CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
The lights are too bright.
Too sterile.
Too fucking clean for the wreckage clawing through my chest.
I sit in the makeshift debrief room—really just one of the side lounges in the Warden’s manor, cleared out and overtaken by the OCCOB crew like ants picking apart a carcass. The same manor that had hosted masked monsters and whispered auctions now housed agents and evidence bags.
And I?
I am a ticking time bomb strapped to a chair.
Montgomery stands across from me with his arms crossed, still in full tactical gear. There is blood on the cuff of his sleeve—someone else's, probably. I don’t care. I am too busy watching the way his jaw works like he is grinding glass between his teeth.
“Thank you for actually explaining this to Shoomaker and I as a team,” I say, the sarcasm sharp enough to cut.
“You’re alive. Shaimez is in custody. That was the mission.”
“No,” I snap, rising from the chair so fast it tips back and hits the floor. “That was your mission. Not mine.”
Montgomery’s mouth tightens. “Starling—”
“I wanted my father.” The words tear from me, each one a blade I’ve been swallowing whole for weeks. “I wanted to see his face when he realized I survived. I wanted him to know I wasn’t his pawn anymore.”
“You didn’t want your father until you knew the truth about him,” he says sharply. “We were here to collect Tomas, Shaimez and the remaining buyers from the auction roster. That’s it.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. But it doesn’t soften either.
“Your father is still on OCCOB’s Top Twenty.
He's number five, Starling. But this op? This was never about him. The Bureau’s priority was infiltration and cleanup of one specific network—buyers confirmed through evidence we could hold in court.
Pierce hasn’t touched the books in years. He’s a ghost.”
“No,” I whisper. “He’s not. He made a deal. With the Warden. With Shaimez. He signed me away before birth.”
Montgomery’s shoulders draw tight, the only tell he gives that it hurts him too.
“We can’t prove it,” he says. “That’s the problem.”
He walks up to me, takes off his bulletproof vest, lays it on the desk behind me and steps into my space.
Grabbing my hands, he places them on his face. The same one he let me feel blindfolded. The one with all the scars.
“Each of these scars I got trying to get back to you in that compound under different aliases. I fought my way back to you, Starling. I failed each time. I never knew if I would find you alive or dead the next time I made it inside. They eventually pulled me from the operation. They said I was compromised.”
“Compromised, how?” I ask stroking the one scar above his lip.
“Because they saw how devoted I was to you. Just you.”
I look at him. Really look at him.
“I was in love with you, Starling. Even when you were seventeen, I wanted you. I wanted to protect you from everything and make you mine.”
“But you don’t anymore.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You said ‘was’ like you are no longer in love with me.”
“Starling, god dammit, how I love you. That is why I was a terrible Warden. I couldn’t see you hurt. I couldn’t command you at my feet. I wanted to rip the mask off and hold you in my arms and never let you go.”
He stays holding my hands in his. Keeping my gaze.
Like I am holy.
Like I am worth worshiping, even after everything.
His words crack something wide open in me—something that had been coiled tight ever since I’d learned the truth. My chest heaves, breath trembling as I look up at him, this man who once watched me from the shadows, who wore a mask of indifference while I begged for someone to see me.
And now here he is, bare and raw and breaking in front of me.
“You were the Warden,” I whisper. “You did command me. You watched me kneel for others. You let me kneel.”
My throat tightens. “You knew about my father,” I say quietly. “And you chose not to tell me.”
“I had to,” he says, hands tightening over mine, keeping them pressed to his face like I am the only anchor he has.
“If I had shown anything—if I’d faltered—I would’ve gotten you killed.
Or worse, they would’ve discovered who I was, who I was working for and put their hands on you again to prove I wasn’t in control. ”
His grip shifts, not loosening, but trembling just slightly.
“And yes, I knew about your father,” he adds, voice lower now. “And yet I still chose silence—for the same reason.”
Tears burn the backs of my eyes. My fingers slide along the scar above his lip, memorizing it again. It is jagged. A little crooked. A brutal truth etched into his skin forever.
I touch it gently. He closes his eyes like my touch hurts and heals all at once.
“You don’t know how many nights I spent wondering if you were still out there,” I say, voice cracking. “And then you show up—wearing the same mask that made me Hirsh’s prisoner. And I didn’t know if you were my captor or my savior.”
His eyes open. They are glassy. Wrecked.
“I wanted to be both,” he says, throat tight. “God help me, Starling, I wanted to be the man who owned you. All of you. But I didn’t want to break you. I just wanted you to be mine.”
A silence stretches between us, thick with confessions and unspoken longing.
“You still want that?” I ask, barely breathing.
He closes the gap slowly, eyes locked to mine, and leans in. Not to kiss me. Just to be close. His forehead presses to mine. His voice, a vow against my skin.
“I never stopped.”
And for once—I believe him.