My mother seemed to recognize the light extinguishing in my eyes, the last flicker that believed in them. Immediately, she stepped toward me, a deep frown in her forehead.
I staggered back, not letting them close.
“The Reys conspired with Urban to have us killed back then,” she said. “They would have done it.”
“If you weren’t conspiring against them first!”
“Our problem with the Reys is long and complex.” Her look was severe, as if to highlight the understatement. “They know how much we hate them, which is why they loved sending us pictures of you sucking face with their son or them hugging you in the lobby…”
I huffed. That explained a lot. Cross always suspected those photos were going to my parents. I guess he was right. Too bad I couldn’t tell him. Because he was dead.
“If you say one more bad thing about Marcus, I will walk out that door, and you will never see me again.” My voice was calm and controlled as I made a promise I truly meant.
Marcus was alone right now, because I was here. With them. I had to pray he was still safely sleeping in his hospital bed. I had to pray he was okay. Because I was busy confronting my non-dead parents who just murdered our now-dead ally.
“You’re right. We were wrong.” Dad shot my mother a worried look. “This isn’t what we wanted to happen. This isn’t how we planned to see you again. You and your sister were all we thought about in prison. Keeping you safe. Getting out to see you. We’ve missed you.”
I shook my head in disbelief, not allowing his words to land. “You’ve done nothing to give me that impression.”
“We never wanted you to pay for our crimes. We wanted you to have a life outside of this business. That’s why we left, and that’s why we tried to cooperate with the CIA. It was so hard to walk away.” A dangerous piece of me wanted to hear the regret in his voice, wanted to see the way his eyes drooped, the way his shoulders slumped. He looked so much like Keira in that moment.
“This plan of Cross’s, running around after the children of our enemies. It was going to get you killed. It’s why we had to intervene now. For you,” explained my mother, her eyes softening. “This is too much for you to handle on your own. It should never have been put on your shoulders. We thought leaving would prevent this very thing.”
My hands quivered at my sides, a burn scorching from my gut all the way to my eyes. No, no, no. They don’t mean it…
“We should have done things differently. We should have protected you more,” my father insisted, slipping a key into the shackles on my wrists, trying to release me, trying to get me to let go.
I thought back to the cemetery, their names on the tombstones, the anniversaries of their deaths, the constant fights with my sister, the battles with social services. The depression. The grief. The isolation of a girl with no parents. “Do you have any idea what you put us through?”
“We are so sorry,” Dad finally offered.
“We truly are, darling. I am so sorry,” Mom agreed.
There it was. The apology I was long overdue, the remorse that was owed to me, and it changed nothing. I didn’t feel better. I didn’t feel relief or closure or forgiveness. The hole inside of me was still fresh. Turned out “I’m sorry” couldn’t bring back my parents. The mom and dad I loved were still gone. The people in front of me now were strangers wearing their bodies as suits.
“Did you ever love us?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“Of course!”
“Yes!” they answered together.
“Then how could you let this happen to us?” I sniffled, trying so hard to hold in the tears, not give them another piece of me, but it was so hard. There was no emotional dam large enough to keep back the flood of being hit with my dead parents come back to life.
My mom and dad shared a look, then tentatively moved toward me, slowly at first, then in three huge steps. They wrapped me in a hug, four arms squeezing me tight, two faces pressing into my hair. “We love you, sweetheart,” they both whispered. “We love you so much. We do. We promise we do.”
That was when I lost it. I sobbed. It all came out. All the hatred I had for their betrayal, all the grief I had in their absence, all the fear I’d had for my sister, and all the love I had for my family. Something inside me fractured, wracking my body. I couldn’t stop crying.
And they didn’t ask me to.
They held me tighter, nuzzled me closer, and I breathed in their scent. My parents. They didn’t smell like soap or perfume, nor lotion or laundry. They smelled like them. A distinct aroma that I hadn’t inhaled since March eighth, the night they left us. It was the scent of their skin, the smell of their sweat; it was them. It was everything. I squeezed my eyes shut and listened to their whispers promising it would all work out, we’d be okay, they were back, and it was okay now. We were all right.
Then I opened my eyes and saw the dead body lying on the ground.
This wasn’t all right.
I pulled away, stepping back from them, wiping my eyes, my nose. My one-shouldered dress was too snug to serve as a handkerchief, and my father’s shirt was currently being used as a tourniquet to stop his bleeding leg.
Everything was not fine.
I gestured to Cross’s lifeless body. “He was grieving for his wife, and you killed him.”
“He came at us with a knife. You saw that,” Mom said.
“Because you killed his wife.”
“She was sick,” Dad maintained.
“You said that, but you don’t get to make those decisions. You don’t pick whose lives are expendable and who should pay for what crimes. Your choices affect people; they affect me. Horribly.” I laid it out, and for once, I heard how closely I had followed in their footsteps. I was playing God. I was running our band of misfits. I was forcing my plans on everyone. I insisted we come here. And now Marcus was lying in a hospital.
“We never wanted you mixed up in any of this.” The new crow’s feet around his eyes deepened. It was a new look, one I wasn’t familiar with, maybe desperation?
“You should have thought about us before you became criminals. You chose this life. It didn’t find you; it didn’t happen beyond your control. You started Department D.” I couldn’t absolve them of the crimes they actively, willingly committed. “You could’ve gotten out after you had kids. You could have thought about Keira and me at any point, but you didn’t. You got out because your lives were being threatened. You were thinking about you.”
It was the simple truth, and we all knew it. It was why the shackles stayed on my wrists, why I’d never be free of this. They put them there. They bound my hands, my future, with lies. No amount of I’m Sorrys could undo that.
“Let us make it up to you.” His speech was accelerating, like he could see my back turning to them. “Whatever you think about what we did, crimes we committed decades ago, you have to know this—we did not kidnap your sister, and we did not kill your friend Tyson.”
“Then who did?” I cut in, realizing that there were still so many questions they hadn’t answered. If they wanted forgiveness, they could start there.
My dad sighed so heavily I felt the temperature in the room change, chill. “We don’t know for sure.” He shook his head in embarrassment. “We know Urban took your sister, but your friend…”
“It’s either Urban or the Reys,” Mom finished for him. “Our money is on the Reys, after this stunt they pulled with Antonio. It’s why you need to get away from those boys.”
My jaw set. “Do you really think…you have any say…in who I date?” I bit off the words.
“It’s not that. It’s for your safety,” Dad said.
“Come with us,” Mom blurted, like it was time to skip to the end.
“What?” I was certain I’d heard her wrong.
“Allen was right about one thing,” she insisted. “Department D, the Reys, Randolph, they’re never going to stop coming after you and your sister. Not now. Not when they know we’re back, when
they think they can use you to get to us, like they used Allen’s wife to get to him.”
I knew this already. It was why I was collecting Dresden Kids like trading cards. A lot of good that does me.
“You know that the evidence you acquired from those kids is false,” Mom went on, hearing my thoughts. “They’re setting us up. Randolph and the Reys realize that Department D is tumbling down, that the CIA is too close, that too many innocents know the truth, so they’re doing damage control. They’ve become their own client. They’ve started to manipulate the evidence, point everything at us, pin every crime, the entire organization on us, so they can walk away free and clear. You saw that news article in Boston, didn’t you?”
She tilted her head, knowing the answer. Department D planted the story in the Boston Tattler to make my family look bad—Keira and me included. The smear campaign had begun.
“That article makes me look guilty,” I growled. “It makes it look like I did something to my sister.”
“And it’s only going to get worse,” Dad said. “That was the tip of Phase One.”
“Unless we stop them,” Mom continued.
“Come with us. Let’s do this together.” Dad stood in front of me like he was offering me a free trip around the world, like I should say thank you and write their names in a gratitude journal. “Let’s bring down Department D. Our way. No CIA, no high school kids. Let’s show them how powerful the Phoenixes really are. Together.”
I half expected a locker room full of football players to burst into applause. This is our time! This is our house! We must defend it! Go team!
Only I wasn’t inspired. I was barely standing. There was a body on the marble floor. They killed a man who had sacrificed so much to help them over the years, and they killed his wife. Yet they were asking for my loyalty, my trust? But…they were also the strongest, most informed allies we’d ever get. And they were my parents. They were back. They were alive. Could I really close the door and act like that didn’t matter to me? Like I didn’t care if someone really killed them this time?
They watched as I warred with myself, my mind changing with every breath.
Then my phone rang in my pocket.
I pulled it out like I was yanking a lifeline.
It was the hospital. Marcus.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I sat in a taxi moving through Rio de Janeiro on my way back to Marcus. I’d left my parents in the villa at Lagoa.
This time, I’d said goodbye.
I couldn’t take them up on their offer. I couldn’t be them, mostly because I didn’t know who they were. I stared out the car window as dawn broke on the city, the hazy apricot light of the wee hours exposing a side of Rio that few travelers saw. The streets were full of police.
There wasn’t a riot or a crime spree. It was an ordinary December morning, with cops patrolling like armed militants. They were dressed in gray and black camouflage fatigues with black berets on their heads and combat boots on their feet as they stomped through the streets, bulletproof vests on their chests, rifles slung over their shoulders, ready to be aimed. They held German Shepherds on leashes while they cleared the sidewalks of the homeless, the poor, the drug addicted or drug dealing—any unsavory character that might scare off the tourists and ruin the Girl from Ipanema image of tropical paradise. It was a city skilled at duplicity, and it seemed so fitting given the parents I’d left behind.
The reality was my mom and dad were heartless, calculating, career criminals who killed people without guilt and who, for years, used their kids and their jobs as engineers to project a picture of an ordinary loving American family. It was all fake. Maybe even the love, at least for them.
I had wished when I saw them that all I would feel was a white-hot burn of hate, but it wasn’t that easy, as Keira predicted. When I’d sobbed on their shoulders, it was with a mix of profound betrayal and twisted pleasure that they had broken out of prison for us. I wanted to believe they were trying to protect us, trying to destroy the organization they built, all for the well being of their children. I wanted to have a family again, and I wanted everything to be okay.
I wanted that so badly, I ran out of there at record pace. I didn’t look back.
The taxi pulled in front of Rio’s largest hospital, and I handed the driver cash as I stepped into the muggy air catching the stench of disinfectant and sickness wafting from the glass doors.
My heart was conflicted when it came to my parents.
But not when it came to someone else.
…
His eyes were open when I walked into the room.
Marcus was wearing a white gown with blue polka dots, no longer bare-chested, so the sensors must have been removed from his body. There were still tubes connected to his arms pushing fluids, and his skin looked impossibly pale, which was saying something given his already pasty complexion. But his black hair was mussed in a way that looked sexy—only guys could pull off bedhead in a hospital room.
“You’re okay.” I stepped toward him, exhaling a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“Thanks to you.” His voice was husky, like it hurt to speak.
“Are you kidding me?” I collapsed next to him, reaching my arms around the beige plastic bedrail to grip his hand, hold it tight. “I’m the reason you’re here.”
“You’re the reason I’m alive.” He tried miserably not to wince from the effort it took to talk.
“Shhh. Don’t speak.” I placed my finger on his lips. “Do you remember what happened?”
He shook his head “no,” so I relayed his story, from the drugged drinks to me kicking Paolo in the crotch so hard he’d probably never have children. I told him what it was like to ride in the ambulance, how the doctors cared for him, and how I didn’t want to leave him.
“It’s okay. You needed the rest,” he rasped, then he narrowed his eyes. “But it doesn’t look like you’ve slept.” He reached his hand to my face, his fingers brushing what must be massive puffy purple circles, only not from insomnia.
I searched his eyes, trying to decide if I should tell him about his brother’s betrayal or Cross being dead or my parents being alive and looking to create a Phoenix Family Fighting Club. It was a lot for me to take in, and I wasn’t recovering from a drug overdose. Instead, I lowered my head to his chest and rested it there. Those details could wait until tomorrow.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, tears in my voice. “If I had listened to you, to Keira, if we’d gone to the CIA, if we hadn’t come here…”
“This isn’t your fault. None of this is your fault. It’s okay. We’re okay.”
He stroked my hair, gently, comforting me while he lay in his hospital bed having narrowly escaped death. “I promise I will never do this again. I’ll listen to you guys from now on. I’ll trust you. I do trust you,” I pleaded, wondering if it was even possible to express how wretched I felt.
“I know. It’s okay. I’m okay,” he repeated.
I closed my eyes. Even with the smell of antiseptic in the air, even with the beeping machines, his touch on my hair was so soothing. My breathing synced with his, my head rising and falling with his chest. After a night of stifling conversations, I felt like I could breathe again, with him, near him. My whole body relaxed, and I wanted to melt into him, fix him, heal his wounds, and let him heal mine. Suddenly I felt completely overcome, with emotion, exhaustion, and relief that I couldn’t ignore the words battering inside me—collecting one, two, three—insisting they come out. They were shouting from my heart, and I had to say them. I wanted to say them.
“I love you,” I whispered, eyes still clenched.
I’d never said the words before, not to a guy, and it took more guts and bravery than anything I’d done since I’d left America, more strength than fighting any spy. I’d walked away from the two people who left me, abandoned me, and did nothing to teach me what those words meant. I had to find that meaning on my own.
I could hear his hear
t pound faster in his chest.
His lungs hiccupped. “I love you, too,” he rasped, then he pulled at my head, urging me to face him. When I did, there were tears in his eyes, and I knew they weren’t from pain. These were the words he wanted to hear, he needed to hear, and I couldn’t do it before. Now it felt so real, so honest.
I slowly lowered my head and kissed him carefully on the lips, barely touching him, afraid to hurt him.
“I love you so much. And I trust you, with everything.” I breathed against his mouth.
He nodded in return, pressing his forehead to mine.
We stayed like that, forehead to forehead, hands clutching one another’s face.
This was what I wanted.
Chapter Thirty
Our black town car pulled in front of the East Sussex Compound. We hadn’t rushed back. After Marcus was released from the hospital, we decided to wait until he “felt strong enough to travel.” Really, we wanted time in the sun, fingers entwined, with the sound of the surf crashing and the feel of the salt air curling our hair. We even bought bathing suits from a street vendor and swam in the bath-water-warm turquoise ocean, my legs wrapped around Marcus’s waist as we kissed in the waves. I never saw my parents again in Rio. I wasn’t sure if they’d left for their evil hideout under a volcano or if they were lurking behind palm trees following us in trench coats, but I was with the person I wanted to be with.
“You ready for this?” Marcus asked as we stepped out of the luxury car that Julian had sent to Heathrow Airport to retrieve us.
“No, but does it matter?” I cocked my head, my dark hair falling over my shoulder. “Are you?”
“Not at all.” He shrugged.
It took a full day for me to tell him about Antonio. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, to break him further. I waited until we were sitting on the beach, our toes in the sand. Then I finally faced him and told him the whole story:
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