Sienna gave us nothing. Not for Collins's questions, my own mind games, Derek's threats or Davis's physical persuasions. Her lips kept sealed throughout, moving only to tease and frustrate us and our efforts. The taunts, however, took a dip as she grew tired. I pushed harder when I noticed this, but to no avail. After three whole hours of this, Collins suggested retiring. We were exhausted, all of us injured to some varying extent, and Sienna showed no signs of letting any secrets slip tonight. Scotty figured she may give more up at the agency's headquarters, anyway, where the security was tighter.
So we turned in, sharing the same room as planned, and Collins took the first watch.
Strong painkillers sent me off quickly, and it was not until the alarm on my phone started ringing hours later did I wake for my turn to watch Sienna. I grumbled while I reached for the device sitting on the dusty floor next to the sofa – somehow being cramped next to Derek on springy cushions with a flimsy blanket to keep us warm had become my best night's sleep in a long time. Dreamless and uninterrupted... until it was time to work.
Muscles groaning, I let out a sigh. Was it not possible for me to have a good night's sleep when I didn't have to wake at four AM?
A snore made me frown at the sleeping body beside me. Derek opted for the second watch, giving him the rest of the night to disturb everyone else's sleep by embracing his own. I'd gotten used to it these past couple of years, even as a light sleeper, as if the sound had melded into white noise most nights, but the others had not. I anticipated an explosive argument when Scotty returned from his own guard duty to find his slumber at risk.
Collins was sitting up. It caught me off guard.
"Sorry, did I wake you?" With the alarm, I meant.
He shook his head, voice quieter than normal. "I was awake anyway. No need to worry about it."
I pointed at Derek. "Him?"
A sigh. "His snores are... vocal."
I glanced at Davis nearby – fast asleep. "Surprised he's unbothered by them."
"Adam's a heavy sleeper," he explained. A smile crossed his face and he let out a near-silent laugh. "This one night when he was staying over last summer... I got up to use the bathroom. From across the landing, I heard something from the room but just assumed he had woken up himself. When I entered, however, I found a complete stranger unscrewing the flatscreen not two metres away from where Adam was sleeping."
I expelled a laugh. He never told us this story. Then again, Collins rarely spoke of his private life, especially Davis.
"How did he not notice someone was in there?" I asked.
Collins chuckled. "Like I said: he's a heavy sleeper."
The way he watched him sleep... He had a look upon him. A desperate longing that wanted what he once had and more.
It was not my place to pry, but I said, "You miss him, don't you?"
The subtle smile collapsed into a frown. "He's still in my life. That is enough for now."
"Is it?"
Collins had always been selfless. For that reason, he put aside his own desires to focus on the mission at hand: finding those we lost last year. But in giving so much, he gave himself up entirely. Even keeping Davis close at hand was seen as a selfish act in his tired, tired eyes.
I did not know how he did it. When Derek and I broke apart from the agency – a lifetime ago now – every second apart from him was agony. The only thing keeping us apart was our own minds. I tried resisting those feelings, but the pain of watching him even speak to another girl that night on the ship was too great. How did Collins endure hearing of his hook-ups for so long after having him all to himself not too long ago?
He stared at the floor, the purple shadows beneath his eyes growing with every second. "I don't know."
Maybe he was in denial – maybe he genuinely did not know. I did not wish to push further.
I wiggled from Derek's grip on my waist and slid my feet into the cheap sliders Scotty brought to avoid splintering my skin. For the chill that now roamed the chateau, I pulled the cream cardigan I wore on the incoming journey over my shoulders before letting out a yawn.
"I could take over, if you'd like," Collins offered.
I waved a hand, covering my mouth with the other. "No need. I'll wake up soon."
He mirrored my yawn. "If you're sure."
"Try to get some rest," I urged. "Even with that one snoring."
He laughed quietly. "I will. Goodnight, Amber."
"Night, Collins."
I met Scotty on the way out, almost walking into the palm of his outstretched arms.
"Watch it," he warned mid-yawn.
"Don't mind me," I retorted.
Sienna was nearby, still tied to the chair we left her in earlier at the base of the stairs, staring straight ahead with a bored expression.
"Has she given you much trouble?"
"Nothing I couldn't handle," he replied.
That wasn't a no. "What did she say?"
His dimples shrunk as he swallowed. "Just a few taunts about Rose. And Anna."
Of course. "And are you alright?"
"What's done is done. I can't change what happened with them both, but I can take steps to make sure I don't make the same mistakes again."
"Scotty." She'd gotten to him.
"It's fine. I learned my lesson, it's okay."
"You don't have to punish yourself for their behaviour."
"But I can change my own."
Not when it hurt him. I must have been frowning, because he nudged me with a forced smile.
"Hey, it's fine. I'm fine. Now go entertain Sienna."
He slid his gun loosely in my hand. "No bullets left. You know, just in case you were tempted."
I tutted and shook my head. "Goodnight."
"Good luck!"
Sienna was much less pleased to see me than Scotty was.
"Knight."
"Sienna." I fell into the chair Scotty left behind and crossed one leg over the other, sitting the gun on my lap.
"Will you be as much of a nuisance as your friend, I wonder?"
"Did he show you his Pokémon collection?"
She was almost taken aback. "His... Pokémon collection?"
"If he didn't, you can't call him a nuisance. Because that collection is excessive and he's made me look over every detail of it."
Sienna only rolled her eyes.
She did not taunt me for half an hour. Did not utter a single word, in fact. All she did was look straight ahead at the barricaded door, flinching every so often at a flash of lightening or an especially loud gust of wind.
"Are you afraid of the weather, Sienna?"
For the first time in a while, she looked at me. Through me. "Everyone's afraid of something, my dear. Thunder does not bother me, however."
I cocked my head. "Then what does?"
Again, that look. Like she was looking into me – seeing through my eyes. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
For my own curiosity, yes. For the mission, it was not relevant. At least not now.
What I needed to know, however – what I had always wondered...
"Why'd you do it? Work for Marcus." Her eyes met mine, then the floor. "Why get involved with a man like that? Surely there were easier investments around." Ones that did not involve tracking from the British Secret Service as a consequence.
Thunder made her shudder, and Sienna kept her head low, black hair falling from her shoulders to shield her moonlight face.
It shifted to her back when she raised her gaze. "I have always been ambitious. My family were content with their quiet lives but not me." She shook her head. "No, not me. I wanted more."
I rolled my eyes and slouched back. "That's always the case with you people."
"Is that so terrible? To want more than the stale, working class life I lived every day for eighteen years?"
"Some people would have killed for a life like that."
"And what would you know of it? You may not have been living the life of luxury, Miss Knight, but I saw your childhood home. You never had to worry over whether the lights would turn back on."
"For the sights I saw back then, I'd have been grateful if they stayed off."
At the glimpse of my clenched jaw, Sienna blinked.
"I had a talent for gambling," she went on, "and when I saw an opportunity to capitalise off it, I leaped. By the time I was twenty, I made a name for myself – completely legally, I might add... until your father." She scratched behind her right ear. "He offered me a contract. I fund his private experiments in excelling human biology, and he returns forty percent of the profits when the products are sold."
My brows shot up. "Products?!"
She chuckled. "There are many buyers in the market for human modifications. As an agent, I'm surprised you didn't know of that."
I raised my chin. It was something I had considered in the past, yes, but not relating to Marcus. "I focus on the mission at hand."
"Maybe that's your problem."
"How is that a problem?"
"You spend so much time looking ahead, you fail to look behind you. Running from your past, praying to god it doesn't catch up. It'll be your downfall."
How did she know? She did not know the extent of what I witnessed. Who in their right mind would look back at a history like that? To relive the pain, sink in the guilt... It would be madness to throw myself in that again.
I exhaled when I realised my breathing had halted, and let my chin rest on an arm propped against the chair. My voice was still when I retorted quietly, "Speaking from experience are we, Sienna?"
When she looked down again, I realised the dark makeup atop her eyelids had smudged across her temples, the dark lipstick dragged down to her chin. "Yes. You should be grateful I'm offering you advice."
"I don't remember asking for it."
"We don't ask for lessons, we're given them. I learned mine and you should learn yours too."
"And what did you learn?" I tilted my head. "To never betray Marcus? Your first mistake was trusting him in the first place."
"How was I supposed to know?" she hissed. "I'm sure you have given your trust to people who did not deserve it."
Marcus. Alistair. Rose. Anna.
I swallowed. "He betrayed you?"
She gulped at the memory as if it scarred her. "A few years back, I decided I was done. I knew of his experiments but one day I saw them with my own eyes and I... It was different to the descriptions your father sent in his reports."
"And you couldn't detach yourself anymore."
Her head slowly motioned from side to side. "No."
Who would have thought Sienna would sprout a conscience? The quote 'better late than never' crossed my mind but as did 'too little, too late.'
I leaned forward. "What did you do?"
"What else could I do? I cut and run."
I tried not to show it, but the anger slipped through. "And you left people behind? Even after what you saw."
"I had to put myself first. Anyone else would have done the same."
"Not everyone is as selfish as you, Sienna."
"And not everyone is as self-sacrificial as you, Knight. How does he feel knowing you would gladly die if it meant stopping your father? Even if it killed him?"
Wrong. "Derek's life comes before stopping my father."
"You are his life. You'd kill him inside by letting yourself be killed, young lady. He's given you his heart – be careful with it."
I frowned. "And what would you know of that?"
Her features turned dark. Mournful. "You may think me a monster, but I have loved before. I love now, in fact. I know what it means to have your heart broken. To love someone so deeply and still have it not be enough to save them."
I sunk into my nineteen-year-old self as if a day had not passed, the pain of that moment rising like bile until I let out the memory in a sharp exhale.
Sienna tilted her head. "I never intended for her to kill him, you know?"
Intentions did not matter. "And yet she did."
"That wasn't her job. You were the target – not him."
I knew that. She nearly succeeded. "Is that supposed to make it any better?"
"Targeting you had its reasoning. But things got out of hand when Anna behaved the way she did. I didn't know she was so twisted."
I huffed a laugh. "As if being an assassin doesn't indicate some sort of issue."
"You can hate me all you want, but I had the best intentions at heart."
"Why? How does that even work?"
She blinked glassy eyes and looked beyond me – towards the barricaded doors. "I paid for my mistakes. I can assure you."
Nothing could pay the cost of a human life, especially one so innocent as Kai's. He moved on from me for his own good. It hurt to watch him go, but I understood his actions. Because I loved him, I had to let him go... and it still wasn't enough. For my past – for my chaotic life – he paid the ultimate price. And the gruesome failure of mine was painted on the walls in red for all to see as his life was torn away in my arms.
It took a while, but eventually I told Derek. He listened – the quietest he had ever been – and the two of us travelled to his grave together. At first I worried he would find the trip uncomfortable, then I realised he understood the need for it. He knew my feelings for him – the contrast between my past with Kai and my future with Derek – and was confident enough to stand beside me when I faced him.
There were no power dynamics between us. We were a team in every sense.
I had to ask, "Why do you stand by Marcus after everything he's done to you?"
"I'm a gambler, Miss Knight. But I have one thing left and that I will not gamble on for a single moment. That is all I'm saying on the matter."
Fear. Fear kept her docile.
Just as I had been for years under Marcus. By sheer luck I had been pulled from it.
She refused to say anymore after that, and the rest of my shift was held in complete silence, nothing but listening to the roaring wind and pounding rain passed the time. Even when I stretched out my arms and warned her that her next guard would not be so pleasant, she only tutted and crossed her arms.
Davis flashed a smile in greeting as I passed him in the doorway, but the best I could manage was a polite nod. After my conversation with Sienna, low mood pressed down on my shoulders.
"She good?" Davis wondered.
"She's Sienna."
"Ha! Terrible, then?"
"Horrible."
"Can't wait. Sweet dreams, Knight."
I thought he'd be asleep, but Derek's hanging arm lifted from the edge of the sofa, hands grabbing empty space until I shuffled in beside him. Despite my worries, I could not help but lift the corners of my mouth at him. Just a little bit.
He let out a relaxed breath that stroked the back of my neck. "How was it?" he asked, careful not to wake Scotty and Collins.
I lifted my shoulders in the best shrug I could manage lying down on the cramped sofa. "It was fine."
Silence twisted my gut.
Then he squeezed my shoulder and sighed. "Roll over."
Reluctantly, I did, and Derek's hand rested on my nape. Our noses almost touched when he whispered, "What did she say?"
I debated not telling him, but I made him a promise: no more secrets. We do things together. It was not what Sienna so much as said, but what her words implied. "I was so close, Derek. So close to being like Sienna."
He frowned. "Red lipstick's not really your thing, darling. And you're not that good at gambling, either, if I'm honest."
He snorted at my disapproval. "Sorry. Tell me what you mean."
"Sienna has suffered under Marcus. Not as much as his subjects, but she's suffered similar to how I did. She fears him because of it. And because she fears him, she works for him. I've sometimes worried that maybe if Alistair hadn't have arrived when he did—"
"No."
"It's possible!" I scared myself at the tone, conscious of our friends sleeping around us. Poor Collins was finally getting some rest – I did not want to interrupt it. "I can't help feeling like I was one decision away from being by his side today. Not out of loyalty, but fear."
"And that one decision brought you here – fighting against him with us. With me."
"Just one decision, Derek. That might have been all it took."
"And one decision might have killed us. One decision could have kept us as enemies. But we didn't make those decisions, did we? We're here now."
He made valid points, but my worries still stood and he saw that.
His thumb pushed my head gently towards him to kiss my brow. "Stop stressing about things that haven't happened. You are not Sienna."
I glanced at the empty space between us. It was small, but still there. "But I am Marcus's daughter."
He tapped my nose and grinned. "Which makes you the perfect person to take him down. I don't believe anyone else can."
I had never been the type of woman to believe in fate, but the reader in me urged that no other outcome was possible. One day, our conflict with Marcus would come to a head one-on-one, me against him. With words, or guns pointed, my father and I would face each other directly.
Maybe that was how it would all end. One outcome or another.
QOTD: What do you think of what Sienna said? Do you understand her position at all?