Chapter 35 Star-Crossed #2
I eased into my chair, sweaty palms gripping the armrests like I might fall.
“First, I’d love to hear your side of things,” she said. “I’ve heard Harrison’s, and now I’ve heard Scott’s. Let’s see if you have anything to add to the narrative.”
Lucas’s scorched-earth glare didn’t bother Williams, but it had me chewing on my lip. “Me?”
“You.”
In my silence, she set her clasped hands on her legs and waited. Afraid of what I might give away, I stuttered out the most basic form of the story I could, emphasizing the positive impact Lucas effected not just on the Defiance, but on me.
I went to him expecting horror. He proved me wrong at every turn. I fell in love. He saved my life. Several times.
When I finished, she nodded, digesting. “Fascinating.”
“Um… why is it fascinating?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Have you ever read Romeo and Juliet, Miss Reeves?”
I blinked at her.
She crossed her legs. “The recklessness and drama, the forbidden love. It hits all the right notes.”
“All the right notes for…what?”
Williams smiled, then abruptly changed the subject. “Scott here states he still has information to give us.”
“Yes…” I glanced his way, though he ignored me.
Her brow perked. “He’s offered it in exchange for your safe relocation to the refugee camp.”
“What?” I snapped, glaring at Lucas. “No.”
“I told him you’d say that,” Theo said.
Williams’s keen gaze intensified. “I declined his offer. I don’t feel that is the best place for you.”
I tried to reason through her strange tone, but couldn’t figure it out.
“She wants you where she can use you to control me,” Lucas said, sharper than a razor.
Williams smiled like his anger amused her. “He hinted he has a path across enemy lines. He has also hinted you are the only thing of any importance to him. Are you familiar with quid pro quo, Miss Reeves?”
Eyes wide, I reached blindly for Lucas’s shoulder. I’d nearly forgotten this detail, the piece of information I’d withheld from the Defiance because it meant compromising Lucas’s position. Lucas knew how to get us to DC, and now that he’d escaped the Hunters, yielding that information held no risk.
I’d concealed it to protect him, and now it might be the thing that saved his life.
“You can’t have it,” I said, tripping over the words in my eagerness. “Not unless you give us something in return.”
“Ah. I see you are familiar with quid pro quo.”
“I want his exoneration. Theo gave me a document promising him immunity, but I want you to sign it as well.”
Lucas’s incredulous stare burned across my face, but I ignored him in favor of Williams.
Her interest piqued. “Exoneration is a big ask for a Hunter with such bloody hands.”
“He’s on our side. He’s one of us. He gave you information that turned things around for us. Why do you still want to kill him?”
“None of this is a matter of desire, Miss Reeves,” she snapped.
“A live execution of one of his infamous Colonels will send a message to Haynes that we are not weak. It shows our soldiers that we are making strides. It proves to the world that we will not tolerate the NAO’s evil.
That is a valuable display of power. If he can offer me something more than mere safe passage through Virginia… ”
I wanted to strangle her. “What more do you want?”
Her expression, her body, her words… Everything sharpened. “What I want is an end to this war, Miss Reeves. I want my country back. If he gets me Haynes’s head on a spike, then we can talk about a full pardon.”
I jerked back from her ire, but didn’t miss the hunger in her words. “Are you serious?”
“He will lead the mission to assassinate Richard Haynes.”
Lucas’s face scrunched into an incredulous mask.
Williams sliced her gaze his way. “You are an excellent strategist and a skilled killer. Don’t you want to end the man who killed your father?”
Lucas merely stared, blank-faced.
“That’s a suicide mission!” I said. “Absolutely not!”
Williams relaxed into her chair and addressed me. “I’m afraid it’s non-negotiable. If he wants to live, he’ll complete this mission.”
“Assassinate the Commander,” Lucas said, tone lifeless.
“You kill him, and not a single person would question your pardon.”
He released a soft, embittered laugh, his gaze on his lap.
“You can pick your team from our most talented soldiers,” Williams said. “You succeed, exoneration is yours.”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s all? Just a little murder before breakfast, and I’m free?”
Her smile twisted. “Well, there’s one more thing, actually.”
Chills slithered over my skin.
“I recently met with a Canadian reporter,” she said.
My gaze darted to Theo, who grimaced.
“He’s developing a story on the atrocities of the NAO, and he wants an exclusive,” she continued, peering into my eyes, into my soul.
My mind whirred, trying to figure out what that had to do with me. “Okay?”
“You’ll tell him your story.”
“My…story?”
“Do you remember what I said about Romeo and Juliet, Miss Reeves? Everyone roots for the star-crossed lovers.”
“Romeo and Juliet both die in the end.”
“Do they?” she asked, unfazed. “Pity.”
A headache blossomed. “I don’t understand.”
“You tell your story and show everyone the mutilation on your back, then explain how an enemy officer saved you from his own brutal regime because he fell in love with you. People will eat it up.” Williams crossed her legs and set her clasped hands on her knee.
“If we package your love story inside the truth of what the NAO is doing to its people, they will rally right when we’re moving in on the Commander. ”
I snorted. “You’re saying the world doesn’t know what’s happening here?”
Her lips pursed. “The NAO has a way of spinning their propaganda. It’s artful, really, how they’ve painted us as criminals while their human rights violations go unheard.”
I imagined trying to tell my story to a camera, and a wave of nausea washed over me. “And if I don’t agree?”
Her joyless smile spread goosebumps down my spine. “It’s my assumption that you don’t enjoy seeing your colonel in pain?”
My blood turned to ice. “I won’t let you hurt him.”
Williams smiled calmly. “Then you agree to do this interview.”
I said nothing. Lucas’s glare grew savage, and his breathing deepened. The muscles of his arms bunched with the effort to break out of the plastic around his wrists.
Eyeing us both, Williams leaned forward, her expression darkening.
“This is war, Miss Reeves, and we edge closer to extinction every day. If your love story hits the way I think it will, your matching scars will go viral. Imagine the outrage. They’ll save us right as Scott delivers Haynes the killing blow, proving himself a hero.
The country will need a new leader, and we will be right there—the champions of justice and love. It’s perfect.”
A hysterical laugh ripped through my throat imagining it all: the impossibility of Lucas succeeding in assassinating the most protected person on the planet, the unlikelihood of my broken, pitiful story making any difference at all, the sheer pipe dream of winning this thing…
We’d never succeed.
Still, she’d found the only weapon sharp enough to cut us both—each other. If we refused to help her, Lucas and I would be tortured, then marched to the gallows together. I’d stare into that aquamarine until our last moments.
This was a losing game.
Theo shifted again, his eyes pleading. “Sophia, please.”
Swallowing down the roiling acid in my stomach, I nodded. “I’ll do it.”
There was no other choice.
Lucas’s gaze cut to me. “Like hell you will.”
“For you, I will.”
“You’re going to let them sit you in front of a camera to tell the entire world how you fucked a fascist murderer, and he let you be carved up by his own people? Could you even do it without having a panic attack?”
“A panic attack could garner sympathy,” Williams said.
“Fuck off,” Lucas snapped. “She’s a human, not a story you can sell. You treat her like she’s expendable.”
“Because she is.”
He paled. “You’re supposed to be the good guys. This is how you treat your own?”
For the first time, Williams appeared a tad uncomfortable. “She volunteered for everything. She was never commanded or coerced.”
“Then what is this? Is this not coercion?”
“The choice is still available to her.” Her voice stayed calm, but tension radiated from it.
Lucas clenched his bound hands into fists behind his back. “You know this isn’t a choice for her. If you continue to threaten her life—”
“I’d be very careful how you finish that sentence, Scott,” Williams said. “I have soldiers outside with strict orders to end her life if you cross any lines.”
My lungs constricted.
Lucas’s stare went deadly, promising pain in a way I’d only seen when he looked at Jack Miller.
Theo turned wide eyes on Williams. “What?”
Williams ignored it all to focus on me, as if I were the linchpin holding this whole thing together. “If your story gets us aid, and Scott is successful in DC, we could win. That emblem on your back is a battle cry, Sophia. I need it.”
Lucas spun toward me, his voice lower, quieter. “You’re letting her use me as a blade against you.”
He was the most dangerous one she could have found, poison-tipped and pointed straight at my heart.
“It’s just a story,” I whispered without looking at him.
“This will hurt you, Sophia. If they succeed in what they want, this will follow you for the rest of your life.”
“It was always going to follow me, Lucas,” I murmured. “The only difference is that now people will know why.”
He exhaled and dropped his head, defeated.
I turned to Williams, her mouth stretched into a Cheshire cat smile. “I want one more thing.”
Williams raised a brow.
“I want him out of the stockade.”
“Oh?” Williams said, surprised.
“Yes, find somewhere safe to keep us both. Guarded at all times. I live, he is pardoned, then we’ll help you.”
Somehow, her smile widened even further. “I believe we have a deal.”