Darkest Before Dawn (KGI #10)(84)

Fear was sharp and bitter in her mouth. She stared at Hancock, allowing every ounce of that fear to show. She was terrified. For him. And for what she thought he was telling her.

“But Hancock, if you don’t give Maksimov what he wants . . . You’ve told me who and what he is. He’ll kill you. He’ll hunt you down like some animal. From what you told me about him, about the kind of man he is, I can well imagine that time means nothing to him. That he’ll wait months, years, however long it takes, but he’ll kill you. No matter how long it takes to exact revenge. He’ll wait and he’ll strike. I can’t, I won’t let that happen, Hancock. You constantly tell me that I matter. Goddamn it, Hancock, you matter,” she raged. “You matter! You matter to this world. The world needs you. You matter to me! You said my sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain, that it served the greater good. Then don’t let my sacrifice be wasted! I would never trade my life for yours. Never!”

“And you think you don’t matter to me?” he roared. “Do you think I’m going to just hand you over to him and walk away knowing that he’ll repeatedly rape you, that his men will rape you? Whomever he wishes to reward will rape you. He’ll torture you just because he enjoys it. And then he’ll turn you over to ANE and every imaginable horror you can possibly imagine, they will do them all to you. When and only when you are so near death that you can no longer withstand their constant brutality, they’ll kill you, but it won’t be merciful and it will not be swift. They’ll drag you into the middle of whatever village they occupy and they’ll inflict as many wounds as possible so that you die a slow, horrific death, and then they’ll leave your corpse to rot and decompose and no one will move you for fear they’ll be killed for interfering.”

She shuddered at the very real images he invoked. Tears ran down her cheeks. Theirs was an impossible situation and she knew it, even if he didn’t admit to knowing the same. They were doomed. They could never be together. If she didn’t die, then Hancock would.

“I will not trade my life for yours,” she repeated, horrible rage building and swelling until it was an inferno. “You are a good man. I don’t care what or who you think you are. I see you, Hancock. I see you. The world needs you.”

“And I need you,” he seethed. “You are the one thing I want—need—above all else. I need you, Honor. What kind of man would I be if I led you to your rape, torture and eventual slaughter? Do you honestly think I could continue on like nothing had ever happened? Do you think I would survive it? That I could continue on, fighting the good fight, fighting for the greater good when you are the greater good and I killed you. I murdered you. I let you be raped and tortured. Do you think I’d sleep at night imagining you in their hands? Do you think the world would be a better place with me in it? I’d turn into a monster unlike this world has ever seen, and I wouldn’t give a f*ck about the greater good because my greater good was destroyed by me.”

She leaned her forehead to his, her tears dripping onto his face. “What are we going to do?” she whispered brokenly.

“We’re going to make the exchange.”

Honor looked at him in shock.

“We’re going to set it up so that it looks exactly as it should. And then my men and I are going to take out Maksimov. I will not give you to him, Honor. Do you understand that? Do you trust me? I will not give you to him.”

She swallowed, the beginnings of hope blossoming, and she tried, oh how she tried, to tamp them down because hope was such a dangerous and delicate thing. So easily broken and yet so easily nurtured.

“I trust you,” she said without hesitation.

He leaned in and kissed her.

“Then trust me to do this. I have to go now. I want you to rest. Really rest. And Honor, if you don’t, I will have Conrad sedate you. I have to get with my men because we now only have a little over twenty-four hours to come up with a completely different plan.”

She smiled ruefully. “After the bombshell you just dropped on me, you better go ahead and go get Conrad, because there is no way I’ll sleep. I’ll just stay up and worry . . .”—her voice trailed off to a whisper, as if by saying the last too loudly she’d somehow jinx them—“. . . and hope. I’m afraid to hope, Hancock.”

“My name is Guy,” he said quietly, surprising her with the abruptness in the change of topic. “No one but my family calls me that. Well, really only Eden, my sister. Foster sister if you will. My foster father and my two foster brothers mostly call me Hancock. I’d like you to call me by my name, but only when we’re alone.”

“Guy,” she said, testing the sound on her lips. “Guy,” she said again. “It suits you. I like it far more than Hancock.” She paused a moment before staring at him, locking gazes with him, allowing everything she felt into her eyes, hoping he could see.

He swallowed visibly, mirroring emotion simmering in his own expression.

“I like it far more because you shared it with me,” she added quietly.

She caressed his jaw, staring at him with the love she felt and hoped he saw it, because she couldn’t—wouldn’t—say it. Not now. It reeked of emotional manipulation and they weren’t out of the woods. Things could go terribly wrong. She would do nothing to make things worse.

He kissed her again even as he was rising to pull on a pair of jeans. “I won’t let you down,” he said fiercely. “I’ve let you down time and time again, Honor. But not this time. Not ever again. I know I’m asking a lot when I ask you to trust me. I’ve betrayed that trust. I don’t deserve it from you, but I’m asking anyway. It matters to me. It matters a lot.”