11. The Goodbye Performance
The Goodbye Performance
The idea came to me not as a flash of inspiration but as a cold, methodical calculation—the kind Gabriel would have admired, the kind Nathan had spent months teaching me to apply to other people without realizing I might one day apply it to him.
I needed to leave the apartment. Not for an hour, not for an afternoon, but for long enough to follow the threads I'd uncovered without his surveillance trailing behind me like a shadow.
I needed to find Gabriel—the real Gabriel, not the monster Nathan's files had painted him as, not the savior Nathan pretended to be.
I needed to hear the truth from the only person who knew both sides of the story and had no reason to lie to me.
But Nathan would never let me go alone. He was too careful, too controlling, too invested in maintaining the cage he'd built around me. If I asked directly, he'd find reasons to refuse. If I pushed, he'd become suspicious. If I ran, he'd hunt me.
So I wouldn't ask. I wouldn't push. I wouldn't run.
I would make him want to let me go.
I set the stage at dinner, three nights after the files had shattered my world.
The apartment was warm with candlelight and the scent of rosemary lamb—a recipe I'd perfected over weeks of careful practice.
Nathan had just returned from a meeting, his tie loosened, his expression tired but satisfied.
He looked like a man who'd had a productive day.
He looked like a man who trusted the woman pouring his wine.
"I've been thinking," I said, setting the bottle aside.
"Dangerous habit." He smiled, reaching for his glass. "What about?"
"The network. Volosin's intel. The Mercy Logistics connection." I sat across from him, my posture open and earnest. "We've been hitting low-level targets for months, but we're not getting closer to the source. Every time we think we've found a lead, it dead-ends or the trail goes cold."
"Intelligence work takes time." He cut into his lamb with the precision he brought to everything. "Rushing leads gets people killed."
"I know. But I had an idea—something that might accelerate things."
His fork paused halfway to his mouth. "I'm listening."
"There's a contact in the old industrial district.
Someone who used to work for Mercy Logistics before the company cleaned house last year.
He's been laying low, but Matt's sources say he's willing to talk for the right price.
" The lie came easily, woven from threads of truth I'd gathered over weeks of careful observation.
"He knows the supply routes. The safe houses. Maybe even the names of the buyers."
Nathan's expression was unreadable. "Matt's sources?"
"I know. Matt's not exactly connected to the intelligence community. But the bar attracts a certain clientele." I shrugged, the gesture calculated to seem casual. "You'd be surprised what people confess to their bartender after three whiskeys."
"And this contact—he's reliable?"
"According to Matt, he's scared. Mercy's been cleaning house, and he's worried he's next. He wants protection in exchange for information."
"Then we'll approach him together. Standard protocol—you take point, I cover—"
"No." I set down my fork, meeting his eyes with the steady gaze I'd practiced in the mirror.
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about.
This contact... he's paranoid. Specifically paranoid about men in tactical gear.
Apparently, his former employers used female operatives for their wetwork, and he's got a thing about it. He'll only meet with a woman."
"Then I'll stay out of sight. Long-range cover."
"It's not enough." I reached across the table, my fingers brushing his wrist. "Nathan, this could be the break we've been waiting for.
The chance to finally dismantle the network that created Gabriel, that created all of us.
But if this guy gets spooked, if he sees a shadow that shouldn't be there, he'll disappear. And we'll lose our best lead."
The silence stretched between us. I watched him weigh the risks, his tactical mind cataloguing variables the way he'd taught me to do. Asset extraction protocols. Risk assessment matrices. The careful calculus of when to deploy and when to withdraw.
"I don't like it," he said finally. "The thought of you out there alone—"
"I won't be alone." I squeezed his wrist. "I'll have comms. I'll have GPS tracking. I'll check in every hour. And if anything goes wrong, I'll abort immediately."
"The last time you were alone on a mission, you almost got killed."
"The last time I was alone on a mission, I took down six traffickers and freed fifteen women." I let a hint of steel enter my voice. "I'm not the broken doll you found in that bar, Nathan. I'm your partner. Let me prove it."
He studied my face for a long moment, and I felt the weight of his assessment like a physical thing. Does he suspect? Does he know what I've found? But his expression softened, and he turned his hand over to lace his fingers through mine.
"When did you get so stubborn?"
"I learned from the best." I smiled, and it almost reached my eyes. "Gabriel taught me to survive. You taught me to fight back. Let me use what you've given me."
The mention of Gabriel's name was deliberate—a reminder of the monster Nathan had helped create, the guilt he carried, the debt he believed he owed me. I watched it land, watched the flicker of something complicated cross his face before he masked it.
"One week," he said. "You check in every six hours. If I don't hear from you—"
"You will."
"And if the contact seems compromised—"
"I'll abort." I lifted his hand to my lips and kissed his knuckles. "I promise."
The seduction that night was the most careful performance of my life.
I didn't attack him the way I had before—all teeth and desperate fury.
That had served its purpose, channeling my rage into something he could mistake for passion.
Tonight, I needed something different. Tonight, I needed him to believe, with absolute certainty, that I loved him more than anything in the world.
"Let me take care of you," I murmured, guiding him to the bedroom. "You've been so stressed lately. Let me make it better."
I undressed him slowly, reverently, pressing kisses to each inch of exposed skin.
His shoulders, still bearing the fading marks of my teeth.
His chest, where his heart beat steady beneath my lips.
His stomach, where the muscles tensed at my touch.
I took my time, building anticipation with the patience of someone who had nothing to hide.
"I don't deserve you," he said, his voice rough.
"Don't say that." I looked up at him through my lashes, the picture of devotion. "You saved me. You gave me a life when I had nothing. I'd be dead without you."
"Bunny—"
"I mean it." I rose to my knees, taking his face in my hands.
"Before you found me, I was disappearing.
I couldn't remember who I was. I couldn't function.
You gave me purpose. Direction. Love." The words were poison wrapped in honey, and I delivered them with the sincerity of someone who'd been trained to lie. "Everything I am is because of you."
His eyes glistened. "I love you so much."
"I know." I kissed him, soft and deep. "Let me show you how much I love you."
The sex that followed was the gentlest we'd ever had. I moved above him with a tenderness that felt almost foreign, my hands tracing his face, my lips never leaving his skin. I whispered endearments against his mouth—I love you, I need you, I'm yours—and I watched him believe every word.
When he entered me, it was with a reverence that would have moved me if I'd still been capable of being moved. His hands cradled my hips. His eyes never left my face. He looked at me like I was salvation, like I was the answer to every question he'd ever asked.
"You're so beautiful," he breathed. "My perfect girl."
Gabriel's phrase, I thought, and the irony was a blade between my ribs. You're both the same. You both want the same thing.
But I didn't say that. I said, "I'm yours. Always yours."
The orgasm, when it came, was technically flawless—the right sounds, the right spasms, the right expression of bliss. I'd learned to fake it so well that even I almost believed it. Nathan certainly did. He followed moments later, my name on his lips like a prayer.
Afterward, I curled against his chest and listened to his heartbeat slow. His hand stroked my hair with absent tenderness, the way it had a hundred times before.
"You make me feel safe," I whispered. "You're the only person who's ever made me feel safe."
"That's all I've ever wanted." He pressed a kiss to my forehead. "To keep you safe."
I closed my eyes and let him hold me, and I felt nothing at all. The performance was complete. The lie was perfect. And tomorrow, I would walk out of this apartment and begin the real work of dismantling everything he'd built.
In the morning, I packed a small bag—tactical gear, a week's worth of clothes, the USB drive with his decrypted files. Nathan watched from the doorway, his expression a mixture of pride and concern.
"You have the emergency contact numbers?"
"Programmed into my phone."
"The safe house address?"
"Memorized."
"And if anything goes wrong—"
"I'll be fine." I zipped the bag and turned to face him. "You trained me well. Trust your training."
He pulled me into his arms, and I let him.
His embrace was warm and solid and real, and for a moment—just a moment—I felt something that might have been grief.
Grief for the man I'd thought he was. Grief for the life I'd thought we were building.
Grief for the version of myself that had believed in him.
"I'll see you in a week," I said.
"I'll be counting the hours."
One last kiss. One last smile. And then I was walking out the door, my bag on my shoulder and my heart a cold, hard stone in my chest.
The elevator doors closed. The building lobby passed in a blur. Outside, the morning sun was bright and indifferent, and I turned my face toward it and let myself feel, for the first time in months, the sharp clarity of purpose.
The apartment was a cage. Nathan was a handler. And I was done being handled.
The real hunt had begun.
I drove for three hours before I reached the dead zone.
It was a stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere, flanked by pine trees and abandoned farmland, where the cell towers didn't reach and the GPS signal flickered into static.
I'd found it months ago, during a solo reconnaissance mission Nathan didn't know about—one of the small rebellions I'd committed before I even understood what I was rebelling against.
I pulled over at a derelict gas station, its pumps rusted and its windows shattered.
The silence here was absolute, broken only by the wind in the trees and the distant call of a bird I couldn't name.
I turned off my phone. Removed the battery.
Removed the SIM card. Then I retrieved a burner from my bag—one of three I'd purchased with cash at a convenience store Nathan didn't know I'd visited.
The first call was to Matt.
"It's done," I said when he answered. "I'm clear."
"How long?"
"A week, maybe less. He'll get suspicious if I'm gone too long."
"Be careful. If he figures out what you're doing—"
"He won't." I stared at the rusted pumps, the shattered windows, the sky that stretched endless and indifferent above me. "He thinks I'm tracking a lead for him. He thinks I'm being his good little soldier."
"And instead?"
"Instead, I'm going to find Gabriel Mire and ask him what really happened. Then I'm going to decide who deserves to die first."
Matt was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was grim. "You know this could go sideways a hundred different ways."
"I know."
"And you're still going through with it?"
I thought about Nathan's hands on my skin. Nathan's voice in my ear. Nathan's files on my laptop, reducing my life to a retrieval protocol and a dosage schedule.
"Yes," I said. "I'm still going through with it."
"Then good hunting." Matt's voice softened, just slightly. "And Bunny? Whatever you find out there—make sure you come back. You're the closest thing to family I've got."
The words hit something in me, something I'd thought was too frozen to feel. "I'll come back," I promised. "I'm not done yet."
I ended the call and sat in the silence, the burner phone heavy in my hand. Somewhere out there, Gabriel was waiting. Somewhere out there, the answers to my questions were hiding.
And somewhere behind me, Nathan Cross was counting the hours until his asset returned to her cage.
Good hunting, I told myself, and turned the key in the ignition.
The road stretched ahead, empty and endless and full of possibility. For the first time in months, I was alone. For the first time in months, I was free.
And I was going to use that freedom to burn everything down.