Page 9 of Scorpion

“Sergeant Bhatia.”

I snap upright, flooded with a sudden burst of energy. No one has called me that in two and a half years, and I’m sure no one from the club knows I’m ex-military.

My vision focuses on the man leaning against the door to my apartment, and a wave of emotions crashes through me.

No. He isn’t meant to know that I’m back, let alone know where I live.

I always thought I’d be in a casket the next time I saw the boy I left behind. But there he is—Mathijs Halenbeek. Even more beautiful than the last time I saw him. Age has done him wonders. He no longer has a layer of baby fat concealing the sharp edges of his bone structure. The boy I knew held wonder in his green eyes, and his pale skin radiated sunlight. But the man before me has lost the light; sunken cheeks and chiseled jaw, sharp eyes, and platinum hair that’s two shades lighter than I remember.

Hollow. Haunted.

Like a ghost.

Still, even under the dim hallway light, he’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. He’s out of place in this decrepit apartment, wearing his three-piece suit and woolen coat that fits his slender waist to perfection.

Just looking at him hurts. I lost him and my parents in a single night. Then, I lost my sister and my best friend within a week. The only person who survived the last ten years is him. Even then, it looks like every day that passes, his grip on life has been weakening too.

“I’m not a sergeant anymore,” I grumble through the cloth, dropping my head to avoid him seeing more of my ruined face.

I shoulder by him to get to my door, but he blocks the way. Irritation slices through me, and I have to stop myself from lashing out at him for something that he has no fault in. I’ve lost everything, and his presence is only acting as a reminder that I’ve failed every single person in my life.

I yank the cloth out of my mouth. “What are you doing here, Mathijs?”

He looks at me for a long moment, dragging his gaze over the cuts on my face, my disheveled braid, down to the way I’m holding my foot. He catalogs every inch of me as if he’s waited a lifetime to do it, and he has no intention of rushing.

The weight of his simple gesture crushes my chest, making me feel seen in a way I haven’t felt in almost a decade. It’s different from the leering I got when I was a new recruit, or when I’m in the ring. Those looks came with the intention of taking. Mathijs’s look is calculating with the air of something warmer. Something heavy.

It almost tastes like longing.

For the first time since I stepped on the bus to get shipped off to training, I can’t help wondering how I look through his eyes. Messy and bloody, ashen from too many days spent in a bed surrounded by empty bottles. I’m almost tempted to run my hand over my head to flatten down any loose strands.

Does he see Zalak, the girl he once loved, or Zalak, the one who let him down?

When he breaks the silence, a part of me tears in two because I never thought a dream could become reality.

“Sergeant Zalak Bhatia of the 75th Regiment. Thirty-three confirmed kills.” He leans against the wall, crossing his arms and long legs. His voice lacks the softness I grew up falling asleep to the sound of. It’s clinical and monotonous. I’d think he didn’t care for any of it if it weren’t for the way his eyes light up with pride. “By twenty-five, you set the record as the woman with the highest confirmed deaths outside of wartime. You were commended for executing a confirmed kill at thirteen hundred meters during your deployment in the Middle East—another record for women.”

“That’s confidential.” No one knows that. I was discharged on grounds of injury and PTSD, and everything me and my team did was sealed shut.

“You executed a surgical high priority Special Operations Raid in Senegal before you were discharged.”

I suck in a sharp breath. If I hadn’t swapped seats with TJ on the way back to base, he’d be alive, and I’d be the one six feet under alongside my sister. It was a standard intel gathering mission. No one was meant to die. But I didn’t see the group waiting for us up on the cliff. No one did.

“You moved here six months ago and you’re in need of a job,” Mathijs continues.

“Get out of my building.” God, it sounds just like the last words I said to him.

Mathijs’s eyebrows twitch like he’s trying to hide the fact that he’s realized the same thing. “Let me rephrase. I need security—a bodyguard, if you will—and you need employment.” He glances at my front door where an eviction notice is taped to it. “And a roof over your head.” His eyes drop from the saturated Band-Aid on my forehead to my drop foot. “And medical assistance.”

“I’m fine.”

He lowers his shoulder and clasps his hands behind his back, a subtle upward tilt to his lips as if he knows he’s going to get the answer he wants tonight. “I offer my staff a 401(k), health insurance, and free accommodation. Tell me, how much would you make in a fight?”

“Enough.”

Nowhere near enough to survive off or have any savings, especially if I’m sending money to help Amy finish her degree now that Gaya isn’t here to support her. And I don’t exactly have any savings.

I hate that he knows how desperate I am. That he knows the state of my life when I know nothing about him beyond the fact that I’m not the only one who lost family.

---