Chapter 24
AIRPLANE CONVERSATIONS
brYS
"I can fucking walk," Jakob snarls. "The wheelchair is entirely unnecessary."
Now that he's decided to swear, he does so frequently and floridly. Like the rest of his Arrows, he has fixated on the many various forms of "fuck" as his preferred curse word.
"It's hospital policy, sir," says the enormous, soft-spoken Hispanic nurse.
"Policy," Jakob grumbles. "Bullshit policy. I was shot in the gut, not the fucking leg."
I touch his shoulder. "Jakob, he's just doing his job. Stop it."
He sighs. "Fine. Sorry."
"Happens every day, sir. It's alright."
He has spent the last few days being monitored and going crazier and crazier at being cooped up.
At this point, he's nearly feral. We also haven't had a moment alone since our giant tell-all; the Arrows decided what was needed was some "family togetherness," which apparently means Chance ignoring the protests of the doctors and nurses as he pushed Jakob's bed down the hallway to Nico's room.
When the doctor arrived and tried to exert his authority, Chance merely stood over him, mammoth arms crossed over his mammoth chest and stared down at the diminutive doctor in glaring, threatening silence.
Eventually, the doctor threw up his hands and walked out, snarling something along the lines of "at least wash your damn hands. "
And that's how we spent the next few days—twenty people crammed into a single hospital room. Visiting hours were totally ignored. Saxon somehow snuck in two fifths of high-end scotch, and Terra snuck in a bag of weed gummies and passed them out to everyone like they were Certs.
It was wild. The hospital couldn't do a damn thing about it, either—they tried.
The hospital security showed up, took one look at the crew of men—each of whom radiated lethal energy—and fucked off back to their booth.
Since we weren't doing anything but being noisy, the hospital decided discretion was the better part of valor and didn't call the police on us.
Now, finally, Jakob and Nico have both been discharged, Nico against medical advice.
They wanted him to stay a few more days for observation, but he was having no part of it.
He was in a lot of pain and was barely able to move, but insisted he would heal better at home, and either they could discharge him or he would walk out on his own anyway.
A long black bus of the type that typically sees bachelorette parties arrives, and the troops tromp up onto the bus; forty minutes later, we're loading onto the same absurd jet.
This time, I'm able to appreciate it more.
It's incredible. The seats are all captain's chairs that rotate 360 degrees, but each one is its own high-end massage chair with heating and cooling functions, the ability to recline totally flat and transform into a bed, and built-in speakers that can sync to either a personal device or the projector screen television that slides down from the ceiling between the cabin and the cockpit.
The walls, floor, and ceiling can be turned into screens that reflect what's outside—making it feel like you're sitting in a glass tube fifty thousand feet in the air, going several hundred miles per hour.
Ask me how I know: Saxon turned the feature on while I was dozing, and I woke up to discover I was scudding through the air, seemingly supported by nothing—the neatest trick is how the effect makes the seat beneath you seem invisible too. It's wildly disorienting.
Jakob and Nico take seats side by side in the back and huddle together—plotting Pugli’s demise. Which leaves me with the women.
I am not a girl's girl. I have never had many girlfriends. In high school and college, I had a circle of friends, but it was all relationships of proximity and convenience, nothing deep or meaningful. Once I took over after Dad's death, I gave up the pretense of trying to have friendships.
So, I don't know how to be around them. I feel awkward and new. They have stories. Shorthand. Inside jokes. They whisper and giggle. I sit and watch and listen and wonder what's wrong with me.
“Excuse me?" I'm startled out of my self-pitying reverie by a soft, quiet voice.
I look at the woman who has settled in beside me: tall, lean, and willowy, with auburn hair. "Hi. Ummm…Naomi? Sorry, I'm not great with names. You're Silas's…ummm…" I trail off, hoping she'll fill in the rest.
She does. "Wife is close enough. We don’t stand on legalities and technicalities." A gentle smile. "And yes, Silas is my man."
I blink. “Your man."
She nods. "Yes. My husband, although, as I said, we are not technically married. We are in every way that counts. But…" she shrugs. "I don't know. He's my man."
"I've never even thought the phrase, 'my man' before," I admit. "I'm far too independent for that."
She shifts in her seat—when two seats are arranged side by side facing the same direction, they're close enough to feel almost like a bench, which means when she crosses her ankles under her thighs, her knees nudge into my personal space.
It's weirdly intimate for someone I just met, but pulling away feels rude, so I tolerate it.
"You are uncomfortable with us." It's not a question.
I nod. "Yeah, I…I'm not—I don't have a lot of friends. Or any. I…I work too much and, well, the honest truth is that I've been too shut down to let anyone in far enough to be a friend."
She casts her eyes around the group of women; it somehow serves as a gesture.
"We are all like that. Myka ran away from an overbearing family and a bad relationship.
Anjalee was the spoiled heiress to an Indian billionaire's fortune and ran away from an arranged marriage. Tatiana’s father is a Croatian gangster.
Annika was an Olympic volleyball player whose career was ended by a car accident, and then she got addicted to drugs.
Maria is an operator like the boys, and the hell she went through is a whole story in itself.
Terra was sexually abused as a girl and was homeless for a long time.
Sophia was the daughter of a Brazilian warlord and was trained from childhood to be an assassin. "
I choke. "Wait, what?"
Sophia rolls her eyes, having overheard.
"I wasn't an assassin, Naomi. I was my father’s right-hand man, woman, girl, whatever.
Being a druglord-kingpin-warlord-whatever-you-want-to-call-him, that meant threatening, hurting, and killing people, it is true.
But an assassin is a specific thing. I was the one who hired the assassin, not the one who did the assassinating. "
“Oh," Naomi says. "I see."
Sophia indicates Naomi. "Her father is a militia-prepper-type. Beat her mercilessly. Used her like a slave when her mother died. Sold her to his buddy, a man twice her age, as his wife."
I stare around at the women, each one in turn, absorbing what I'm being told.
"My father left my home in El Salvador to find work and never came back," Maria says.
"My mother tried to bring my brother and me to America for a better life, but she and my brother died in the Darién Gap.
I made it to the border but ended up in a brothel.
I escaped, eventually, and was discovered by a CIA agent, who recruited me into black ops. "
"Um." I shake my head. "I…I don't…"
"Brys," Naomi says. "My point is that none of us—not one of us—has lived what anyone could call a normal life. We are all messed up. We've all been through hell. We may not know your personal story, and we may not know what you've been through, but I promise, we understand."
I shake my head—my eyes burn, for some stupid reason. "It's not that. I…I just don't know how to be friends with women."
There's silence, and then every single one of them bursts into laughter.
Naomi slings an arm around me and squeezes. "Oh dear. Oh my." She rests her cheek on my shoulder. "We aren't friends. We’re…"
"Sisters," Anjalee says.
"Comrades-in-arms," Annika says.
"Every time the men go out on another mission to save one of the others, or one of us, or whatever, we're how we get through it. We're a little band of soldiers’ wives." This is Terra, with her thick Boston twang and her bright scarlet hair. "We're family."
"I don't have that either," I say.
"Neither do most of us," answers Annika. "This is found, family."
Sophia doesn't say or do anything, but somehow, all the women turn to her as if they know she's about to speak.
It's weird and impressive. "Brys, listen to me.
I know exactly how you feel. I held myself apart from them for a long time because of it.
I didn't think I knew how to interact with them, didn't think they'd want to.
One of the nicknames my father's men gave me was 'La Reina de Hielo.
' Do you speak any Spanish?" I shake my head.
"It means the Ice Queen. I was also known as La Víbora—The Viper.
That should tell you what kind of a person I was. "
"The Viper?" I echo. "Really, that's…honestly, that's pretty fucking badass."
She just shrugs. "You just have to let us in. Let us know you."
"And really, you don't have a choice," Terra says. "You're stuck with us."
"Isn't that just endearing?" I deadpan.
Tatiana speaks for the first time. "I was so concerned as you were when Nico introduced me to the others.
And I suppose you may understand, hmm? I saw them laughing, and how close they are.
I had friends back in Croatia. But I was Stjepan Juric's daughter.
The friendships were…it was hard to know if they were genuine, no?
Do they like me for me or because my father is who he is?
How do you know? I thought these ladies would not like me or think I talk stupidly, because of my accent.
Or—oh, I had many fears. But now we are family. "