Page 54 of Rescued By the Convicts
Her face fell. “I see.”
“That doesn’t mean I love you any less.”
“Love?” she laughed again, the doubt in her voice clear. “Tell me the rest, Zev. I need to hear it all.”
“Why?”
“To decide.”
Decide what? Whether or not to forgive him or if she could ever love him? Fuck, he didn’t have a right to ask for either, but she deserved the truth.
“Five months before you arrived, Namir wanted someone on Veenith who could report back to him. He suspected Hawke was working with Thorne to set him up and turn him over to The Company, but he wasn’t sure. And it was a major operation for him, freeing and getting the loyalty of some of the worst criminals in the sector. He couldn’t just shut the operation down or replace Hawke, or Thorne for that matter. I was sent to spy and report back to Namir. That was the break I’d been looking for, one that would put me in position to learn more details of the operation.”
“Then you getting to know me, becoming part of the unit was a coincidence?” she said, her voice raised high. She didn’t believe him. He wouldn’t either if he were in her position.
“Yes, and no.”
Her hands fisted. He could feel her frustration, even as she turned her eyes away. She’d been so strong, trusting him in the maintenance tubes and then the promenade, and now her trust was wavering. Information overload plus the stress of the past few days. And the rest of her unit was still missing.
Zev drew her fists to his mouth and lightly kissed her fingers until her hands relaxed and her fists unclenched. “Please, Mel, even if you never want me near you again, you need to know I never meant for you to get hurt.”
“I’m so confused right now, about everything and everyone. Even Ivan and Jayce turning me over to Hawke. I don’t understand why they did that.”
“Because I asked them to.”
She sucked in a breath.
He tried taking her hand, but she pulled it closer to her body. He never thought such a simple slight could hurt so much, worse than getting shot or stabbed. Zev steadied his voice and continued. He owed her an explanation. More, actually, but for not, an explanation was all he could give her.
“I received a message two months ago from Namir saying I should take you and contact him for pick up when I had you. I told him I couldn’t get to you, that you were hiding out in the med-center. That was partially the truth. I still hadn’t discovered how the prisoners were evading the security scans, how they were getting rid of their tattoos. That was information Namir never shared with me and never would. He trusted me, to a point. That part of the operation was under Hawke’s control. Including Section B and the greenhouse manager, Powell. Thorne had to focus on running Veenith and staying out of Hawke’s way.
“While I had targeted Reece as a means of backup when I was planted on Veenith, I didn’t know he’d get a chance to know you, to be part of your unit. It was a stroke of luck that Jayce sought out Reece’s help in retrieving you from Hawke.”
“Reece was the reason I ended up in the hole. Sort of. I mean, he killed Collins to protect me. I couldn’t let the guards put him in the hole for me.”
“That was quite lucky, for all of us, ultimately. Especially me. I had no real way of getting close to you, not until Jayce approached Reece about taking you from Hawke. Once we became part of Ivan’s unit, it was a matter of keeping you alive while I continued to investigate. A few weeks later, when I finally discovered Powell and Hawke had been using the spindle spores to breakdown the serilium, I contacted Namir for pick up. For that though, I had to go through Hawke, who didn’t know I worked for Namir. He might have killed me had he known. Hawke worked for Namir, but he doesn’t like his authority being challenged in any way. He’s very much like Namir in that way. Leaving Veenith would have been faster and simpler if my communication device hadn’t been destroyed in a brawl. A stupid, everyday brawl left me dependent on Hawke.”
She leaned further away from him. “Was any of it real between us?”
“Fuck, Mel, it was all real. You got inside my head, my soul. I truly was at a crossroads when it came to you. Hawke didn’t know who I was, per Namir’s orders. And Namir didn’t know I worked for The Company. I was there on Namir’s business, but trying to learn as much as I could for The Company. I didn’t want to get involved with you, even though Namir told me to enjoy you. It felt wrong every time I touched you, because of all the secrets, but especially because he’d ordered me to use you. But when I saw you in that stairwell with Reece. . . . Hell, I was already falling for you.”
“That’s why you always hesitated,” she said, realizing he’d been conflicted.
“Before we stole you from Hawke, I knew who you were, and I’d heard of how Namir abused you in the past, but I’d never seen you before, never witnessed one of his parties. I’d always been tucked away in the operations side, first transporting and then inserting criminals where Namir would use them, eventually. This was the final part of the operation I needed to figure out before I could go home and leave Namir and his sadism behind.”
“I can’t believe you were working for him the entire time.”
“I was working for The Company. Okay, both, depending on your viewpoint.”
“And that he told you to use me. I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be shocked, given how he’s given me to his friends in the past. But sending me to Veenith, where I could have been killed. . .”
Anger seeped into his voice. “He wanted to humiliate you in every way possible. That’s the reason he told me to take you. It was the entire reason he had you condemned there. To humiliate you, Mel.”
“But Namir didn’t send me to Veenith. I was convicted and sent there because I defied The Company on my research project—”
“HR only lowered you to a Level 3,” he cut in. “They never condemned you to Veenith, not until Namir pressured them to lower you to Level 5. He wanted you to be used, to fear every minute you spent on the prison planet. He wanted to break you, Mel. And he wanted to make me a part of that. I couldn’t do it. Not to you, not to any woman.”
She visibly paled and started shaking. He reached for her hand, but then pulled back, not sure if she wanted him to touch her. He’d lost that right.
