“You help people,” I continued.“Thishelps people in the end. It keeps the really fucked-up men away from good, helpless citizens in Falcon City. People like Mom.”
He sighed. “Think about why we’re doing this. How far we’ve come. We’re so close to revenge, and now Command wants the same thing we do. Marco Bellini, dead.”
He took a long pull from his beer, staring out into the night.
“She won’t talk,” he said, shaking his head. “Not like this.”
“Then use that brain of yours,” I said. “Tell me what we do.”
He sat in silence for a while, sipping his drink. Knox was always the thoughtful twin, watching, waiting, learning. Our interrogees revealed themselves in every twitch, every expression, every sound. He figured out the leverage, and I applied the pressure. We made a good team.
“If she’s too broken to break,” he said finally, “we'll rebuild her.”
I choked and nearly spit out my beer. “Whatthe fuckdoes that mean?”
“It means exactly that. We have time. We'll clean her up and get her comfortable. Treat her like a human instead of the animal Marco's treated her like for years. Once she feels better, we explain that we’re trying to help the other omegas. That we’re trying to take Marco down.”
I shook my head. “She’s fucked up in the head, Knox. Youand I are not psychiatrists, and we’re not trained for that. We don’t rebuild people. We break them.”
He turned to me then, eyes hard. “And that’s the problem. Whatever Marco did to her stripped away more than fear. It killed her instincts. Specifically, self-preservation. Even her response to dominance.”
His jaw tightened as he continued, “She didn’t react to the alpha bark, Silas. It's unheard of! She leaned into the blade. He didn’t just break her. He hollowed her out. Turned her into a shell that doesn’t even care about survival anymore.”
“I know you think I'm a bleeding heart, but this isn't about pity, it's about leverage,” he said, eyes hardening. “A different kind. You can’t threaten to kill someone who already wants to die.”
The words sat heavy between us.
“General Green said any resource we needed was available,” Knox went on. “So let's use them. We'll assign her protected informant status and enroll her in the Witness Protection Program. I'll contact a psychologist from the Omega Training Center, and you can arrange a safe house to stash her in. If what Jacob said about Lena being the favorite is true, Marco will come looking for her. Maybe we can even force him to make a mistake or lure him out.”
I stared out into the darkness, jaw clenched.
Rebuilding instead of breaking?
Trust instead of fear?
It went against every instinct I had.
But I knew Knox was right. For once, my tools wouldn’t work.
“Fine,” I said at last. “I can take it to the general. I’ll lay outthe change in tactics and see how much leash he’s willing to give us.”
Knox nodded, like he’d known I would agree.
“I’ll handle it in the morning,” I added. “But if this fails, we go back to doing things my way.”
He didn’t argue.
Below us, locked in the cells, Lena waited. And for the first time since this job began, I had the uneasy sense that she wasn’t the one about to be tested.
We were.
Chapter 6: Knox
“The psychologist from the Training Center is here,” Officer Yuri's voice crackled over my comms.
Silas heard it too, and we headed for the facility entrance to escort her inside.
“About fucking time,” my brother murmured.
