21. Pietro
Pietro
I’m an intruder.
“You’re here? In Udine?” she scowls.
My lips threaten a smile—to give me away. I’m a schoolboy with a good report card.
“There’s something you need to see.”
I pull the folder from the duffel. Slide it across the table.
Valaria opens it, eyes narrowing as she reads.
“What is this?”
“Declassified transcripts,” I say. “The internal notes from the operation. The part after I filed the override.”
“The override?”
“I sent a message to my handler,” I explain. “Five days in. I told them you were no longer to be monitored, flagged, or considered a threat. That I was recusing myself from the directive. That I was compromised.”
She stares. Looks at the date.
“You filed that before the fire,” she whispers.
I nod.
“And before the kiss.”
“Yes.”
Something cracks behind her eyes. Not pain. Not betrayal. Something else.
Hope.
She closes the folder with a soft snap and sets her hands flat on either side of it, as if steadying herself against the weight of everything unsaid.
“You risked everything,” she says quietly. “Your clearance. Your assignment. Your reputation.”
I shrug, but the motion feels too light for what she’s just said. “Some things are worth more than directives.”
Her gaze flickers, mouth parting like she might say something else. But then she doesn’t.
She just looks at me like I’m both exactly what she feared—and exactly what she wanted.
And just as that fragile thread between us starts to settle?—
Her phone lights up.
She glances at it, and the color drains from her face.
The glow reflects off her cheekbones as she answers.
“This is Valaria.”
Pause.
Then—
She goes still. Her spine straightens. Her eyes lose all softness. Every part of her switches to lockdown mode—the agent mask she wears when the world goes sideways.
“No. That’s not possible. That facility was shut down.”
She ends the call.
Then she looks at me. Voice steady. Low.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Who?”
“You’re not the only one with an inside track.”
She holds my gaze.
“Tell me. You know I’ll do anything for you.”
“They found something in the ruins of the southern compound.”
“Found what?”
She swallows. When she speaks, it’s almost too quiet to hear.
“My name.”
A long silence falls between us.
“Just your name?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“No. An archived file turned up in my mailbox.” She moves quickly, grabbing her coat. “Redacted but traceable. Cross-referenced with something I never submitted.”
“Which means someone submitted it for you.”
She nods, jaw tight. “Someone with access. Someone who wanted me to see it.”
She pauses at the door. “Someone who knew exactly where I’d be—and when.”
My blood turns to ice.
I had hoped she would never find that file. Not because I wanted to keep it from her—but because I knew what it would do to her. To us. The moment her name appeared in connection with the southern compound, the clock started ticking. Whoever planted it knew what they were doing.
Someone wants her dead.
Someone else wants her back—alive.
She doesn’t know the rest. Not yet.
She doesn’t know that I saw the file weeks ago and tried to destroy it. I thought I could shield her from it. Keep it quiet. Bury it like all the other things I’ve done to protect her.
But secrets don’t stay buried in our world.
There’s another file she hasn’t seen. There’s more. She can’t walk in blind. She needs to see the one flagged as “burned evidence” in the official report.
“Val, wait. There’s something else.”
I pull up the other file. She scans it.
“You knew this?”
I nod. The look in her eyes. A mixture of hatred and fear. Fear of me. If she slaps me, I deserve it.
“I wanted to protect you.”
Her eyes flicker. Soften a fraction.
“I need loyalty, not protection—I need your absolute loyalty.”
“You have it.”
She moves through the room like a soldier now—focused, sharp, unreachable. That folder didn’t just reopen a case. It reopened her wounds. And I’m the one who handed her the scalpel.
I want to stop her. To make her look at me and remember. But the moment’s gone.
Whatever we were building just got hit by a classified freight train.
And I don’t know if there will be anything left to salvage in the wreckage.
Not unless I tell her everything.
Even the part that could break us. That she was built for a purpose. About the encryption string that can only be unlocked with her retinal scan. And the biometric fragment in her that matches her mother’s DNA.
“Val..wait a sec. You have my loyalty, my blood, my bones, but there is more.”
Her eyes go glassy, the way they do when she’s bracing for the truth, she can’t unhear. Beneath the frost, there’s a flicker—raw and wounded—as if some last, fragile hope has given up.
I tell her everything I know. She can’t go in blind.