I can’t see anything through the peephole, so I stand there for several seconds debating internally. What if it’s not Nick? What if it is Nick? Am I ready to see him again? What does he want?
I hear Merc’s voice in my head. Just open the door, you little brat. You’re a trained killer. They are more afraid of you than you are of them.
Which is most likely true in this case. I’m not afraid of Nick. He would never hurt me. So I punch in the security code and swing the door open.
“Took you long enough.”
A hooded figure is sitting on the second stair of the front porch. His hands are stretched out behind him, palms down, and his legs are kicked out in front. He hasn’t got a care in the world, that pose says.
I take a deep breath and let it out. “I’m mad at you.”
“I know.”
“Why are you here?”
He turns his head a little and I catch a bit of his face under that hood in the lights coming from City Park across Mountain Avenue. We are at the end of a cul-de-sac, so there are no cars, and the park is empty in the winter, so it’s just us. “I was in the neighborhood.”
I smile, recalling our first conversation at the antiques mall in Cheyenne back when we were still kids. I asked him what he was doing in Cheyenne all dressed up like a surfer.
“It’s a nice neighborhood,” I reply, changing the answer from the past when I told him he could do better.
“You deserve it, Sash. You really do.” He pats a hand on the stoop and says, “Come sit next to me. Let’s catch up.”
I reach back inside and grab my coat off the hook near the door, then shrug it on before slowly walking towards the steps. My heart is beating so fast, I put one hand over it and feel the thumping. I take a deep breath when I get to the steps and then sit down. “I missed you.”
He turns to me, fully illuminated now. And none of the photographs back at that safe house can prepare me for what I see.
The scar on his cheek that looked small and superficial is… not. It’s thick and speaks volumes about the life he’s been leading. The tattoos on his neck are so realistic, I have to take a second look to make sure the chains are not real.
“Nick.”
He looks me in the eyes, his brown ones meeting my blue ones, then shakes his head. “No. Nick’s been gone a long, long time. They call me Santino now.” He talks with an accent and that kills me almost as much as the scar. “How have you been?” He manages a smile, but I can tell it’s forced.
“OK.” I search his eyes for a moment, but then he turns his head and he’s hidden in the shadows of the hoodie again. “I want to know how you are too—but I’m afraid to ask.”
“You don’t want to know.” It’s not sarcasm. It’s truth. He doesn’t want to talk about his life because he’s got nothing good to say about it. I put a hand on his shoulder and he reaches up and gives it a squeeze. “I loved you. I just needed to tell you that. I’ve been practicing this speech for ten years and I had so much planned. But”—he sighs—”the only thing that matters is that I loved you.”
I feel the tears, but I’ve locked them away for so long, I squeeze them back out of habit. “I would’ve gone with you, ya know.”
“I know. That’s why I was mean to you that night. I knew you’d do anything to stay with me and it was wrong, Sasha. I’m not sorry for the way it ended between us that night.” He stops to swallow down his sadness and then he turns his head again and looks me straight on. “I’m not sorry. You’d have grown up in hell if you came with me.”
“You planned it, didn’t you? You always knew I’d go to Matias for help.”
“I knew.” He smiles at me then and I find the old Nick in that grin. It comes back easy. I see him as a teenager when we first met. How golden he looked to me. Like a movie star. And his life was something out of a movie too. The good kind. The kind where rich kids live on superyachts and play in paradise growing up. “Your father gave you an exit strategy.”
“My father?”
“Yeah. When I used to come see you guys in Cheyenne, he told me about Matias. He told me all the secrets he gave you. And when I left you at that hotel and told you I’d be back, I lied.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean I lied about everything. I was never coming back. But I knew you’d never let me go. I used you to bring Matias because I had to go find Harper and I didn’t have time to set it up myself.”
“How could you know it would all work out that way? I mean, was I that stupid and transparent?”
“So fucking transparent.” And then he laughs and so do I. “I had you pegged as a sappy romantic from the first second I saw you. And you know what?”
I smile at his laugh. “What?”
“I knew back then that you believed in that promise. I knew you were the only person on this whole fucking planet who would go the end of the earth to save me.”
Oh, God. I bite those tears back again. “I would,” I squeak out. “And I did my best, Nick. I really did.”
He puts his arm around me and pulls me close. He smells different now. I used to think he smelled like the beach, but now he smells like the cold. “I know you did.” And then he laughs again. “You’re fucking spectacular, you know that?” He turns his head and his hand slips behind my neck to pull me closer to him. He’s about to kiss me, but I turn away. “Sorry,” he whispers. “I can’t help myself.”
I rest my head on his shoulder and lean in. God, how many years have I wished for this moment? How many ways did I imagine him as he professed his love to me? And now I don’t want it.
“Are you in love with him?”
I know he’s talking about Jax. I’m not sure how Nick knows we’ve been seeing each other, but I know that’s who he’s talking about. “I’m not sure what love is.”
“You like him, though?”
“I do. He’s so nice. He’s one of those guys who holds doors for old ladies. And every time I find myself stuck in the rain, he’s got an umbrella over my head.”
“You deserve nice.”
“Do you know him?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you kill his little brother?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it an order?”
“It was.” And then he hugs me harder. “But it’s no excuse.”
“I killed people too, Nick. We didn’t have a choice. We had to back then.”
“I still have to now, Sasha.”
I let out a long sigh. “I know. But you’re not gonna kill Jax, right?”
“No. He’s not on my list.”
My back stiffens at the mention of a list.
“Don’t ask me if you’re on the list, Sash. Because if you do, my heart will break completely in half.”
I want to hug him so hard right now. I know the pain and desperation I feel inside myself, and when I’m close to him like this, I think I can feel his too. We are promised. No matter how it turned out, we are promised. Nick may not be my soulmate, but he’s part of my soul. “I know you’d never hurt me.”
“I hurt you so bad back then. I hurt you so bad I wanted to cry when I watched you disappear on that boat.”
I want to cry right now just picturing him fading into the foggy night. But once I start, I will never stop. I can’t let this be the night I fall to pieces. I’m not ready yet. “I went to the hotel room and waited for you. I waited until those two weeks you paid for were up and James made me leave.”
“I figured you would. That’s just the kind of girl you are. Loyal to the end.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes after that.
“So,” he says after the quiet goes on too long. “What did you think of your aunt?”
“You know I went to see her?”
“Did you like her?” he asks, ignoring my question.
“Not really. The whole place seems weird. Too… I dunno how to explain it.”
“Too Company?”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s how it looked. Secret shit and big houses and some guy named Julian attacked me.”
“He’s her… James, I guess.”
“A killer?”
“Yeah. Did you kick his ass?”
I laugh. “What do you think?”
“I heard you did.”
“From who?” His knowledge is bugging me. “How do you know all this?”
“I have rats too.”
My back straightens again. Rats. That’s the word Jax used to describe what his father does in the FBI. He runs the rats.
“Julian, the priest,” Nick says with an air of contempt. “They run a school, Sasha. Or they did until I got here and put a stop to it. A school for girls. Julian was in charge of it.”
“Who would send their children to a school with that creep running it?”
“Who do you think?”
I close my eyes. “No. No. Please.” I let out a laugh that is so far from laughter, it strikes fear into my heart. “No. They aren’t allowed to do that shit, Nick.” I look him in the eyes as the pieces start to fit together. “You—”
“Don’t get paranoid on me, Sasha. It’s my job to know what they’re doing. I’m still the Admiral’s son, after all. Did she tell you some story about the Zeros?”
My chest hurts. I might be having a heart attack.
“Sasha,” he says, turning his body so he can face me full on. His scarred face is hard for me to look at, but I force myself. He deserves to be seen. He earned it. I owe him. “That program they had to raise Zeros, it’s all true. You were one of the first, but there were more. Michael, the foster kid Jax loved so much. He was one of them too. Your father—”
“No.”
“Yes, Sasha. Your father was in on it with your aunt. They started that program but they never had a boy who didn’t go crazy. And all they had to do was look at James to see what the future of that program would bring. He was, I guess, the pilot kid. The one they tried everything out on first. Including his capture and imprisonment in Honduras back when he was sixteen. But the girls were different. They were trainable, but they didn’t snap like the boys. They’ve been breeding them for more than twenty years now.”
Breeding them? That’s how they think of us? Offspring? What the fuck is wrong with people? How do you do that to your kid? “She said you were one too, ya know.”
“I was Number Eleven, Sash. You know that. You were always a Zero. Harper, she was a Zero, but my father set her up to fail on purpose. And I helped him. There was no way we were giving Harper up to that sick program.”
“But your father, the Admiral, he was a bad guy.”
He looks at me sideways, one eye peeking out from his hoodie. “We’re all bad guys, remember?”
“We can’t all be bad, Nick. Someone has to be good. The whole world isn’t bad. I mean, I get it, there’s shades of gray and all that good shit. But seriously, I need to believe in something right now. I have no idea what’s happening. And then you show up and spill this shit on me. I can’t take it anymore, Nick. I swear to God, I want to scream, that’s how confusing this is.”
“Whatever Madeline told you, she lied. She’s gonna use you, Sasha. To train more Zeros. She’s gonna use you to bring the Company back to life, only this time she’ll be in charge. Matias is the de facto leader at this moment because I made that deal with him back in Santa Barbara. It was planned that way, Sasha. I’ve been plotting this moment for more than a decade. But he’s meeting with Madeline tonight at that estate. They are forging a new relationship—”
“Matias is Company?” Jax was right. How many other things was he right about?
“Why do you think he let me live?” Nick grabs my hand and squeezes hard. “Think, Sasha. Why me? Why did he want me?”
“You’re a killer? He needed you?”
“Why did he need me?”
I know where he’s going with this line of questioning, but I can’t bring myself to say it. Because if I do, then I have to admit that my life was planned for me as well. That I am just a pawn in a game. I am offspring.
“I’m the Admiral’s son. I’m the next in line. I’m the only thing left of the Company leadership.”
“You’re not still Company. You left. We all left. That was the whole fucking point of killing all those people ten years ago. We set the kids free—”
“I am the Company heir, Sasha.” He says it hard. In a way that leaves me no doubt that everything Jax said about him was true. “And the kids aren’t free. Just ask Sydney if the kids are free. Ask her about the kids she found two years ago. It’s bullshit what we did. The Company never died, it just went underground and regrouped with me as their promise for a new future. I did a lot of shit down in Central America, Sasha. With kids, the new Zeros—”
“Those kids on your back, that tattoo…”
“I make Zeros down in Honduras. That’s my job. I’ve been doing it for years. But in order to keep them from succeeding, I have to fuck it all up. I set them up to fail.” He grabs me by the shoulders and squeezes so hard I wince. His eyes dart back and forth, looking into each of mine like he’s desperate for me to see what’s happening. But I’m not sure I want to know these things. “I kill them,” he says in a flat voice. “I save them by killing them. I am responsible for the death of every single one. I kill. That’s my only purpose. And I’m not sorry about any of it. Every death was a sacrifice that needed to be made.”
I feel vomit coming up in my throat.
“And the only reason I came back tonight was to tell you the truth about me.”
“Why?” I’m so angry. “Why do I need to know? Why now? Why not just leave me alone? You’re the one who told me to move on, love someone else, live a normal life. So I did. I did my best, Nick. And now you’re back, fucking it all up! If you hadn’t started looking for me, I’d still be in school. Jax would’ve never found me. I’d be safe and living my stupid life as a PhD wannabe.”
“I only came back to make sure you understood. I can’t do this anymore, and I need you to understand.”
“Understand what?” I want to scream so bad.
He cups my face in both of his hands and forces me to look him in the eyes. “That you’re the only one I can trust. So when the time comes, all I’m asking is that you do your job.”
And then he stands up and walks down the stairs.
“Hey!” I yell after him. “Where do you think you’re going? You don’t get to show up here and fill my head with all this shit and just leave!”
But he keeps walking and then gets into some stupid little car parked on the other side of the street. I run after him, but his door is closed and the engine is already running before I get there. I pound on the window, but he puts the car in gear and drives off.
“Motherfucker!” I yell. Dogs start barking down the street and then a porch light goes on. I back away, all the way to the sidewalk in front of my house. Afraid that the neighbors will come out and ask me what’s wrong.
And I can’t even begin to explain.
I can’t.
Because this is history repeating. Nick came, he wrecked me, and he walked out.
Again.