NOTE: This chapter comes with a trigger warning for violence and brief description of torture (at the end).

July–September 1963

For days, Lucien wakes from unwilling sleep in a pool of his own sweat, blood, and bodily fluids. Chains biting at his ankles and wrists, arms cramping from their fixed position above his head, broken ribs choking his organs, gashes and cuts healing poorly, he begs to return to the nightmares. His mind and body vie for the most pain, wake or sleep, stabbing agony or psychological torment. Either way, he tumbles, with no way of breaking his fall.

When the chains disappear, he longs to stand, to pace, to move freely, but his limbs don't obey, and his muscles scream, and the cold water tossed on him in lieu of a shower makes his joints ache. It's hours before he finds the will to roll onto his side, to take the first stab at sitting upright, and it takes him far too long to recover from it. Arms tingling from disuse, he pulls them to his chest and lays one palm flat on the bed with an intent to rise. Push, Blake. It can't be any worse. It's the first coherent thought he's had for ages, and it's a lie.

He's lost track of time, but once the meals reappear, he tries his best to keep up with the days and nights, to create a schedule for himself to regain his sanity. The less time he spends in the clutches of his subconscious, the better. It takes days, but eventually he wakes and sleeps at normal hours of the day and determines that he spent nearly the entire month of July immobile. During his waking hours, he monitors the state of his poorly healing wounds and thinks of Jean. Despite the months spent without her, Lucien has no trouble recalling with perfect clarity every feature, every wrinkle, every scar, every freckle. How he longs to dream of her laugh, her body, her embrace.

Alas, as soon as unconsciousness claims him, Lucien is tortured. Sometimes he dreams of the camp, of the stench of dead bodies so potent that he has no chance of remembering that this was only a dream. Dozens of them, toppled like dominos on the noxious soil. The weight of a rifle heavy on his back, Lucien forces himself to look at the faces of each. Some he recognizes from memories he'd rather repress. Some he knows cannot be there—his father, his mother, Doug Ashby. If not this horror, another. His home in Ballarat in flames, screams of everyone he loves, everyone he can't save, overcoming the roar of the blaze. Li and Mei Lin trapped below deck on a sinking boat.

No more, he decides one night, hiding from sleep. Grasping for control and desperate for a drink to numb the pain, he returns to his only remaining vice, obsessing over how to get home.

In early August, Jiang visited Lucien for the first time since he nearly tortured him to death. Given a month to calm down, Jiang bore no trace of the rage he unleashed that night. Though, since he had been sending Baako in with Lucien's meals, Lucien knew that it had cost him dearly to lose control.

Today, however, seated in the chair he brought to replace the one he'd broken during Lucien's torture, Jiang crossed his ankle over his knee and gestured to Lucien. "You look nearly healthy today. The meals are helping?"

Lucien, who couldn't summon the energy to sit up in bed and greet the man who had put him in such a state, scoffed. "If your goal is to keep me just on this side of alive, yes, the food is helping immensely."

"I'd be more concerned about you if you did not answer in your typical insipid fashion."

"Concerned? How touching. Wish you would have been more concerned while you broke three of my ribs," Lucien snarled.

"Not as much as I wish you had learned from your imprisonment what happens to men who run." Jiang veered from his usual monotone to something like the clipped tones of irritation. "If you prefer, next time I'll take it out on your family, as I originally intended."

To this, Lucien had no snarky reply. He held his breath, eyes fixed on a mold spot on the ceiling, willing himself not to give Jiang the satisfaction of watching his victim sweat. "You expect me to take your word that they're safe?"
"Yes, but since I know you won't, I took the liberty of procuring some proof for you."

Lucien stared at Jiang, terrified of what "proof" he may have.

"Don't look so petrified." Jiang reached for a folder laying on a pile of clean clothes on the floor. "It's been a long time since I used appendages as proof of life." Instead of offering Lucien the folder, however, Jiang perused the contents himself. "I would have killed your granddaughter Amelia first. Maximum damage. Pain for you, your wife, your wife's son, most certainly for Amelia."

As he sat up, Lucien felt nothing but the thud of his racing pulse.

"Baako convinced me that if I truly wanted to enact justice for my family, that I should show mercy to yours," Jiang said. "I have to say that I regret my decision. For the first week, we weren't sure that you would live."

"What does it matter?" Lucien snapped. "You know where your son is. You don't need me to find him.

You don't even need me to seek justice for your family. Or can you not blackmail Baako into helping you commit murders?"

Jiang cocked his head with an almost amused glint in his eye. "You think me without principle, Blake, but if I have a choice, I honor a man's convictions. Baako is only willing to help me to a certain extent. He's young. There's still hope for him to come out of our line of work unscathed."

In the midst of the terror of Huan Jiang was a sad truth: he could have been someone else if only he had done something else for a living. Even acknowledging and accepting what he became, Jiang wanted to shield others from a similar fate. Perhaps he thought Lucien too far gone to save.

If Lucien helped take yet another life, perhaps he was.

"In the interest of keeping the authorities unaware, we will not act until September." Any compassion Jiang expressed was quickly buried beneath his usual indifference. "Until then, we strategize, and you get back into fighting form. I cannot drag a scraggly white man into town wearing bloody clothes, looking black and blue, and smelling like a rat."

Bile rose in Lucien's throat. "I'm going with you this time?"

"Last time, I was nearly caught by a passerby in the hallway outside the lieutenant's apartment. I need a lookout." The toothless smile he gave Lucien did not reach his eyes; it only darkened them. "And I know you will not make another catastrophic mistake."

I would have killed your granddaughter Amelia first. Sweet Amelia, with her mother's buoyant curls, her father's bashful smile, her grandmother's eyes. "No, I don't think I will." Lucien gripped the edge of the mattress until his knuckled whitened.

Jiang pulled the keyring off his belt loop and, to Lucien's shock, handed them to his captive. Freedom dangled from the fingertips belonging to the hands that could crush Lucien's every reason for living.

He held freedom in his hands only long enough to realize the pain it would cost him to unlock his shackles.

Jiang handed Lucien the stack of folded clothes and the folder. "The proof I promised."

The keys jangled as they fell from Lucien's hand and onto the carpet. Hands shaking, Lucien opened the folder, bracing for the worst.

Li.

The camera captured his daughter's smile, a gift she hadn't bestowed on her father since her childhood. Li had so much of her mother in her, but Lucien swore he saw a glimmer of his genes in her face when she grinned. Ying Yue, his beautiful granddaughter who he'd never met, sat on her mother's lap, holding a children's book that Lucien had sent for her third birthday.

When he looked up to confront Jiang about daring to go near his family, Jiang was gone.

Swiping hot tears from his cheeks, Lucien laid the photo aside and braced himself for the next photo.

Amelia.

The kitchen frame slightly obscured the view in the next photo, but Lucien could see Amelia playing with her dolls at the kitchen table while Ruby set the table for lunch. Ruby had always been a slight girl, so when Lucien saw the bump at her midsection, his certainty sent his hand to his mouth. A baby, about five months along by the looks of Ruby. The happiness he knew he should have felt was eclipsed by the terror of the little life being snuffed out before it truly began. Would Christopher note any strange men or women lurking in the neighborhood? No, why should he? He's supposed to be living the life he had built for himself and his family, anticipating the arrival of his child, not looking over his shoulder because of his stepfather's recklessness.

Gritting his teeth, he placed the photo next to Li and Ying Yue's.

Jean.

A sob tore its way through him as he touched her glossy face, devoid of any joy he expected to find in light of the expansion of their family. She sat alone in the sunroom, knitting needles idle in her lap, eyes fixed, unseeing, on the garden. The familiarity of her expression broke Lucien's heart, for he had not seen such resignation and depression in her face since Mei Lin came to Ballarat. After he proposed to Jean, Lucien promised himself to never hurt her again. Then he wrote the affidavit against her wishes, but her love for him enabled her to find the strength to forgive him. When he slid the wedding band on her finger, promising to have and to hold her till death do them part, he couldn't think of a reason he'd ever want to let go.

What have I done?

Over the next several weeks, despite his posturing, Jiang did not allow Lucien to roam free. He still spent his days bound by a chain that allowed him to pace his room but not reach the door. Part of Lucien rejoiced at the lack of opportunity to take Jiang's life. Some nights, after his injuries had healed enough for him to toss and turn, murder seemed his only option. The drive to protect his family and to get home to them occupied his every thought, and his previously unchecked impulses led to an impatience and rage than nearly overwhelmed him. The night Baako apprehended Lucien, rage almost won out.

Now, when those moments came, he turned to Jean for guidance. Jean, who he would never see again if he were convicted not only of Jiang and Baako's murders but also of Fa Wong's, which apparently remained unsolved. Jean, whose life with him would be tainted by sins committed not for queen and country, but for her. No, he had put her through enough. He would rather play the long game, without any guarantee of victory, than come out of bondage a shadow of the man Jean married.

Besides, if his trust did not prove misplaced, freedom might be closer than he thought.

Though Lucien hoped to use Baako to manipulate Jiang or vice versa, Baako's role in this hit kept him from the house. He rarely came by anymore, and Jiang never left. Since Jiang wanted to lay low to avoid suspicion, Lucien suspected that Baako's job was to keep tabs on the local law enforcement's progress in Lieutenant Fong's murder investigation.

Jiang and Lucien spent most of August planning. Executing the next target, Major Cong Ruan, a higher-ranking military official, challenged them on many fronts. Jiang had gained entry to Fong's apartment by playing the part of a man coming to surprise an old friend, which both accounted for his presence in the building and gave him a mundane enough cover to be unremarkable. According to the information Baako provided, the major's residence would not provide Jiang and Lucien with such easy entry and inconspicuous presence. Also, unlike Fong, Ruan did not live alone. Determined to protect the people he deemed innocent by his convoluted logic, Jiang insisted on waiting until Ruan's wife was not home. Finding that window of opportunity cost them two more weeks, but it solved most of the logistical issues.

They would strike on the night of September 13, while the major's wife visited Hong Kong for her mother's birthday.

Lucien had always thrived under pressure, so naturally, his plan only took a definite shape once he had a mere nine days to form it. Since Jiang worked so hard to keep the authorities from making connections between the murders, Lucien's best chance would be in leaving a trail. The arrangements Lucien made years ago would be worthless until he could make his presence known in China. Matthew could only do so much from Ballarat, and if Jiang had left no evidence for the police in Sydney to find, the trail would be cold by now. All his hope lay in the letter he posted outside the Acacia, and after so long in captivity, he'd begun to lose that hope. His thwarted escape resulted from his frustration with waiting for someone to rescue him. Once he could feel anything other than agony, he had felt shame at his rash, desperate bravado.

Only one person had cause for suspicion regarding Lucien's disappearance, so Lucien's cries for help had to be overt enough to catch his ally's attention and subtle enough to keep Jiang from catching on. That meant waiting, at the expense of human lives, with a man who spent nearly half his life living a lie. Lucien had no idea if he possessed the strength to sacrifice his morals and his humanity, but it didn't matter. He would do what he could to minimize the hell Jiang planned to unleash not only on his victims but also on their families. If he could save only one of God knows how many men Jiang deemed unworthy of life, perhaps he could live with himself.

He almost believed it until he heard Ruan's screams.

The day of the strike, they surveilled the house for hours in Jiang's vehicle. When Ruan's wife left, she took the last hope of her husband's survival with her. Under perfect circumstances, perhaps she could have escaped, gone for help, described the intruders to the authorities. Instead, they watched a clueless young officer load Mrs. Ruan's expensive luggage into the trunk of a military car and drive away from the danger he had no doubt been discharged to watch for.

Jiang had made the conditions of Lucien's presence clear—stay close, stay quiet, stay alert. So he watched as Jiang glided over the hardwood floors, blended in with every shadow, and apprehended his sleeping prey with sickeningly swift, soundless moves. Lucien tried to avoid eye contact with Ruan, one victim he knew he could not save. Still, with every shift of the light from a wind-blown branch or a passing headlight, Lucien hoped that perhaps a colleague wanted to drop off papers for Ruan to sign, or that a nosy neighbor had seen them break in and called the police. Even in this desolate situation, hope mocked him.

As much as he hated himself for it, Lucien counted on Ruan's demise for his own plan to work. Unfortunately, since Jiang searched Lucien daily, he would have to find a clue to leave behind in this room.

Under the guise of keeping watch, Lucien paced, scanning for anything he could use, wishing he couldn't hear every sickening sound emanating from the bed. Judging by the weakness of Ruan's cries, Lucien was running out of time. Either the major would lose consciousness and no longer demand Jiang's attention, or he would talk and shortly thereafter lose his life. On his next pass, his gaze fell on a pen and a folded sheet of stationary on Mrs. Ruan's nightstand. The nightstand, however, was too close to Jiang to reach it without being noticed. He needed an excuse to get close—

"Jiang, wait."

Jiang's head snapped up, eyes wild and jaw set. "I told you to stay quiet."

"He's going to be permanently quiet if you don't take a break soon." He took two cautious steps toward the bed, where Ruan lay bloodied and half-conscious. "There's only so much the human body can take."

A vein in Jiang's neck twitched, but otherwise he did not move. "I'm aware."

"Are you? Because it looks to me like you're getting carried away." Take a breath. Don't be too insistent. "If you want this man to get you one step closer to your family, let me take a look at him, make sure you don't kill him before you get what you want." For the few seconds it took Jiang to respond, Lucien didn't dare breathe.

With a stiff nod, Jiang stepped away from Ruan and turned to the briefcase that held all his devices. Slowly, Lucien approached the bed from the opposite side, thankful for the small mercy of Ruan being restrained in the middle of the bed.

He had two options. One, lunge at Jiang with the pen and hope that Jiang didn't reach the knife at his hip first. Two, scribble a brief message on Mrs. Ruan's stationary. Neither seemed feasible at the moment, with Jiang's eyes darting back and forth between Lucien and his case, but only one bought him more time.

Kneeling on the bed, he felt the major's pooling blood soak through his pants. With Ruan's blood on him and his fluttering pulse under Lucien's fingertips, he couldn't hide from the depravity of his plan. No matter that the major would not survive no matter what Lucien did—he had been relying on this man's death, however inevitable, to save himself. Swallowing the bile in his throat, he forced himself to look into the eyes of the man whose face would haunt him forever. Despite his weakening pulse, Ruan's eyes were wide and pleading, begging Lucien to help him.

Even if Lucien risked everything by snatching the pen and plowing it into Jiang's neck, praying he hit the carotid artery, it would not incapacitate him quickly enough to avoid being gutted by the knife at Jiang's hip. Then he would most certainly be dead, and if Lucien missed, Jiang would slit Ruan's throat before fleeing the house.

So he closed his eyes and pushed himself off the bed. Before he turned around, he swiped the pen and paper off the nightstand and slipped them into his back pocket, just before Jiang looked to him for an update. "You can't inflict any more wounds with the knife. If he loses too much more blood, it'll be over. His pulse is dangerously low, breathing shallow. Tread lightly." A car horn outside drew Lucien's attention to the window, but he soon identified the noise as a skirmish between two drivers.

Jiang continued.

Lucien anticipated the major's next cry, so when he tore off a piece of paper about the size of his pocket watch, the major's anguish drowned out the ripping sound.

But now the major was talking. When Lucien heard a surname buried in Ruan's next wail, he knew he didn't have much time. Wiping his sweaty palms on his dirty slacks, he willed his hands to stop shaking. Fa Qin. VX1748. In the right hands, that would be enough. With the stench of burned flesh stinging his nostrils, he seized his chance, scrawling his brief missive and slipping it up his sleeve. But he couldn't be caught with the instruments—it was a miracle Jiang didn't notice that they were missing from the nightstand. Pulse thrumming in his palms, he eyed his next target, the bureau across from the bed. Only unintelligible screams and static shock filled the room now, so on his next pass, Lucien once again risked it all by lifting his arm to drop the pen and paper on top of the bureau.

Jiang was too busy sending electricity through Ruan's brain to notice.

When the sickening sizzle and crack of Jiang's instruments ceased, the silence held a weight it hadn't before.

"Let me check for a pulse."

Jiang nearly snickered. "I'm thorough."

"I'm a doctor, Jiang. Humor me." He bit back a sigh of relief when Jiang shrugged and began packing up. Forgive me, he thought as he shook out his sleeve and let his clue settle under Ruan's lifeless neck.