47. Aj #2
“What happened to you in Russia…what the Nightshades did to you. You and Dylan aren’t as different as you think. It went on for years.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “Years.”
I stop hearing her words. Stop feeling the cold.
He was a little boy.
I know how it feels to be taken to a room and come back out less human than you were before. I know the awful split between your mind and your body when you realize you’re about to be raped and there’s nothing you can do.
“How? Why didn’t anyone stop it?” The question burns as it leaves my mouth.
“We were foster children. We didn’t have anyone else.
We all tried, in the ways kids can try when they’re terrified, starving, and getting hurt too.
” Eyes shining with tears, she keeps going.
“Dylan stopped talking almost completely after a while. He’d sit in corners and stare at walls and flinch if anyone touched him.
But if one of the younger kids cried, he’d give them his food.
He was…” She wipes at her eyes. “He was still kind then. Even after everything.”
A lump rises in my throat. “What happened? How did you get out?”
“Dylan was nine when he finally snapped. One of the men was drunk. Left the bedroom door unlocked upstairs. Dylan got out. I don’t know if he planned it or if he just reached the end of what he could survive.
Maybe both. But he went into the kitchen, turned on every burner, found the lighter fluid in the mudroom, and set the house on fire.
” Her hand brushes over the scar on her neck again.
“He ran downstairs covered in blood and started unlocking the basement cages. He got me out. Jake too. Casey. Sarah. Jonas.” Her voice cracks. “But not everyone made it.”
Staring straight ahead, more tears build in her eyes.
“The fire spread too fast. Part of the basement collapsed. One of the little girls was still chained to the pipe, and we couldn’t get the lock off in time.
” She swallows hard. “Another was unconscious. Dylan tried to go back for them, but Jake tackled him to the ground because the ceiling was already coming down. Four of them burned alive in that house, while Jake held Dylan back screaming.”
My entire body goes rigid as my heart races.
“When the police came, Dylan wasn’t talking. He didn’t speak to anyone. Not to the doctors, not to social workers, not to us.”
Miranda rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I had distant relatives in Czechia,” she says after a moment. “An aunt on my mother’s side. She took me and…all of us who were left. We moved and tried to build something that looked like a normal life. But Dylan never really came with us.”
“What do you mean?” I ask shakily.
“He was physically there. That’s about it.” Her mouth trembles. “He didn’t speak for years. He slept with knives under his pillow. If anyone touched him without warning, he’d break fingers before he even knew what he was doing. I didn’t hear his voice again until he was almost fourteen.”
Eyes closing briefly, she takes another steadying breath.
“He thought it was his fault. All of it. The abuse. The kids who died. He convinced himself he was rotten somehow, that there was something wrong with him that invited all of it. Jake used to tell him he was just a kid, that none of it was his fault, but Dylan…” She shakes her head.
“He’d already decided what he was. He’d vanish for hours and come back covered in mud or blood, or both.
Then he started disappearing for days at a time. Until one day he just…left.”
“Left where?”
“Anywhere that would take him.” Miranda laughs without humor.
“I tracked him for years through police reports and rumors. Prague. Berlin. Budapest. Eastern Europe mostly. Smuggling, mercenary work, contract violence. By the time I joined MI6, he was wanted in half the countries around us and using three different names.”
“MI6?”
She nods. “That’s how I found him again.
Professionally, not personally.” Her expression hardens.
“And by then Dylan was already gone.” She turns and locks her eyes on mine.
“Dylan died in that house, AJ. Or maybe he died in the years after. I don’t know.
But by the time I found him again, there was only Wolff left. ”
I can’t speak.
I can barely think.
All I can see is Wolff at nine years old, dragging his siblings out of a burning house. Blaming himself for every horrible thing that happened to him.
Miranda wipes under one eye and exhales.
“Jake died three years ago.” The words jolt me back into the present.
“In a car accident. He had a wife and a little boy. He spent years trying to get in touch with Dylan. Birthdays, holidays, anything he could use as an excuse. He wanted his son to know his uncle.” Her mouth twists. “Dylan never answered.”
The ache in my chest is almost unbearable. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I know he won’t answer if I call.
And…he let you touch him. You probably don’t understand how strange that is.
Dylan hasn’t let me hug him since he was a child.
He barely let Jake near him either, and Jake was the person he loved most in this world.
He doesn’t touch people.” Her throat works around a swallow.
“But in Russia, I saw the way he looked at you. The way he kept reaching for you without even thinking about it.”
Heat rushes to my face, but it’s overshadowed almost immediately by the ache in my chest.
“He cares about you,” Miranda says softly.
“Maybe in whatever broken way he knows how. But he does. I heard it in his voice when he called me, needing passports and papers to get you out of Russia. If he was willing to reach out to me—after all these years of silence—it means something. You mean something to him.”
My fingers pick at the loose threads on my sleeve.
“He won’t let me in, AJ. He won’t let any of us in.
But we’re holding a memorial for Jake. On the anniversary of his death.
Sarah and Casey are flying in. Jonas too.
Jake’s wife is bringing their son.” Her eyes shine again.
“I just want Dylan there. I want him to know that he still has a family. That he still has us.”
My throat burns. “And you want me to talk to him.”
She nods. “I know it’s unfair, and I know I have no right to ask this of you. But if there’s any chance that he’ll listen to someone, I think it might be you.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out a folded piece of paper and holds it out to me. “It’s the address and the date.”
I stare at it for a second before taking it.
“If you decide not to say anything, I’ll understand. I just… Seeing him in Russia with you…gave me hope.”
I look down at the paper in my hand.
Dylan.
The name punches my chest.
For the first time, I understand that Russia didn’t bind us together because he saved me. It bound us together because some part of him had already lived through the same kind of hell, and when he looked at me, he wasn’t seeing a stranger… He was staring into a mirror he never wanted to see again.
And maybe that’s why he can’t stay away.
Why I can’t.
Why this thing between us keeps clawing its way back, no matter how viciously he pushes me away, no matter how many times he leaves me aching and furious and humiliated enough to hate him.
No matter how many people I throw at the empty space he leaves behind, trying to prove I can still want someone else.
It never matters.
There’s something hollowed out inside me—something ugly and wrong—and for some fucked-up reason, Wolff is the only person who fits inside it. Like whatever broke in him learned the exact shape of what broke in me, and now neither of us knows how to stop reaching for the other.
Two ruined pieces clicking into place in the worst possible way.