Or maybe just get a head start on making another baby before the first one’s even born.
Now he’s looking at me like I’m everything in the world.
I almost can’t stand it.
My life has always been a curtain of moving shadows. A cascade of subterfuge and fluid identities. No matter how bright and bold I say I am, that life hasn’t had much room for pesky feelings in the ever-shifting darkness.
It’s almost painful to see someone watching me with so much light in his heart, in his eyes.
If he’s not careful, Oliver Major will ruin me with his love—assuming he already hasn’t.
“They won’t have her,” he says fiercely. “They won’t put their paws on our kid. We’ll get out of here, and I’ll dismember that entire company to make sure they can never touch her or us again.”
I can’t help but slip a shaky laugh. “You’ve already decided we’re having a daughter? Um, it’s just a clump of cells right now.”
His gaze flicks past me to the ultrasound on the nightstand.
“I know,” he says softly. “You’re too strong to give me anything but strong-willed baby girls who are just as wild as you.”
A weak smile pulls at my lips. His fantasies should make me happier.
“I don’t feel wild right now,” I admit. “I’m worried. We talk about taking them down, nothing new there...but we’ve only gotten in deeper over the years, Oliver. How do we have a child, and tell her the things we’ve done? The things we’ve enabled them to do? If there’s a hell, we’ve pretty much got express passes...”
So, this is new. Another emotion I’m not used to.
Regret.
But he captures my hand with a rough swipe, holding it against his heart.
It beats so strong under my palm, so fierce, so firm.
“We tell her life has a lot of fucking grey, Fuchsia,” he says, holding my hand so tight it hurts. But it’s the kind of good hurt I need.
My eyes flash as he licks his lips and continues.
“We tell her that her mother was pushed into a life that wasn’t hers for the choosing when she was too damn young to make a choice, and boxed in without any easy, safe way out. That her father went in blind. Not knowing what this situation would become, and he wanted to try to stay close where he could do real damage from the inside, even if it meant playing a dangerous waiting game. If we handle it any other way, we die, wildcat. And then we can’t be there for her at all.”
I swallow hard.
There’s no question he’s right.
“Do we tell her how scared we are, then?” I ask, searching his eyes, that devastating mocha-brown expanse, and I wonder if a man as calm and steady as he is can even feel fear at all. “That some of it’s just that we’re cowardly and weak and afraid to die?”
“That’s not cowardly or weak.” He presses his lips to my knuckles with a smile full of so much warmth, and that’s when I realize this man really loves me.
“Oliver...”
“It’s human to fear death. And it’s human to want to run from facing it for a little while longer,” he growls, then tugs me closer. “Come here, wildcat.”
I go into his arms, then, and let him wrap himself around me—around us.
Us.
God.
There’s two of us, right now, plus another one inside me.
With a shaky sound, I burrow myself against him.
He presses his lips into my hair.
“We’re not going to die,” he promises. “We just have to be smart so we get to decide how we choose to live. There’s a life after Galentron, beautiful. We put our heads together, we’ll find it.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t.
But I believe him.
I believe in him.
I won’t lose Oliver. Not over this. Not after the promises he’s made and the pact we just sealed with the most frenzied, heartfelt kiss of my life.
Except I realize too late that I’ve already lost him.
When I come back the next day after debriefing, when I knock on his door, already filling my head with visions of picking out designer cradles, renovating part of his penthouse into a nursery, baby-proofing all of the ridiculously expensive things he keeps around...
There’s nothing.
It’s dark inside and cold.
He’s not there.
Even as I unwrap a piece of candy and pop it in my mouth with trembling fingers, I know something’s very off here.
My key still works in the lock, so it’s not like he’s just abandoned me. The place is still there as if it, too, is waiting for him to come home.
Like he just left this morning and everything’s perfectly normal.
I want to believe it’s okay, nothing off-kilter, maybe something just called him away unexpectedly.
It’s not uncommon in his position to be brought on snap conferences at a moment’s notice.
But he doesn’t answer his calls, either.
Not tonight.
Not for five days after.
He never comes home. I watch his apartment like a hawk. Full surveillance.
It’s what I’m best at. Laying low, waiting for my target to show, but there’s neither hide nor hair of him.
It’s not until I’m called in for a briefing on another mission that I get the news.
Oliver Major is dead.
He’s been dead for days—fucking days—while I waited with my heart in my throat to show him even more ultrasound photos. Waited to see his face light up at the sight of that small grainy black-and-white peanut that’s our child, to plan every day of our lives together with him.
They say it was an ambush.
Someone with a knife, going straight for Durham like an angry tiger.
They call Oliver a hero, sacrificing himself to save Leland Durham’s rotten life.
And that’s how I know it’s total bullshit.
Because I’m the only one who knows how Oliver really feels about Durham.
Deep down, I know.
Galentron—and Durham—took Oliver from me.
Somehow, I keep my usual emotionless mask on with my chief officer. I don’t dare show how I feel, listening robotically to the instructions given to me on my newest target, the information, the time frame, the location, and the sin that’s made them a Galentron target.
In this case, it’s a rival researcher from a Japanese biotech conglomerate. I’m supposed to slip him drugs and manufacture some incredibly compromising photos with a hooker intended to finish his career. Easy, and by normal standards, fairly clean.
But under the conference table, my hand slips to rest on my belly, and I swear with everything in me, there’s only one mission now.
I’ll protect the life inside me.
It’s all of Oliver I have left.
And Galentron won’t take her—either of them—away from me again.
Present
Whether I realized it or not at the time, that was the day.
I knew I’d do anything to tear Galentron down brick by brick.
It might’ve taken me a little time and a lot of carnage to get here.
But this is my moment.
I’ll find out what they did with my daughter. Where she is. If she really survived.
If she can be saved.
And as a bonus, I’ll take revenge for what they did to Oliver and Heart’s Edge and thousands of people whose only mistake was going against the company.