I let the cameras run.
She hadn’t spoken to anyone all day—at least not in a way that mattered. Just spreadsheets and silence. But I watched her posture change as she slumped onto her bed like gravity had given up on her.
Then her phone rang abd I already knew the caller. Jake.
The reason she stayed. The reason she obeyed—mostly. The reason I hadn’t broken her yet.
She answered fast. “Jake?”
His voice filled the speakers in my office. Stronger than I remembered. “Hey, sis. Just wanted to check in.”
She sat up straighter. Eyes wet, lips trembling like she was afraid to feel hope.
They talked. About food, blood cell counts, cafeterias. They… laughed.
She didn’t laugh like that with me.
It wasn’t the conversation that caught me off guard—it was what it did to her.
The armor slipped. The girl underneath the mouth and defiance came up for air. She talked like someone who still believed in the future.
I leaned forward, watching her face like it was a code I hadn’t cracked yet.
She mentioned spaghetti. He joked about ADD. Pancakes, watermelon seeds, the Tooth Fairy. It was all in her file, of course. I knew their childhood. Knew what she’d lost, when she lost it.
But hearing it in her voice? That wasn’t in the reports.
That was hers. That was mine, now.
Their conversation drifted into the past, into a kind of laughter that made me hate everything I’d ever done to her. Then he thanked her. Soft and honest.
“I know this job isn’t what you wanted, Floris,” he said. “I know you’re sacrificing a lot for me.”
She said it wasn’t a sacrifice.
Liar. But a good one.
They hung up and she just sat there. Eyes glossy. Body soft. Hope radiating off her like heat. I let her have it. Five minutes of peace.
Then I picked up the internal line. “Rooftop. Now.”
And hung up.
***
I was already there when she arrived.
The skyline of Amsterdam stretched behind me like a throne room made of stars. Two glasses of wine sat on the table between us. I didn’t look up when she approached.
“Sit,” I said, still scrolling through something meaningless on my phone.
“Please and thank you are still words, you know.”
I glanced up. The attitude was expected. But her eyes were calmer now—softened by Jake’s voice.
“Please sit, Floris.”
She sat, took the wine and sipped like she needed the alcohol to survive what came next.
“You looked happy,” I said. “On the phone with your brother.”
I already knew, of course, I watched it. I just wanted her to say it out loud.
“He’s doing better,” she said.
“Good. The treatment is working?”
“Yeah. He might even get to go home.”
I nodded. Pretended not to notice how tightly she held the glass. “Tell me about him. Your family.”
“Why?”
“Curiosity.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Your childhood. Your parents. How you ended up taking care of him instead of the other way around.”
Her stare sharpened. “Don’t you already know all this? I’m sure you have a file on me thicker than a phone book.”
I smiled. A real one. “Well, yes. But it’s better to hear it from you.”
“Right. Because surveillance reports don’t capture the emotional nuance of family trauma.”
“Something like that.”
She took another long sip. The wine was working—loosening her. Making her pliable without realizing she was.
“We grew up middle class. Suburbs outside Boston, two-car garage, family dinners every night. Mom was a teacher, Dad was an accountant. Normal people living normal lives.”
“Sounds idyllic.”
“It was. Until they died in a car accident my junior year of college.”
The words hit harder than I expected.
“Drunk driver. T-boned them on their way home from date night.” She looked away. “Jake was still in high school. I came home, finished my degree locally, made sure he graduated and got into college.”
“That’s a lot of responsibility for someone barely out of their teens.”
“It didn’t feel like a responsibility. It felt like… I don’t know. What you do for people you love.”
We went quiet. The city flickered behind her like a funeral pyre and then I said the thing I wasn’t supposed to say.
“At least you had a childhood.”
“Eric—”
“Don’t.”
I stood, abruptly. The moment was too honest. Too close. I didn’t want her to see it. But she already had.
That’s what made her dangerous. Because she didn’t just want to survive me.
She wanted to understand me.