Page 141 of Dark Night of the Soul

I shook my head. “No. I gave them what the Brotherhood wouldn’t. A choice.”

She waited.

“Disappear. Start over. Stay reachable.”

“Reachable how?”

“If I ever needed help,” I said. “If something mattered enough.”

Her fingers tightened around her mug. “And they said yes.”

“Not all of them,” I said. “Enough.”

“Because they’re loyal to you.”

I met her gaze. “Because I didn’t own them.”

She studied me for a moment—assessing, not questioning. And I saw the moment she understood what I’d done. The risk I’d taken. The years of deception. Every mission where I’d been sent to eliminate a problem and had instead created an ally.

Every time I could have been caught.

Every time it could have ended.

“You’ve been building this for years,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Right under their noses.”

“Yes.”

Something fierce flickered across her face. Not shock. Something closer to respect. “That’s incredibly dangerous.”

“It was necessary.”

She considered that, then nodded once. Understanding, I thought, why I’d done it. Why I’d needed my own people. My own network. Something the Brotherhood couldn’t touch or control or take away.

“Munich isn’t something we do alone,” I added. “They’ll handle surveillance, run interference, extract us if it comes to that.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then they stay ghosts.”

She picked up her mug again, took a slow sip. Thinking it through with that tactical mind of hers.

“Okay,” she said. “Then we plan like you have allies.”

I exhaled. “I do.”

“This is bigger than we thought, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s why you want backup.”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “And if anything goes wrong?”