They hauled the various bags in and to the kitchen, with the exception of the one with his old boots in it. Kylo took that upstairs and stashed it in the wardrobe. They'd be useful sometime. Perhaps. Sitting on his bed, he opened the envelope and tipped it out. He wanted a chance to read through it all before he told Rey anything.

The envelope was filled with newspaper clippings talking about Palpatine's illness, the disappearance of Pryde, and that Canady had been bailed and then failed to reappear for a hearing. This wasn't good. Kylo cursed the events that had him here, away from it all while the Family meltdown was happening. But he'd done his bit. This was probably the safest place to be. Certainly for Rey it was – if her grandfather died, she'd be next on the list. It was frustrating not being able to get the news any other way. The local radio station had been taken over by a conglomerate from Coruscant, and the news was all puff pieces about their own services. And he could only listen for about ten minutes in and out of town; the signal was terrible. Kylo piled the news clippings to one side as he finished each one.

The last thing he pulled out though was different. Clipped from English newspapers, the series of articles described how the workers breaking ground for a new Coronavirus hospital in Exeter had discovered two bodies buried in what had been a disused concrete wasteland. The corpses, a man and a woman, had been there for about fifteen years. They appeared to have been killed in a gangland-style murder, their arms tied behind them by wire and the shots expertly placed. There were other details that made Kylo wince. The next article had Scotland Yard identifying them as Raymond and Apailana Jackson, formerly of Naboo. They were known to have been flitting from place to place, last seen in Dawlish Warren in September 2003. They'd left their temporary accommodation with their child then disappeared. It was assumed at the time that they were avoiding the authorities and heading north. Police were making enquiries about the whereabouts of their daughter Aurelia. The article included a photo of her father that was obviously a mugshot, and one of her mother in a sundress, tanned just like Rey said.

Rey and her mother had the same eyes.

He'd known a few things about them before he joined the Don's family, but this just confirmed the worst of his suspicions. Damn.

"Dinner!"

Rey's voice echoed up the stairwell and over the wall. Kylo folded the papers carefully and put them back in the envelope. He considered putting it in his bag, but instead slipped it under the bottom drawer in the wardrobe.

Once they finished the pie, she took two glasses out of the cupboard and a bottle he didn't recognise. Taking his hand once more, she led him back to the lounge room, and sat him down on the sofa. This time, instead of facing the fire, she was turned towards him with her feet tucked under her.

The bottle, he discovered, was a maple and brandy blend best served in shot glasses. The glasses they held were tumblers, each holding twice as much as a shot glass would. Rey filled both glasses, and held one out to him. But when he went to take it, she held onto it, with a look of fierce determination.

"I had to go through a lot to buy this."

"Such as?"

"I got carded." She grimaced while he laughed but her look calmed him quickly. Then, once she knew he was listening, she spoke again. "I'm claiming my future favour."

A chill ran down his spine. "What do you want?"

"The truth."

The look in her face – he'd seen it before when her grandfather had told him to look after her. There was no escaping, no denying it, and no doubt whose bloodline she came from.

He took the glass, drank it in one swallow, and held it out to her. She refilled it, then held up her own.

"Here's how it works. I tell you something I've worked out about you, your job, my grandfather, things like that. If it's true, you take a drink. If I've got it wrong, I have to tell you something true about me that you don't know, then I take a drink. Then it's your turn."

"What if I can't think of something I know about you?"

"Then it counts as getting something wrong." Rey took a sip of her own. "The drinks don't have to be too big. I want to remember what you say."

He recognised the situation. He'd been in shootouts, in standoffs where only the coolest of nerves had got him through. This would be the same.

"You start?"

"And you have to promise to be honest. Brutally, totally honest."

"As do you, Kitten."

She looked away for a moment, then back at him, her eyes glistening slightly in the firelight. He was braced for a list of crimes, perhaps a recitation of his jobs as Capo. He was not ready for her first statement.

"You're not fifty years old, are you, Benjamin Organa Solo? She grinned up at him. "Drink."

"Fifty?"

"Nor were you born in Alderaan. If you'd been born there, you'd have to be fifty now. Your mother, Leia, was, and she fought for the town just as you told me, but Anarkin Industries destroyed it in 1977. She met your father when she was running from the corrupt police there, and they married a while later. You, on the other hand, were born in Chandrilla thirty years ago. Drink."

He drank. "How?"

"I didn't spend the entire time on the computer doing classwork. You let a few too many things slip. Being here when the fires came through, for instance. Or Miss Holdo knowing to give you books about space. I wanted to find out about you, so looked up Alderaan. I had my suspicions. This confirmed it." She pulled a roll of paper from her pocket and put it on the couch between them. It unfurled slowly, revealing itself to be one of the home-made storybooks upstairs that sat with the model rockets. On the front was the title: Further Adventures of Kylo Ren by Ben Solo.

"I forgot I'd done that one."

"So this was your family's cabin?"

"Yes. My father grew up in the town, and inherited this land from his parents. You can't buy land inside a National Park."

"So the heating system …"

"He designed it, I helped him build it."

"Very clever. All right. Your turn."

Kylo … Ben … swirled the drink gently as he thought over the options. Suddenly a lot of things fell into place.

"You're not doing a four-year Beauty Course."

"Guilty as charged." She took a mouthful. "I'm in the advanced course to get into Engineering at Theed University. Mechanical, although I am very tempted by Mechatronic. Did you read the textbooks, or was it the calculator?"

"Neither. There's not a lot of people would talk about the coefficient of friction. When I realised, though, the books and calculator helped. And your homework. It's a Rube Goldberg machine."

"Heath Robinson. I'm English."

"Whatever. And something someone told me – apparently you're very good at math." He grinned. "I believe the expression was scary intelligent."

"Right."

"Why do you let people think … look, I hate to use stereotypes, but you act like a foolish kid without a brain in her head. I'd say dumb blonde but you'd hit me. Why?"

"Protection. If people think I'm clueless and foolish and completely self-centred, they ignore me and talk in front of me. I learned so much about Poppy that way. And you." She grinned at him. "My turn again. You're working for the FBI."

"REY!" He felt his heart almost stop. How long had she known? How had she …?

"It's true, isn't it? You managed to get on Poppy's good side but you've been using your position to send information back so you can take him down." She took a drink herself. "Good. I hate who he is, and what he's done all these years. I'm sorry that he's dying. I want him to pay for his crimes, not just fade away. Now he's getting out easily. That's why I wanted to go back – to look him in the eyes and tell him what I thought of him. Did you know he had one of my school friends beaten up?"

"I didn't." Ben took a drink. "How did that happen?"

"We were in Chemistry class, and Snap Wexler accidentally spilled some hot sulphur on me. It stung like crazy and I had to go to the hospital to get it checked. When I went back to school, Snap was away, and he didn't return. I heard he'd been jumped on the way home and beaten badly. Broke both arms and his nose. He didn't know why, and I didn't at the time – we all thought it was just a mugging, although they didn't take anything. But Poppy told me years later." She rubbed her eyes. "That was one of the reasons I had so much trouble making friends. People were scared of what would happen, like I was some sort of a vengeful angel who could take them out if they made a wrong step. And really it was Poppy and his Mob heavies."

"And how did you work that out? That I'm with the Bureau?"

"Your parents keep saying that you're in Europe somewhere, studying ancient history. But they never say which university, and they haven't seen you for four years. But you're not. Good cover story, by the way."

She took another sip, then saluted him with the glass. "Oh yes – and you organised for the assassination attempt on Poppy so you could look good."

"For once, Kitten, you're wrong. That was just me being coincidentally in the right place at the right time. Drink, and tell me something about you."

"I don't know what to say."

"If it's any help, I have a message for you."

"From?"

"Miss Phasma."

"Is she all right?"

"So far." He watched as she took a large sip of the drink. "She said you should tell me everything."

"Right. Sure."

"Mixing backwards doesn't work."

"Oh. She really did."

"What does that mean?"

Rey laughed, the delighted sound of pure joy. "When she was teaching me to cook, she used to joke to always mix the cake batter one way only. That if you mix it backwards, all the milk flies out and the eggs jump back into their shells, the flour into the sifter … I knew she was making fun of me, but it was so nice to be treated like that."

"So …"

"You have to promise me that she won't get in trouble."

"For what?"

"Just promise me. It's serious."

He considered. Undoubtedly he would be able to manage something. "Miss Phasma won't get in trouble for what you're about to tell me. So tell me."

There's no contract."

"You never fail to surprise me. No contract?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes now, but he could see it was from shame and disgust rather than deception. "Remember me asking about if someone kissed me?"

"Someone did?"

"Did you wonder why I wasn't terribly upset about Unkar getting killed?" Her voice was soft now. "Before she came, he was … always trying to touch me. Trying to get me alone with him. I was fourteen. I changed the lock on my bedroom door and didn't tell him, and one night he tried to get in. Ended up breaking the door down, but he made so much noise that he only had time to kiss me before the cook showed up. Gwen made sure I was safe, kept him away from me, wouldn't leave me in the house alone with him. She didn't need to move in but she did, just to keep me safe. And he found out about the engineering course, and threatened to tell Poppy unless I came to his room that night. So she told me to stay at the front of the house, and she got hold of an icepick from one of Poppy's meatworks … She told Poppy that one of the rival Dons' hitmen had come in but she had chased him out with a frypan. I didn't see Unkar dead, and I'm glad he is. When he touched me, it felt like death."

One tear started down her cheek, and he leaned over and wiped it off as gently as he could. She leaned into the touch briefly, then took another sip. "Your turn."

"I need to ask you something first."

"Go on."

"When your parents left you, where were you?"

"Near a town called Orpington, in Kent. It was a park, with play equipment and woods and kite-eating trees – I remember some boys were trying to get theirs down and they couldn't. Why?"

"Did you ever wonder why they left you?"

"Because they didn't want me any more. I told you that." She was crying again, holding her drink and looking at the fire.

As gently as he could, he touched his finger to her chin and turned her face towards him. "They wanted you. They loved you so much that they ran away from Naboo, from your grandfather, and tried to set up a new life in Britain. They wanted you to be safe, and to grow up away from the crime and corruption. Your father was in the Irish Mafia in Naboo – the South side group. There was a truce called after some shootings, and your father's boss tried to arrange a deal between the North and South sides. Your father went as bodyguard with the emissary to your grandfather's house, and saw your mother there. They fell in love, ran away and married. A bad move. Your grandfather had intended your mother to marry one of his Capos."

She was motionless, trapped in his words as he continued.

"So your parents flew to London. You were born there. They spent a lot of time moving from place to place, but someone must have spotted them, been following them. They tried to lose themselves in the countryside. And that day, when your father went to buy icecream, he was picked up. They waited and got your mother too. But she was sensible."

"How was she sensible? She left me behind!"

"She left you behind because she knew if you came too, they would have taken you and killed you as well."

"How can you be sure?"

"Are you sure you want to know?" He looked in her eyes, worried at how wide they were. She deserved the truth, but it wouldn't be easy.

"I don't care how bad it was. Tell me."

He took a deep breath. "Because they were tortured. There are marks on their bodies, even after all this time, that proves it. They were tortured and murdered and buried under a concrete slab in an abandoned warehouse that has only just been torn down. And it's very likely they were tortured to find out where you were. There were things left with them to show it was a Mafia killing. But they mustn't have told. If they had …"

"If they had, I would have been killed as well."

"Their bodies were found last month, Rey. In Exeter. That's two hundred miles and hours away from where they left you. I can only assume it was done deliberately to make it harder to find them if the police started looking. But as a side effect, it meant that as you were never reported missing, no-one knew who you were. Rey Jackson wasn't on any missing person reports.

"Who did this?"

"No-one's sure."

"But I bet I know who organised it. Poppy." Rey's eyes stared at him, dark and haunted. "I heard things over the years, that he didn't want them to marry, that Poppy thought my mother was a whore and Dada a traitor for going against his wishes. So Mama and Dada loved me, but they left me …"

"… knowing that, horrible as the system was, you were alive."

The dam broke. Sobbing, Rey barely managed to put her drink down without spilling it. Ben wrapped his arms around her and held her, stroking her hair and trying to give her the love and protection that she needed. Her whole body collapsed into his, heaving and hiccoughing as seventeen years of despair and loneliness poured out with the tears.

He was holding her, stroking her hair and telling her that she was his brave girl, his strong woman, his sweetheart, until the sobs calmed down to deep breathing. He wondered if she'd fallen asleep, but she propped herself back up with an odd expression. This was no flighty girl or thoughtless princess. In his arms was a woman determined to make her own destiny.

"I can't let Poppy win."

Reaching over, she lifted one of the glasses – he couldn't remember whose it was – and took a sip.

"My turn."

"We haven't finished?"

"Almost."

"Go ahead then."

"You got the information through the Church. Someone in there is passing it to you. In fact, " she took another sip, "I bet you've been doing that for years anyway."

She handed the glass to him, and he took a mouthful and put the glass down. "And you worked that out how?"

"You eat meat on Fridays and you don't say prayers. But you go to Confession so often."

"You know I studied to be a priest?"

"Yeah, but you dropped out. I'm glad."

"Why?"

"You're going to have to confess so much."

"Do you want me to?"

"Have things to confess?"

She was no longer his client or his charge. "Yes."

She reached up and kissed him hard.

The kiss, brief though it was, was fire and glory and all the angels singing at once. He might not believe anymore, but the kiss was almost a conversion. When she drew back, he kept his eyes shut for a moment, still dazzled by the brightness inside him that hadn't been there for a very long time. Finally, he sat back. Picking up the glass, he passed it to her.

"My turn. Last one."

"Go on." She narrowed her eyes, looking from him to the glass. "One more secret. Make it a good one."

"I think we're both heading for the lava pits."