As if I wasn’t already.
“The former,” I whispered. “Don’t hurt yourself.” I met his gaze straight on and gave him a truth. “You scared me. I thought you were going to die.”
He didn’t shy away from my honesty. “I’m sorry I scared you. Dying wasn’t my plan, but I knew it was a possibility. It was an acceptable risk to give you a chance.”
I lightly smacked his shoulder. “It wasn’t an acceptable risk! Promise me you won’t do something so stupid again.”
His jaw firmed, and his eyes lit with determination. “I won’t lie to you, love. I would make the same choice a hundred times if it kept you safe.” He sighed. “When I said I’m hard to kill, I meant it. As you’ve already guessed, I’m a member of the missing Genesis Project squad. We were engineered to be ruthless, indestructible bastards. It takes a lot to put us down permanently.”
I smiled sadly. “No wonder you hated me when you arrived. I represented everything terrible that had happened to you.”
Ian grimaced. “I was an asshole. I was overwhelmingly attracted to you and didn’t want to be, so I pushed you away with sharp words and biting comments. I apologize. By the time I grew up enough to realize how stupid I was, you were married to that weasel. Then you came home but wanted nothing to do with me, which frustrated me into repeating the cycle.” He shook his head. “Not my proudest moments.”
I ran my fingers through the stubble on his jaw. “Would you like to know a secret?”
He nodded warily.
“I always wanted you, but you made me so tongue-tied that I started intentionally making you angry enough to end our conversations early so I wouldn’t look like an idiot. We’re both assholes. I’m sorry.”
He kissed my palm. “We’re perfect for each other,” he said.
Incandescent joy brought a smile to my face. It dimmed as I realized I had yet another secret to share. “Gregory was a brilliant man,” I began.
“Bianca—” Ian started, but I pressed my fingers to his lips.
“I need to tell you,” I said softly. “Gregory was obsessed with his research. It was one of the reasons Father pushed for our marriage—he wanted Gregory’s discoveries to be House von Hasenberg discoveries.”
I sighed and gave him the rest of the truth. “The other reason was that Gregory had gotten me pregnant. I didn’t realize until later how carefully he’d planned everything, including our hasty wedding. I lost the baby two months later.” My voice was flat, but I felt that wound still.
Ian wrapped his arms around me, offering silent support.
“The first year of our marriage, Gregory did everything possible to break me down and distance me from my support network, starting even before I lost our baby. All of my training and all of my intelligence and I couldn’t see my own husband was manipulating me. I kept trying to fix it, but it wasn’t something I could fix.”
Even now, I wondered if I could’ve done something differently, and how fucked up was that? I knew he had manipulated me and still I wondered. I shook myself.
“The Consortium’s regulatory agencies didn’t move fast enough for Gregory. Human experiments require years of work before they’re approved, so he decided to experiment on his own property, namely me. He wanted a piece of tech so irresistible that he could write his own rules.”
“He experimented on you without your consent, didn’t he?” Ian asked, his voice dark and dangerous.
I laughed without humor, the bitter sound dragged out of me by the thought of Gregory asking me for anything so trivial to him as consent. “He did not ask me,” I confirmed. “He drugged me and inserted the implant in my brain. Afterward, he told me I had passed out and hit my head and he’d operated to relieve the swelling.”
Ian swore viciously under his breath.
“The modified nanos came later. By the time I figured out what was happening, I was too sick to stop it. I almost died before he realized he needed to shield my bedroom from wireless signals. Then when I felt well enough to move from the bed, he threatened to do the same to my sisters if I told anyone or asked for help.”
Now I could see that the threat was an empty one—my sisters were well protected in House von Hasenberg. But at the time, sick and in pain, I would’ve done anything to spare them the same fate.
Ian rubbed circles on my back. I wasn’t sure if he even knew he was doing it, but it helped me to get the rest of the story out.
“I was too sick to go out in public, not that there was much to do in Daln anyway, and I’d cut ties with nearly everyone. My sisters still tried to visit occasionally. Gregory would put them off as long as possible, then have them visit me in a shielded sitting room while I was dosed with painkillers. He told me that if they found out I was sick, he’d kill me, so I let them think I was trying for a baby and it wasn’t going well. They were so supportive—” My voice broke.
“Shhh,” Ian whispered. He clutched me in a tight hug. I sucked in a few deep breaths before I felt like I could continue.
“Gregory knew the implant had the potential to decode wireless transmissions, even encrypted ones, but he couldn’t fully test it in the lab because it needed the connection to the human brain. And once implanted, it didn’t have any diagnostic access, so he needed my cooperation.”
It was a rare mistake. He must’ve thought he’d broken me enough that I would be docile and helpful. And no one would want an implant that could be hacked externally, so he must’ve implanted me with a prototype that was close to final. I often wondered who else he had experimented on and whether they’d survived, but despite my connections, I couldn’t find a hint of them. Gregory had been paranoid about data security.
I continued, “When I failed to cooperate, he would lock me in the lab and bombard me with messages, encrypted and not, to try to get a reaction out of me. He put horrible things in them, threats and worse.”
It had been a living nightmare and, even in the safety of Ian’s embrace, I shivered in remembered horror.
“I never let him know how well his tech worked. No matter what he tried, and he tried everything, I had just enough stubborn determination to pretend his life’s work was faulty. And no House or merc squad would risk their health for faulty tech. He died thinking he’d failed.” It was my one point of pride, my one tiny rebellion. I hadn’t been strong enough to fight him, but I’d clawed back just enough spark to stonewall him.
Ian’s arms tightened around me. “That bastard is lucky he is dead.”
“He died badly,” I said. Satisfaction warred with pity. “We were in the lab. He was angry because I wasn’t helping. I don’t know how the fire started, but there were so many combustible materials it spread faster than anything I’d ever seen.”
The roar of the flames, the heat searing my face. Gregory’s frantic screams for help as his coat caught. “He was trying to save his research files; he didn’t believe in off-site backups, too risky. But the fire was too intense. I was right beside a fire extinguisher. I could’ve saved him. I didn’t.”
I shrugged as if the nightmares didn’t still force me from sleep in a cold sweat. “I dragged myself out and the doctors treated me for smoke inhalation and a few minor burns. Once Gregory’s family realized he’d died, they kicked me out of my own house because, of course, it wasn’t mine, it was Gregory’s. I had to ask Hannah to come get me.”