Chapter 29
BYRON
The helicopter lifted off, carrying Joy away into the night, and I watched until the running lights disappeared into the darkness.
Then it was just the three of us.
Me. Victoria. Micah.
Standing on a sandbar in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a lantern and the weight of thirty years between us.
Victoria pulled out another cigarette, her movements slower now, less theatrical. Like the performance was over and she was too tired to keep it going.
I watched her light it, the flame illuminating her face for just a moment, and I was suddenly somewhere else entirely.
Quantico. 1995.
Victoria had been exactly what she'd said.
Brilliant. Magnetic.
The kind of woman who walked into a room and changed the oxygen content just by existing.
We'd been in the same training cohort—hand-picked, vetted, tested within an inch of our lives. The program was classified. The mission was long-term. The commitment was forever.
And Victoria had been the best of us.
Sharp. Fast. Fearless in ways that made the rest of us look cautious.
We'd started sleeping together three weeks in.
Not because it was smart—it wasn't—but because the attraction was undeniable. Magnetic, like she said. Two bodies pulled together by something neither of us could name or control.
Training made it better.
We pushed each other. Competed. Fucked like we were trying to prove something neither of us could articulate.
And for a while, it worked.
But it was on our first real-world training mission—overseas, boots on the ground, live intel—that I started to see the cracks.
Behind the wire, Victoria kept it together. Flawless performance. Perfect execution.
Out in the field, though, something shifted.
She'd have these moments. Manic bursts of activity that came out of nowhere. Talking too fast. Moving too fast. Her eyes bright and fevered like she'd taken something she shouldn't have.
She'd cover it quickly. Laugh it off. Make a joke.
But I saw it.
And as one mission rolled into the next, as our affair continued in hotel rooms and safe houses across three continents, I knew the truth.
Victoria was hiding something.
I confronted her in Prague.
She laughed in my face.
Then dropped to her knees and tried to give me a blowjob.
I refused.
That's when the mask came off.
Glasses thrown. Profanities launched. She turned into someone else—someone I didn't recognize. A woman possessed.
I asked her to get help.
She laughed again. Harder this time. Crueler.
"Help?" she'd spat. "You think I need help? You're the one who's broken, Byron. You're the one who can't handle reality."
But I wasn't the one throwing things. I wasn't the one spiraling.
I was idealistic back then. Young. Married to the mission in a way that left no room for complications.
And Victoria was a complication.
She could ruin everything. Everything we'd been building. Everything we'd been chosen for.
The psych evals had been rigorous for a reason. This wasn't a weekend mission. This was a commitment for life.
So, I told my superiors.
That night, she came to my apartment.
She let me have it.
Accused me of everything. Sleeping with other women. Having this plan all along to sabotage her.
Her voice got louder. Sharper. Unhinged.
I had to call my superiors again.
They sent a team.
She fought them. Screamed. Called me every name she could think of as they dragged her out of my apartment.
I never saw her again.
But I heard the whispers.
She kept trying to get into the inner circle. Kept showing up at checkpoints, demanding to be let back in. Went off the deep end. Had a baby. Gave it up for adoption.
I wished I could've done more.
Said something. Done something.
But I had a mission.
And the mission always came first.
I blinked, the memory dissolving, and I was back on the sandbar.
Victoria stood a few feet away, staring out at the water, cigarette smoldering between her fingers.
Micah was tense beside me, eyes locked on her like she might explode at any second.
Maybe she would.
"Victoria," I said quietly.
She didn't turn.
"I'm sorry," I said.
She laughed—soft, bitter. "For what?"
"For all of it," I said. "For telling them. For not fighting harder for you. For letting them take you."
She turned then, her eyes meeting mine. "You did what you had to do."
"I could've done more."
"No," she said simply. "You couldn't."
Silence.
The wind picked up, carrying salt and cold.
"We can work this out," I said. "Whatever you want. I'll take the blame. I'll—"
"Stop," she interrupted.
I stopped.
She took a long drag from the cigarette, her hand shaking slightly. When she exhaled, the smoke was torn away by the wind.
"I don't want your apologies, Byron," she said. "I wanted your fight."
I frowned. "What?"
She looked at me then—really looked—and something in her expression cracked.
The fight drained out of her all at once, leaving her deflated. Smaller.
Sad.
Her hand shook as she fished out another cigarette. The first one had burned down to nothing.
I stepped forward without thinking and held the lighter for her, my hand steady where hers trembled.
Her skin was cold. Papery. Nothing like the soft, warm flesh I'd kissed and marveled over decades ago.
Where had that woman gone?
Victoria inhaled deeply, then met my eyes.
"You always had a way of confusing me," she said softly. "You always knew how to push my buttons."
I didn't know what to say to that.
"What I wouldn't do," she murmured, "to go back and do it all over again."
The wistfulness in her voice hit me harder than anger ever could.
She looked at Micah then, her gaze lingering on him for a long moment.
Then back to me.
"You've ruined it for me," she said. "Again."
"What?" I asked.
"I wanted you to fight me," she said. "I wanted fists against claws. A war. Something I could sink my teeth into."
She smiled faintly, sadly.
"But just like Byron Dane," she continued, "you threw me another curveball."
She flicked the cigarette away, the ember arcing into the darkness.
The wind caught a strand of her hair, pulling it loose from the perfect coif she'd maintained all night.
And for just a second—one brief, stolen second—I saw her.
The young Victoria. The woman with fire in her eyes and sex in her smile. The woman I'd loved before everything fell apart.
C'est la vie, she said quietly.
Her hand moved.
Fast. Practiced.
Decades of training compressed into a single motion.
She reached into her pocket.
"Micah," she said, her voice steady now. Clear. "Take care of her."
Micah tensed, his hand moving toward his sidearm.
But Victoria was faster.
Her hand came back out holding a small pistol—black, compact, deadly.
"I hope you're a better man than your father," she said.
And before either of us could move, before I could shout or reach for her or do anything—
She pressed the barrel to her temple.
And pulled the trigger.