Chapter 7
Finn had been told the crashes were secret.
Of course.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The second I asked, I regretted it.
His face fell.
Wrong question.
I corrected myself.
“What did they say would happen if you told me?”
He looked surprised.
Then relieved.
“Declan said you’d be mad at me.”
My chest tightened.
“For crashing?”
He nodded.
“Evelyn said bosses don’t like broken things.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
They had used my identity against him.
Not Mommy.
Boss.
A colder version of me.
One they invented.
“What do you think?”
Finn looked at me carefully.
“You’re mad.”
“Yes.”
His lip trembled.
“At me?”
“No.”
Immediate.
I picked him up.
“Never at you for being scared.”
He buried his face against my neck.
That was the first repair.
Not promises about Declan.
Not threats.
Just correcting the lie that fear made him defective.
Later, I found another message from Evelyn.
The boy needs to learn Mara values control above comfort.
I stared at it for a long time.
That sentence frightened me more than the remote.
Because it almost sounded believable in the world I had built.
I had spent years teaching grown men that composure mattered.
Declan and Evelyn had taken that principle and turned it toward a child.
May you like
That part was theirs.
But I would not pretend my culture gave them nothing to weaponize.
