The air thinned around me, sharp and weightless, as if the walls themselves had taken a breath and forgotten how to release it.
My fingers curled reflexively at my sides.
For a heartbeat, I wasn't tired anymore. I was just cold.
He swallowed, his gaze steady. Too steady. Something in it flickering with what looked unsettlingly like regret.
"He's one of the reasons you lost your memories, Sol."
"How..." I breathed, just as the hallway started to shrink around me. It suddenly felt too narrow and suffocating. Every shadow pressing closer.
No wonder he said I had looked familiar. No wonder I had felt that strange pull toward him that night. It wasn't fate. It wasn't coincidence. He must have had something to do with what happened to me three years ago.
And I had fucking slept with him. Fuck.
My pulse pounded in my ears. "If you know anything else," I said, my voice low and razor-thin, "you'd better tell me now. Because I swear, if you're keeping something from me—"
His jaw snapped shut. Whatever he'd been about to add died instantly, guilt flashing across his face before he looked away. It was like he had realized too late, the weight of what he revealed.
Wrong move.
In two steps, I closed the distance. My hand fisting in the front of his suit as I slammed him back against the wall. The thud echoing down the hallway. His breath leaving him in a sharp exhale, but he didn't lift a hand to fight me.
He never did.
"What else did you know?" I hissed.
Reluctantly, slowly, his eyes met mine.
And I hated it. Hated the way he looked at me like he was sorry. Like he cared.
My grip tightened. "What else did you keep from me?"
His throat bobbed as he swallowed. He even had the audacity to look sad. "Sol..." It wasn't an answer. It was a plea.
"You know what, Josh," My forearm pressed into his chest, pinning him harder, close enough that I felt his pulse jump beneath my wrist. "Fuck you."
I shoved him away, stepping back like touching him had burned me.
I let out a humorless breath. "Pathetic."
The heaviness in my chest settled into something colder, steadier. I stepped past him, our shoulders brushing. He stiffened as if my touch burned but I didn't stop. Didn't even look back.
"Leave," I said quietly. "I'm done talking."
I brushed past him without another glance, ignoring the way his posture flatered. The way the air felt heavier between us now.
"Isolda—" he tried again.
"Don't."
The single word finally clamped his mouth shut.
My fingers trembled only slightly when I reached my door. I pushed it open, stepped inside and shut it hard enough for the frame to rattle.
I clicked the lock in place. A small, decisive sound. But it was the only thing keeping the world on the other side from breaking in.
For a long second, I just stood there, staring at the door like it might dissolve if I blinked. My mind felt...terribly blank. Like it was hollowed out. My thoughts scattering in ten different directions and none of them are making their way back to me.
Warmth sliding down my cheek.
My hand going up to my face, expecting sweat, anything really, but it was tears. Actual tears.
"What the hell," I whispered to my empty room.
I didn't cry. I never cried. Not for pain, not for people and definitely not for the past that couldn't be undone.
I sank onto the ground, my fingers toying with the fabric of my sleeves, trying to steady the shaking in my hands, when my mind reached back to that night. Unbidden, replaying every single thing that happened.
The slip in his expression when he thought I looked familiar. The way his touch jolted some buried instinct of mine awake. The way he had so easily triggered two memories out of me, when I haven't gotten anything for the past three years ever since I had woken up in that hospital. The way even his fake name, Alaric Voss, felt wrong.
I should've clocked it then.
Everything about him had been a warning sign I chose to ignore. The way he watched me, the tension that always hovered beneath his calm exterior, the familiarity he carried like a shadow.
Of course. Of course he had something to do with my memory loss.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the sleeve of my dress, the motion almost robotic. Dark streaks of makeup smearing across the white fabric. I stared at it for a moment longer than necessary, swallowing against the knot forming in my throat.
The heaviness inside me didn't dissolve, but it shifted. Sharpening and solidifying into something steadier than fear. A purpose.
If Alexandre Barinov had anything to do with the incident that stole my memories, if he was one of the reasons an entire year of my life had been wiped clean, then this mission wasn't just an assignment. This was my chance to finally know the truth.
My opportunity to find out exactly what he did to me. Why he still lingered in the shadows of my mind like a bruise that never healed.
Josh knew something, and he'd been afraid to say it. Afraid of what I would learn. And Nonno...he was the one who gave me this mission. Even when he had an army of trained men at his disposal. People who would've been more qualified more than I am.
So why me?
The question settled over me like a frost spreading along glass. Thin and dangerous. He knew something. Something he chose to bury, and hoped would stay buried.
My fingers curled into fists, the pain of my nail pressing against my palm grounding myself as the weight of it all pressed in every direction. The room was too quiet. My breath sounded too loud. And yet, beneath the fear and the anger gnawing at my chest, there was something else rising.
Something fierce. Something that felt almost like resolve.
Whatever waited for me tomorrow, whatever truth Alexandre Barinog carried, it would reshape everything I thought I knew. It would drag whatever had been hiding in the shadows of my lost past, finally into the light.
And this time, I would not look away.