34. Ellie
ELLIE
The woman in the mirror is a mess. Bruises on her neck. Clothes that don't fit. She used to have a plan. She used to be smart.
I look away. Now I'm just a girl hiding in a house owned by the man who killed her father.
It's been two days since Killian said Yes.
Two days since I locked myself in this room.
The guys leave food outside my door. I pick at it.
A few bites here and there, enough to keep my body from shutting down completely.
Knowing he killed my father isn't the same as knowing the rest. The how.
The why. Whether anything between us was ever real.
I can’t hide anymore.
The hallway is quiet. Despite the lack of food, my legs feel stronger today.
My footsteps echo on the hardwood. At home, the floors creak.
Here, there is only the music drifting from the ceiling.
A slow, hauntingly beautiful melody I've never heard before.
I walk toward the kitchen, feeling like an intruder in my own life.
I find them in the living area. Gabriel’s hands stall on the keyboard. Jackson’s mouth snaps shut. They’re hunched over a laptop, cross-referencing names I’ve never heard of. I don’t care about the people they’re hunting. I don’t care about their war. I need to see Killian.
"Ellie," Kai rises from the couch. "How are you feeling?"
"Where is he?" I ask, feigning a smile.
Gabriel doesn't look up. "He's outside chopping wood. He’s been at it since sunrise."
"I need to talk to him."
The team exchange glances, but no one tries to stop me. They understand that this conversation is inevitable.
I lean against the counter and wait. The rhythmic thud of an axe stops. A moment later, the heavy back door swings open. He brings the cold in with him. The smell of rain and fresh-cut pine. He's sweating despite the chill, his shirt clinging to his back.
"Ellie."
I spin toward the voice. He’s leaning against the frame, looking like he hasn't slept in a year. He stays by the door, he knows better than to crowd me now.
"You're here," I manage.
"Gabriel said you were asking for me."
"I need to know everything. I can't begin to understand without knowing."
He watches me with eyes that have seen too much to be surprised by my anger.
"Ellie."
"Don't treat me like a victim. Just tell me what happened. I deserve to know."
He watches me. He’s scanning my face for the exact second I finally decide I hate him.
"Sit down," he says.
"I'd rather stand."
"I wasn't asking, Ellie. Sit." He slides a bar stool out from the kitchen island. "You're too pale. Just sit."
I sink onto the stool. My legs are already shaking. Even carrying my own weight feels like a punishment Grace designed herself. I fold my hands in my lap. Squeezing. Digging my nails into my palms until it stings.
"Tell me about that night. Tell me exactly what happened."
Killian is still.
"Your father wasn't only investigating deaths. He was looking for the blueprint behind them," he says. "He wasn't trying to stop the Order. He was trying to understand how they made us. He'd found out what they'd done with his research. How I was..." He uses his fingers for air quotes. "Made."
He looks at the table. His eyes are dark.
"Your father was brilliant, Ellie. He pieced together connections that should have been impossible to trace.
I didn't realize how much he knew until I went through his files after.
After it was done." He pauses. "He didn't want to dissect me.
He wanted to figure out how to bring people like me back from the dead, from the conditioning they put us through. "
I search for a lie. I don't find one. Even now, he respects my father's intelligence.
"So they ordered you to kill him?"
"Julian Ross ordered me to end the threat. I'd done it dozens of times before." He doesn't look away. "It was just another assignment."
Another assignment.
"How?" I clear my throat, which feels like it's closing.
"I hit him in the temple. He fell. Hit his head on the corner of the conference table. I made it look like an accident." He pauses. "It was supposed to be poison. Something that mimics cardiac arrest. But when I saw him looking at your photograph..."
He stops. My hands are shaking so hard I have to grip the edge of the stool. He chose to look him in the eye. He chose to use his hands. No poison. Just brute force.
I close my eyes, but it doesn't help. I can hear it, bone hitting table. The way his body must have crumpled. The way he must have known, in those last seconds, that he was dying.
My father died looking at a picture of me. I can feel the hot sting of tears prickling behind my eyes.
"Were you thinking about the job when you watched me at the gala?" My voice cracks.
He flinches. The first real crack I've seen in his smooth, dangerous surface.
"No. God, no. When I saw you that night." He stops. Shakes his head. "I was there for the job. I was supposed to kill him and leave. Immediately."
"But you didn't."
"I couldn't. I killed him. I was supposed to disappear. But I'd listened to you speak. I heard you talking about redemption. I told myself I was checking the scene. Making sure it was believable."
"And?"
"And I saw you break down when they wheeled him out." He looks at the floor. "I knew I was fucked. The Order never mentioned that he had a daughter. You weren't a target. You weren't even a threat. But I couldn't stop looking at you."
"So... you stayed."
"I stayed. You weren't a job anymore. You were just this girl who was losing everything, and I was the one who had taken it. And I knew. The mission was over. The Order was over. There was only you. I couldn't walk away."
"To do what?"
"To protect you. From the Order. From anyone who might want to finish what I started."
He tells me about the three men he killed to keep me alive.
How he ran the prison from the inside. How he manipulated the system to get into the house arrest program with me.
God, he even had people tracking every route I took.
Every place I went. My hands go numb. I was never alone. Not once. Even when I thought I was.
"Is that what you told yourself? That you were protecting me?"
"At first. But that was bullshit. I was just trying to feel less like a piece of shit. Protecting you was the only way I could live with myself."
"When did it stop being about guilt and become about..." I gesture helplessly between us.
Killian is quiet for so long I think he might not answer.
"I didn’t have a plan after that first week," he says, his voice dropping an octave.
"It was never about the files, Ellie. I'd spent seven years watching you from the outside.
Getting through your front door was the only goal I actually had.
Once I was inside, I was winging it. I made up any excuse I could find to stay close to you.
And then I made that comment about the prison programs, and you actually laughed.
You weren't being a therapist. You were just you.
And I was done. I stopped protecting myself and started wanting you. "
I remember laughing at that comment.
I shake my head, trying to dislodge the memory.
"You studied me," I say, my voice sounding like it belongs to someone else. "All that time. You were just learning exactly what I needed to hear."
"Yes," he sighs.
"How long were you planning it?"
He doesn't look at me.
"Two years. From the moment I heard about the rehabilitation program."
Two fucking years. Seven hundred and thirty days of him learning exactly how to make me fall.
"You knew exactly how to make me feel safe. You turned my own mind against me."
"In the beginning, yes."
"In the beginning? When did it stop being manipulation, Killian?"
"I don't know. Somewhere along the way, the act stopped. I just started being myself. With you. The man I'd always wanted to be."
"And which version was real? The killer, or the man who made me feel safer than I'd ever felt?"
"Both," he says, with no theatrics. "They're both real, Ellie. I'm a man capable of terrible things and also capable of..." He stops.
"Capable of what?"
"Of... of wanting to be worthy of the way you looked at me before you knew. Of trying to fix what I broke."
I should feel something. Anything, but there is nothing there. The words don't change what his hands did. Then I look at those hands. The same ones resting so calmly on the table. The numbness ignites.
"Don't." I stand abruptly, the stool scrapes against the floor. "Don't you dare make this about redemption."
"Please?”
"You killed him. You held me. You touched me. You made me feel things I can't even name."
Killian goes very still. Like any movement might break me.
"I know," he says simply.
"Do you? Do you have any idea what it's like to realize the man you trusted is a murderer? I can’t see you without seeing him."
"No. I don't know what that's like. But I know what it's like to want someone you've destroyed."
"Stop talking about wanting me! You don't get to make this romantic or tragic or anything other than what it is."
"And what is it?" His gray eyes are unflinching.
"It's sick. It's twisted and wrong, and I don't know what's real anymore. I don't know if anything I felt was genuine or if it was all just some fucked-up game."
The silence stretches. I’m breathing hard, waiting for him to defend himself.
"What do you want me to say, Ellie? That I'm sorry? I am more than you'll ever know. That I regret killing your father? I regret that it was necessary, but I don't regret the path that led me to you."
"Necessary? Is that what you tell yourself?"
"It's what I know. If I hadn't killed him, someone else would have. Someone who might not have had any interest in protecting his daughter. Your father was a dead man the moment he started investigating the Order."
"So you're a hero now? My savior?" I want to laugh, but my anger is a knot in my throat that I can’t swallow.