Chapter 9 Jagger #2
"You know," Edmund says, lowering his voice conspiratorially, "my brother has no idea what's really happening. He thinks the old order will simply continue. That the Custodians can maintain control the way they always have."
"And you disagree?"
"I think adaptation is survival. The ones who recognize the shift will thrive. The ones who don't..." He shrugs elegantly. "Well."
"You've given this a lot of thought."
"I've had years to think. Years of watching my brother squander opportunities. Years of being told to wait my turn." His voice hardens. "I'm done waiting."
"I understand."
And I do. I understand ambition. I understand patience. I understand the cold calculus of eliminating obstacles.
The difference is that Edmund sees people as stepping stones. I'm starting to see them as something else entirely.
At least, one of them.
We're on the highway now, traffic thinning as we approach the exit that leads to my building. The driver has settled into cruise control. The bodyguard is checking his phone, relaxed in a way he shouldn't be.
"There's something I should tell you," I say quietly, "before we arrive."
Edmund leans closer, eager. "Yes?"
"The things I've discovered about Project Omega. They implicate certain Custodians directly. People who were involved in the original program. People who are still protecting its secrets."
"Which Custodians?"
"That's the sensitive part." I lower my voice further, forcing him to lean in. "Your brother is one of them."
Edmund's eyes widen. I watch the calculations race across his face. His brother, implicated. Evidence of wrongdoing. A path to the Custodian seat that doesn't require waiting for natural causes.
"You have proof?"
"I have everything." I reach into my jacket, and he doesn't even flinch, too focused on the prize I'm dangling. "But there's a problem."
"What problem?"
"You."
The blade is in my hand before he can react. Four inches of ceramic, invisible to metal detectors, sharp enough to split atoms. I drive it up through the soft tissue under his jaw, angling toward the brain stem.
His eyes go wide. A gurgling sound escapes his throat.
The bodyguard is turning, reaching for his weapon, but I'm already moving. I grab Edmund's head and twist, using his body as a shield while I pull the blade free. The bodyguard has his gun out but can't fire without hitting his employer.
That hesitation costs him everything.
I throw the blade. It takes him in the throat, severing the carotid. He slumps against the door, blood spraying across the leather seats.
The driver is screaming, slamming the brakes. The car swerves, tires shrieking on asphalt. I brace myself against the seat, ride out the momentum, and wait for the vehicle to stop.
When it does, I lean forward and press my fingers against the driver's neck. The pressure point drops him instantly, unconscious but alive. He's a civilian. A witness, but not a threat. I'll deal with that later.
I sit back in the blood-soaked seat and look at Edmund Holloway's corpse.
His eyes are still wide, still surprised. Men like him always are at the end. They spend so long calculating other people's moves that they never see the blade coming for their own throat.
I feel nothing.
That's not true.
I feel something. A cold satisfaction, maybe. The knowledge that this particular threat will never touch Jonah. That this particular dickhead will never use what he knew to hurt the investigation, the truth, the man waiting in my apartment.
I take out my phone and make three calls.
The first is to a cleanup crew. Ministry-adjacent, paid to ask no questions. They'll dispose of the bodies and the car, create a story about Edmund disappearing during a business trip.
The second is to a contact who can handle the driver. Memory modification. Expensive, but effective. He'll wake up in a hospital with a concussion and no recollection of the past twelve hours.
The third is to the apartment.
Jonah answers on the first ring.
"You're alive," he says.
"I'm alive."
"Did you handle it?"
I look at Edmund's corpse, at the blood dripping from the leather seats, at the bodyguard slumped against the window.
"Yes."
Silence on the line before a shaky breath out. "Are you okay?"
No one has ever asked me that after a kill. Not once.
"I'm coming home," I say instead of answering.
"I'll be here."
The line goes dead.
I sit in the car, surrounded by the evidence of what I've done, and realize that "home" wasn't a word I used on purpose.
But I meant it anyway.
The cleanup takes two hours. By the time I'm walking through my apartment door, evening light is dim and the moon is moving across the sky, and Jonah is pacing the living room like a caged animal.
He stops when he sees me.
I'm wearing different clothes. The suit I left in is being incinerated along with everything else that touched Edmund Holloway's blood.
But something must show on my face, because Jonah doesn't make a joke.
Doesn't deflect with sarcasm. Just crosses the room and stops in front of me, close enough to touch.
"You're back."
"I'm back."
"Is it done?"
"It's done."
He reaches up, cups my face in his hands. His palms are warm against my cheeks, and I realize I'm cold. Have been cold since I watched the light leave Edmund's eyes.
"Are you okay?" he asks again.
I don't know how to answer. I've killed dozens of people. I've never had someone waiting for me afterward, checking my face for damage, touching me like what I’ve seen is terrible and I need aftercare.
"He would have exposed you," I say instead. "He would have used what he knew to gain power. People like him don't stop until they get what they want."
"I know."
"I couldn't let him hurt you."
"I know." His thumb traces my cheekbone. "That's not what I asked."
I close my eyes. His touch anchors me, pulls me back from the cold place where the killing happened.
"I'm not okay," I admit. "But not for the reason you think."
"Then why?"
"Because I didn't feel anything when I did it. No hesitation. No regret. I cut his throat and watched him die and the only thing I felt was relief that he couldn't threaten you anymore." I open my eyes, meet his gaze. "Death and murder don’t phase me… but losing you… it shouldn’t be like this."
Jonah is quiet for a long moment. His hands don't leave my face.
"You know what I think?" he says finally.
"What?"
"I think you've spent thirty years feeling nothing because that's what they designed you to do. And now you're feeling something, and you don't know how to process it. So you're focusing on the absence of guilt instead of the presence of everything else."
"That's very insightful."
"I used to interview murderers for a living. You pick things up." His mouth quirks. "Also, you're not as complicated as you think you are."
"Is that so."
"That's so." He drops his hands from my face, but only to take my hand and lead me toward the couch.
"Come on. Sit down. I'm going to make you tea because that's what people do in situations like this, and then you're going to tell me exactly what happened, and then we're going to figure out what comes next. "
"Tea."
"Don't argue with me." He pushes me onto the couch and disappears into the kitchen. I hear water running, the click of the kettle, the sound of cabinets opening and closing.
I sit in the fading light and think about Edmund Holloway. About his ambition, his schemes, the years he spent waiting for a chance to seize power. All of it ended in twelve seconds on a highway, because he made the mistake of threatening something I've decided to protect.
Jonah comes back with two mugs. He sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch, and presses one into my hands.
"Talk," he says.
So I do.
I tell him about the townhouse. The study. The careful exchange of information and leverage. I tell him about the car, the bodyguard, the driver who will wake up in a hospital with no memory of the worst day of his life.
The blade sliding through Edmund's throat. The surprise in his eyes. The way his body went slack. And the way I liked watching him bleed out, dying at my hands. Never to be a threat to the man I…
Like.
Jonah listens without interrupting. When I'm finished, he sets down his mug and turns to face me fully.
"You killed a Custodian's brother," he says. "Not an asset. Not a target approved by the Ministries. A member of one of the ruling families."
"Yes."
"They'll investigate. They'll look for answers."
"The cleanup was thorough. Edmund was planning a business trip. He'll simply never arrive at his destination."
"And if someone connects it to you?"
"They won't."
He studies me, those dark eyes seeing too much. "You've done this before. Killed people outside your orders."
"No." I set down my own mug. "This is the first time."
"The first time you've killed to protect someone."
"Yes."
"The first time you've killed for yourself."
I don't answer. The silence is answer enough.
Jonah reaches over and takes my hand. Laces his fingers through mine, the way he's started doing when he wants to anchor me.
"Thank you," he says quietly.
"For killing a man?"
"For choosing me over them." His grip tightens. "I know what that cost you. What it might still cost you. And I know you did it because somewhere in that carefully controlled brain of yours, I matter more than the rules you've followed your whole life."
"You shouldn't thank me for murder."
"I'm not thanking you for murder. I'm thanking you for being human." He lifts our joined hands, presses his lips to my knuckles. "Even if you still don't believe that's what you are."
I watch him, this man I destroyed and somehow couldn't destroy completely.
This man who sees me clearer than anyone has ever seen me.
This man who makes me want things I was designed not to want.
All that fills my mind is how fucking badly I want him on my cock, and how I want to destroy him in a different way.
"I don't know what I am anymore," I say.
"That's okay." He smiles, and his whole face softens.
For thirty years, I've operated alone. Made decisions alone. Killed alone. The only people I've ever trusted are my brothers, and even that trust has limits. Boundaries. The cold architecture of survival.
But Jonah is offering something different. Partnership. Connection. The terrifying possibility of not being alone anymore.
I should refuse. Should push him away, rebuild my walls, return to the safety of isolation, finish making his fake passport and send him on a one-way plane trip far, far the fuck away from here. From me.
Instead, I pull him closer.
He comes willingly, settling against my side, his head on my shoulder. We sit like that as the last light fades from the windows, as the city comes alive with evening sounds, as the betrayal of what I've done settles into my bones.
I killed a man today. Not for The Silent. Not for the Ministries. For Jonah. For the chance to keep him safe a little longer.
I should feel guilty. I should feel something.
What I feel is his warmth against my side, his breath evening out as exhaustion catches up with him, his hand still tangled with mine.
What I feel is home.
And that's the most terrifying thing of all.