Chapter 24 #2
For a long moment, she says nothing, just studies me with clinical detachment. When she finally speaks, her voice has changed—the warm maternal tones replaced by something colder, more precise, with a hint of an accent I’ve never heard before.
“The Directorate ordered it,” she says simply, as if this explains everything. “It wasn’t my choice. He was going to expose a thirty-year operation, Lea. He’d found documents linking me to Pyongyang. He confronted me, threatened to publish everything.” She gives a small shrug. “It wasn’t personal.”
The casual dismissal of my father’s murder ignites something molten inside me. “He was your husband, and my father,” I spit out, my hands curling into fists at my sides. “You were my mother. There is nothing more personal than that.”
A flicker of irritation crosses her face. “You don’t understand the bigger picture. The mission was always primary. Everything else—marriage, motherhood—those were covers, tools to establish my position. When he became a threat to the operation, he had to be removed.”
“Removed,” I repeat. The clinical term for murder makes me feel physically ill. “And what about me? Was I just part of your cover too? A convenient prop in your life as a suburban academic? Was I going to get removed too at some point?”
For the first time, she hesitates. Something that might be genuine emotion flashes across her features before disappearing behind her mask.
“At first you were part of the cover,” she admits. “But children are... complicated. They don’t stay props. They become...” She trails off, searching for a word.
“Human?” I suggest bitterly.
“Real,” she corrects. “You became real to me, Lea. That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“So real that you manipulated my entire career? That you placed me at the Journal as your asset? That you were willing to use me as a pawn against Nico?”
She doesn’t deny it, simply watches me with those cool, assessing eyes. “You have exceptional talents. I saw that early. Why wouldn’t I help shape your path toward something useful?”
“Useful to whom?” I demand, my voice rising. “To North Korea? To your handlers? To your precious Directorate?”
“To the cause,” she says, as if this should be obvious. “To building a world where American imperialism doesn’t?—”
“Stop,” I cut her off, unable to bear hearing propaganda from the lips that once sang me lullabies. “I don’t care about your justifications or your ideology. I care about your having murdered my father. That you used me. That everything— everything —about our life together was a lie.”
She regards me for a long moment, then shakes her head slightly. “Not everything, Lea. I loved you, in my way. I still do.”
The words shake me. I take a stumbling step backward, my vision blurring with tears. “Don’t,” I whisper. “Don’t you dare say that to me. Love doesn’t do what you did.”
Something shifts in her expression. “You’ve made your choice then,” she says, her voice devoid of emotion. “You’ve chosen him.” She nods toward Nico. “The man who seduced you, manipulated you, and used you just as much as I ever did.”
“The difference,” Nico interjects quietly, “is that I never pretended to be something I’m not. I never claimed to love her while plotting to sacrifice her.”
My mother’s laugh is short and bitter. “And that makes you noble? You’re a criminal, Varela. A murderer. You traffic in human misery just as I do, but you pretend there’s honor in your methods.”
“I don’t claim honor,” Nico replies evenly. “Just honesty about what I am.”
I look between them—the mother who raised me and the man who opened my eyes to the truth—and feel something final settle within me. A decision, a severing, a farewell.
“As far as I’m concerned,” I say, my voice flat, “my mother is dead. You are dead to me.”
She flinches, the first genuine reaction I’ve seen since her mask slipped. But she quickly recovers, her face smoothing into impassive lines.
“You’ll regret that sentiment,” she says softly. “When the novelty of playing criminal consort wears off, when you realize what you’ve thrown away, you’ll remember that I would have given you the world.”
“A world built on lies,” I counter. “I’d rather have the truth, no matter how ugly.”
Nico steps forward then, clearly deciding the emotional confrontation has run its course. “It’s time to go,” he says, his authority absolute. “My car is waiting downstairs. We’re going to a different location to conclude our business.”
Blake moves forward at the command, his hand now visibly on his weapon. Isabel rises with fluid grace, but my mother—no, Eunji —remains seated, her eyes fixed on me.
“You won’t see me again after tonight,” she says, her voice carrying a finality that sends a chill through me. “Whatever he does to me, whatever happens next, remember that I love you. In the only way I knew how.”
Blake gestures for her to stand. After a moment’s hesitation, she complies, allowing herself to be guided toward the elevator alongside Isabel.
As they move past me, I take an instinctive step to follow. Nico’s hand on my arm stops me, gentle but firm.
“I don’t think you should watch this next part, Lea,” he whispers.
The blood drains from my face as his meaning sinks in.
All this time, all these weeks of manipulation and games and shifting alliances, I’ve never directly asked what would happen when we finally cornered Isabel and my mother.
I’ve been too afraid of the answer. Too afraid of what it would reveal about Nico—and about me, for choosing to stand beside him.
But now, watching my mother being led away, I can’t avoid the question any longer. I need to know exactly who I’ve allied myself with. What kind of future I’m walking into.
“Are you going to kill her?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. “My mother?”
Nico looks down at me, and something extraordinary happens. All the ice, all the calculation, all the fury of the king melts from his expression, replaced by a profound, startling sincerity.
“No,” he says, his voice soft but resolute. “I can’t kill the mother of the woman I love.”
The words hit me. Love . He’s never said it out loud before. Never even hinted at it. Our relationship has been built on manipulation, desire, power games, and, eventually, a reluctant partnership—but never love. It wasn’t a word that belonged in our vocabulary.
Until now.
He sees the shock in my eyes and continues, his hand moving from my arm to cup my face.
“But she will not go free. There are people... powerful people... who have been looking for her for a long time. They are extremely interested in what a high-level North Korean spy has to say.” His thumb brushes gently across my cheekbone.
“She’ll have the rest of her life to think about what she’s done. ”
I stare up at him, trying to process the enormity of what he’s just revealed. He has declared his love and my mother’s fate in the same breath. He has chosen a path of intricate justice over simple vengeance, a choice made for me .
“Why?” I ask, my voice barely audible. “You could have killed her. After what she did to you, tried to do to you... why show mercy?”
His dark eyes hold mine, more open and vulnerable than I’ve ever seen them.
“Because I know what it’s like to lose a parent to violence,” he says simply.
“I watched my parents die. I wouldn’t inflict that on you, no matter what she’s done.
” He pauses, something raw and honest flickering across his face.
“And because I want whatever exists between us to be built on something other than blood.”
In that moment, I see him—truly see him—for perhaps the first time.
Not as the monster I first believed him to be, not as the manipulator who orchestrated my investigation, not even as the dominant lover who broke down my defenses.
I see the man beneath all those masks: complicated, damaged, capable of both terrible cruelty and unexpected mercy.
A man who has just changed the rules of his world for me.
“Nico,” I begin, not sure what I’m going to say, not sure what words could possibly encompass the hurricane of emotions inside me.
He shakes his head slightly, stopping me. “Not here,” he says, glancing toward the elevator where Blake is waiting with our captives. “We have business to finish first. Then we can talk.”
I nod, understanding the necessity of his compartmentalization. The king must complete his conquest before he can return to being a man.
As we move toward the elevator, Nico guides me with a hand on the small of my back—a gesture that has become familiar, possessive without being controlling. It steadies me, grounds me in this surreal moment.
The doors slide open. Isabel and my mother stand inside, flanked by Blake and another of Nico’s men. My mother’s eyes meet mine one last time—dark pools of something I can no longer read. For an instant, I see a flash of the woman who raised me, who loved me in her own twisted, conditional way.
Then the doors close, taking her away forever.
Nico and I remain in the silent gallery, surrounded by priceless art that now seems trivial compared to the human drama that just unfolded before it.
“What happens now?” I ask.
Nico turns to me, his expression softening. He reaches up, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear with unexpected tenderness. “Now,” he says quietly, “we build something new. Something neither of us has ever had before.”
“And what’s that?” I ask, my heart pounding against my ribs.
His answer is simple, devastating in its honesty.
“A future not built on lies.”
As we stand there, beneath the harsh gallery lights, surrounded by the aftermath of truth and deception, I feel something fundamental shift within me.
The woman who entered this building tonight is not the same one who will leave it.
The daughter seeking vengeance; the journalist chasing a story, the pawn in other people’s games—all of those versions of myself have been burned away, leaving someone new in their place.
Someone who has looked into the abyss of her own history and survived.
Someone who has chosen her own path forward.
Someone who, against all odds and reason, has found love in the most unlikely of places.
I reach for Nico’s hand, intertwining my fingers with his. Whatever comes next, whatever this new future holds, we will face it together—two broken people who somehow, impossibly, make each other whole.