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.
I just have one wish.
When I find her, I hope that she’s whole.
Inside and out.
That she’s not just like her mother. Not like me.
Incapable of love.
Incapable of warmth.
Incapable of friendship.
Capable only of anger, determination, good fashion sense, and the real ace up her sleeve—an unparalleled hunger for vengeance.
Sure, it’s been building inside me for years.
It makes my spine straight and stiff as I pick up the suitcase I’ve brought with me and step forward.
I’m not playing around with subterfuge today.
We’re going to do things my way in the rainy light of day.
Big, bright, bold…
…and with a hell of a lot of noise.
I’m coming, Durham.
Ready or not, you piece of shit.
7
A Spoonful of Sugar (Oliver)
I swear to God, this woman has a death wish.
I stare incredulously over my steering wheel, watching through my binoculars—even if I only need to use one lens—as Fuchsia emerges from whatever crevice she’d hidden herself away in after barging past the gate.
She’d disappeared in a blink. She’s good, still a wildcat after all these years, so good even I’d lost her for a minute.
But now she steps boldly into sight and goes stalking across the tarmac, straight for the plane—dragging a rolling suitcase behind her.
She still wears those red-bottom heels she loves so much, the only splash of color when she’s always a panther in all black.
My wildcat.
Amazingly, she still walks like she owns everything around her.
Even when she thrusts herself into the center of a pack of Nighthawks who bristle like they’d happily take her head off in half a second, and only the fact that she’s a woman is slowing them down.
That’s the mistake most people make with Fuchsia.