“And what are your regrets?”
“You know my biggest one,” he said. “I told you about it in Georgia.”
My lungs froze. “The mission in Syria.”
“Yes.” The word was filled with pain. “We missed the target, and he ended up killing his entire family.” He cleared his throat. “Those kinds of regrets haunt people like us, make us have nightmares about what we could have done differently. But that doesn’t mean that—”
“I’m a bad person?” I shook my head. “Of course, it does. I hurt my friends, my siblings. The people who cared about me. I betrayed them like it was as easy as it was to change a pair of socks.”
“Until you understood exactly what it meant.”
I stopped, considered that. Considered that he might be right. Except . . . that was too easy, too pat an excuse. “No,” I said. “What I have is confirmation that I’m exactly like them.”
“Ava.”
“Do you know how I know that?” I asked, talking over him. “Why I didn’t meet you for that date two years ago?” I released a shaky breath when I saw him shake his head. “Because when I got back to headquarters, Laila asked me to look at some files. And you know what was in those?”
“No, honey.”
I barely heard the endearment, not when there were so many other important things to focus on. Like my DNA. Like the fact that I’d done unforgivable things. Like the fact that I’d always have these deeds hanging over me and couldn’t ever forgive myself.
“The files had pictures of body parts. Fingers, hands, ears that were branded with a T.” Bile burned the back of my throat. “Parts that my family had removed and delivered to people as threats.”
“Oh, baby.”
“No,” I whispered. “Enough with the endearments and the soft tones. It was the reminder I needed then. It’s the reminder I need now.” I shook off his hand, knowing that my thoughts earlier about being different had been sentimental tripe. I wasn’t different. Wouldn’t ever be different. “I’ll never be like you, Dan.” Even if part of me deep down wished he wouldn’t push me away, wished I could pretend to be normal and a woman he could be with, the rest of me knew that wasn’t ever going to happen.
I’d done awful things.
I’d hurt the people who cared for me.
I—
“You were a child.”
“That doesn’t make it okay!” I exclaimed. “I knew it was wrong, and I did all of it anyway. And worse, Isa never hated me. She should have. Should have despised me for what I’d done.” My eyes burned. “Instead, she came to my room that night, comforted me. How fucked up is that?”
“Because you were a child.”
“I was sixteen. That’s an adult in plenty of places in the world.” I reached up and shoved my hair out of my face. “I didn’t grow up like you, Dan, didn’t have a wonderful sister and normal parents. I’m not saying they were great, that they gave you everything you needed . . .” I remembered how he’d felt left alone, like they’d disengaged from his and his sister’s lives. But—
“But they didn’t make their living exploiting others.”
“Yes.” I sighed. “And that’s all I know. That’s the bread and butter I was raised on.”
A brief blip of silence.
“And there is nothing I can say to you that will make this okay. Nothing that will excuse your actions.”
Even though I knew it was the truth, hearing him say that out loud was a blow.
“Exactly,” I whispered.
“So, the only thing I can tell you is that this is all fucking bullshit.”
Seventeen
Southern Italy
Unknown hrs local time
Dan
“What?” she whispered.
“It’s all bullshit,” I said. “Yes, your childhood was fucked up. But no, you’re not a product of that. Once you understood, you fought.” I covered her hand with mine. “You told me that yourself. You told me that you spent too many days in this cell. You told me that you got out and now you put your life on the line for innocent people every day. You do good.”
“No, I want to pretend I’m good. But that’s the bullshit.”
“Ava—”
“Go back to the fucking wall. It was a mistake telling you any of this.”
“Ava—”
“Cut the emotional horseshit, and let’s focus on getting out of here alive.”
“I didn’t take you for a coward.”
“What?”
Irritated by her obstinance, I made my way over to the wall, digging my fingers into the dirt and succeeding in wiggling the rock. “This is all very convenient. Your horrible past means that you don’t have to get close to anyone, that you can keep us all at a distance.” I yanked harder. “You’re too scared of getting close, too scared you might hurt someone. Except . . . that’s life. People hurt other people. Not usually on purpose, but I don’t think a lot of what you did was on purpose—”
“I just told you that I—”
“You were a sixteen-year-old girl who was in an untenable situation, who was raised by an unbelievably manipulative and violent father to do horrible things. That was the unforgivable part. He did that to you.” I forced myself to pause, to moderate my tone. “What is admirable is that you realized what was going on and that you found some good even amongst all this darkness.”
She scoffed. “That’s all a pat story. But it doesn’t absolve me of my part in all I did.”
“No,” I said. “But I think what’s more pat is you using this fear and the walls to keep people out because you’re afraid they may hurt you. Because as much as you want to pretend it’s you protecting the world from your evilness, it’s really about you protecting yourself from anyone who might get close enough to betray you.”
I heard her inhale sharply.
“That’s not—” She broke off, fell silent.
I let her think as I continued working on the wall, feeling very much like Sisyphus and his proverbial rock, only instead of rolling it up a hill, I was trying to pull it loose from ten years of dirt and grime.
“I might have gotten out,” she whispered after an interminable silence. “But I didn’t come out whole. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make right what I did.”
“You can’t change what happened.”
“What? You going to advise me to put my past behind me and move forward?”
“Yes.”
“And have you forgotten Syria?”
“No,” I said. “And I won’t ever forget it, but that’s not the obstacle that’s preventing me from moving forward. Rather, it’s the building block for my blueprint of how to move forward.” I shook my head. “I will regret how that mission went down for the rest of my life, but I’ve taken those mistakes, I’ve made certain that I won’t ever make the same ones again.”
“It’s not that easy.”