Chapter 17 Jinx
Chapter Seventeen: Jinx
The boarding school looks nothing like a facility.
Red brick. Ivy climbing the walls. A sprawling lawn that's gone wild from neglect, grass swaying in the Geneva breeze. The kind of place that should hold memories of childhood summers and first loves and the particular cruelty of adolescent social hierarchies.
Instead, it holds broken children and the people trying to piece them back together.
Elliot meets us at the door. He looks exhausted, dark circles under his eyes, his usually neat appearance rumpled and worn. But he's smiling, and that smile says everything.
"They're doing better than expected," he says as we follow him inside. "Most of them are eating. A few are starting to talk. The medical team says the physical injuries are manageable."
"And the rest?" Asher asks. "The conditioning?"
"That's going to take time. Years, probably.
But we're already making progress." Elliot leads us through a corridor lined with closed doors, each one painted a different color.
"We let them choose their rooms. Pick their own things.
Small choices, but important ones. They've never had choices before. "
I know that feeling. The first time someone asked what I wanted instead of telling me what to do, I froze for a full minute. Couldn't process the question. Couldn't understand that my preference mattered.
"Where's Lily?"
Elliot's smile widens. "She's been asking for you all morning. Wouldn't eat breakfast until we promised you were coming." He stops at a door painted bright yellow, knocks twice. "Lily? Someone's here to see you."
The door opens a crack. A single eye appears, dark and wary, scanning the hallway for threats.
Then the door flies open and Lily launches herself at me.
I catch her on instinct, arms wrapping around her small body as she slams into my chest. She's crying, hot tears soaking through my shirt, her thin arms locked around my neck with a grip that borders on painful.
"You came back." Her voice is muffled against my shoulder. "You said you would and you came back."
"I told you I would." I hold her tight, one hand cradling the back of her head. She's so small. So fragile. This girl who held a knife to a man's throat twelve hours ago is actually skin and bones. "I don't break my promises."
"Everyone breaks promises." She pulls back enough to look at me, her face streaked with tears. "The doctors promised it wouldn't hurt. The handlers promised it would get easier. Everyone lied."
"I'm not them." I crouch down so we're eye level, take her hands in mine. Her fingers are cold, bird-boned, trembling. "I know what they did to you. I know how hard it is to trust anyone after that. But I'm not going to hurt you, and I'm not going to leave you. Not ever."
She stares at me. Searching my face for the lie. The betrayal she's been trained to expect.
The wariness doesn't disappear, but it softens.
"Can I stay with you?" The words come out small. "When this is over? Can I stay with you and not go back to a facility?"
My throat tightens. I think about all the reasons this is a terrible idea.
The violence in my past, the violence still to come.
The fact that I don't know the first thing about raising a child.
The nightmares that wake me screaming, the rage that still lives under my skin, the thousand ways I could fuck this up.
Then I think about her face in that office. The knife trembling in her hand. The way she collapsed into my arms when I told her she had a choice.
"Yeah." The word comes out on a rasp. "You can stay with me. Us."
Her face transforms. The tight lines around her mouth dissolve. Her eyes go wide, wet, and she throws herself at me again. This time I'm ready for it. I hold her and let her cry and pretend I don't notice Asher wiping his eyes behind us.
"Lily." Elliot's voice is gentle, careful. "Jinx has some things he needs to do. Important things. But he'll be back soon."
"How soon?"
I pull back, meet her eyes. "Three days. I have to help my brothers with something. But when it's done, I'm coming back here. And Asher and I will take you home."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
She nods, solemn and serious. Then she reaches up and touches my face, her small fingers tracing the line of my jaw.
"You look tired," she says. "Did you have nightmares?"
"No." I take her hand, squeeze it gently. "For the first time in a long time, I didn't have any nightmares at all."
"That's good." She pulls her hand back, wraps her arms around herself. "I still have them. Every night. The doctors say they'll stop eventually, but I don't believe them."
"They will." I stand, rest my hand on her shoulder. "It takes time. But they get quieter. And one day, you'll wake up and realize you can't remember the last time you had one."
"Is that what happened to you?"
"I'm still working on it. But I'm getting there." I glance at Asher, then back at Lily. "I had help. Someone who didn't give up on me even when I gave them every reason to."
Lily's gaze moves to Asher, assessing. "Is he your person?"
"Yeah." I reach back, find Asher's hand without looking. "He's my person."
"Good." She nods, satisfied. "Everyone should have a person. The doctors say that's important for healing."
"The doctors are right."
Elliot touches Lily's shoulder, guides her gently back toward her room. "Come on. Let's get you some lunch while Jinx takes care of business. He'll come say goodbye before he leaves."
Lily goes, but she looks back twice before the yellow door closes behind her. Each time, I raise my hand in a small wave. Each time, she waves back.
When the door clicks shut, my shoulders drop. The tension I've been carrying since Singapore bleeds out in one long exhale.
"You okay?" Asher asks.
"No." I turn to face him. "I told a traumatized child that I'd take care of her. I don't know how to take care of anyone. I barely know how to take care of myself."
"You'll learn."
"What if I don't? What if I fail her?"
"Then you'll try again." He takes my face in his hands, forces me to look at him. "That's what being a parent means. Fucking up and trying again. Making mistakes and learning from them. Nobody gets it right the first time."
"You seem very calm about the fact that we're apparently adopting a kid."
"I've had a few hours to process." He grins, and it's the cocky, infuriating grin that made me want to punch him the first time we met. "Besides, you already love her. I can see it. Fighting that would be like fighting gravity."
"I don't love her. I barely know her."
"Bullshit. You looked at her and saw yourself. That's love, Jinx. The complicated, messy, crazy kind. The kind that doesn't give you a choice."
He's right. I hate that he's right.
"Three days," I say. "We finish this in three days, and then we figure out how to be parents."
"Sounds like a plan."
"It sounds like insanity."
"Same thing, with us."
I kiss him, hard and fast, because I don't have the words for what I'm feeling. The fear and the hope and the desperate, aching need to believe that I can be something other than what they made me.
When I pull back, his eyes are soft.
"War room," he says. "Jagger's waiting."
"Let's go plan some murders."
The war room is a converted dining hall on the ground floor.
Long tables pushed together in the center, covered with maps and tablets and pencil shavings.
Jagger stands at the head, pale eyes moving over data streams on his laptop.
Jace is pacing, flipping his knife in the air.
Jonah perches on a table nearby, legs swinging, looking entirely too cheerful for someone planning assassinations.
Marlee and Thiago are here too, both looking better than they did before. Thiago's shoulder is bandaged but mobile. Marlee's split lip has healed to a thin pink line.
"Good of you to join us," Jagger says without looking up. "I trust the reunion went well?"
"Lily's attached." I take a seat at the table, Asher sliding in beside me. "She's going to stay with us when this is over."
Jagger does look up at that, one eyebrow raised. "You're adopting a child."
"Apparently."
"In the middle of a war against a shadow government."
"The timing could be better."
"The timing is terrible." But he chuckles. "We'll discuss that later. Right now, we have two targets and seventy-two hours."
He pulls up the first file, projects it onto the wall. Abernathy's face fills the screen, scarred and hard, eyes like chips of ice.
"Abernathy. Currently in London."
"Security?" Marlee asks.
"Heavy. He's paranoid, with good reason. Never travels without a minimum of four guards, all ex-military. His office is a fortress, multiple checkpoints, biometric locks, armed response on call." Jagger pulls up building schematics. "But he has a weakness."
"Which is?"
"Every Thursday night, he visits a private club in Mayfair. Very exclusive, very discreet, very illegal. He goes alone, because even his guards aren't allowed inside. The club has its own security, but they're not his people. They can be bypassed."
"You want me to take him in a sex club?" Jace asks. “Fucking gross, what if he’s balls deep in someone.”
"Then cut his dick off, I don’t give a shit. Should be fun for you, Reaper." Jagger rolls his eyes and switches to the next file. "Oswald is in Dubai.”
"He's mine," I say.
Jagger shakes his head. "You're needed for the Board meeting. Oswald goes to Marlee and Thiago."
"He took children and sold them to be tortured. I want to watch him die."
"I understand. But the Board is more important. If we don't secure those seats, everything we've done means nothing. Someone else will rebuild the Foundry. Someone else will continue the work." Jagger's eyes meet mine, steady and certain. "Trust Marlee to handle Oswald. She knows what's at stake."
Marlee nods at me, her expression grim. "He'll suffer. I promise you that."