Page 74 of The Viper
“You changed,” I said. “Your face did. Right after the old man left.”
His eyes met mine, steady, assessing. “Just a minor complication.”
“Who are they?”
He hesitated. “Not your problem.”
A polite lie, wrapped in steel.
I didn’t push, because I suspected he’d only lock down further. Instead, I leaned back, pressing my palms against the armrests and forcing my voice to steady. “You said earlier you’re not used to money. I get that. But this …” I gestured toward the world outside—the private jet, the bodyguards, the war I didn’t understand. “This isn’t about money, is it?”
“No,” he said simply.
“What’s it about?”
His gaze softened, almost regretful. “Survival.”
Something inside me went still.
The word meant one thing to me—a metaphor people used when they’d been through breakups or bad press cycles. For him, it was literal. A heartbeat. A code.
I wanted to ask what he’d survived, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer. So, I said, “Tell me what it was like. Growing up.”
He tilted his head, studying me like he was deciding whether I could handle it. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
The hum of the engines filled the pause. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, less certain, like the sound of a memory that didn’t want to be remembered.
“We lived in a valley in Montana,” he said. “You could drive for miles and never see another house. Winters were rough. Summers were work. My brothers and I split chores before the sun came up—hauling water, fixing fences, digging trenches when the snowmelt flooded the yard. We didn’t have much, but we had rules. My mom made sure of that.”
“Your dad?”
He looked away, toward the dark window. “Gone before I turned ten. Never said where he was going. My mom just said he’d gone to find peace. Whatever that means.”
I wanted to reach across the table and touch him, but something told me not to interrupt.
“When I was seventeen,” he went on, “I enlisted. Thought I’d find my own kind of peace. Turns out the world doesn’t give it away. You’ve got to earn it, and even then, it’s never yours for long.”
His tone wasn’t bitter—just matter-of-fact, which somehow made it worse.
“What was it like?” I asked. “The military.”
“Depends on the day.” His mouth curved faintly. “Some days, it felt like purpose. Other days, it felt like drowning.”
I thought of him standing on the yacht hours ago, looking at the horizon like he was trying to see the edge of the Earth. “And now?”
“Now, I guess I’m trying to figure out who I am when I’m not fighting.”
The honesty hit me harder than I expected. I felt it all the way down—past admiration, past fascination, into the quiet ache of understanding.
“I think we’re both doing that,” I said softly.
He looked at me then—really looked—and something unspoken passed between us. It felt dangerous in a different way, not the kind that comes from guns or threats, but the kind that comes from being known.
When he finally fell asleep on the flight, I couldn’t.
Lights blurred beneath us, a sprawl of gold veins pulsing across the dark. I unbuckled my belt, walked to the small mirror near the galley, and stared at my reflection.
