Bonds of Justice

piece of madness.

“I would know you, Max.” Soft words in a voice that had already become exquisitely, intimately familiar, gentle bonds that held Max in place. “Before . . . I would know you.” Closing the distance between them, Sophia waited until he lifted his hand . . . and then she stroked her fingers across the very center of his palm.

It was an electric shock that went straight to Max’s gut. Hissing out a breath, he curled his fingers into a fist even as she dropped her own hand and took a jerking step backward.

“Sophia?” Deep-seated instinct shoved at him to go to her, cup her face in his hands. Keeping himself in position was the hardest thing he’d ever done. “Are you in trouble?” It savaged him that he might have hurt her.

“No. I apologize—I’m fine.” But she was staring at his hand, a quaver in her voice. “I felt none of your memories. You’re as blank as a piece of wood.”

Relief was a fucking fist inside his chest. “I’ve been called hardheaded before, but never wooden.”

“I didn’t mean to offend.”

It was oh-so-tempting to touch his lips to hers, to tease her by telling her that she could make it up to him, but given the way she was standing so stiff and shocked, he knew he’d have to wait for his first taste of the lushly enticing Sophia Russo. “I was playing with you, Sophie.”

“Oh.”

He flexed his hand, saw her eyes go to it. “You felt it, too, didn’t you?”

Shifting away in a sudden movement, she walked around him to open the door to her apartment. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Max.”

Sophia stood with her back to the door she’d closed behind Max until she heard his own door open and close. Only then did she slide down the wall to sit with her legs stretched out in front of her, her entire body buzzing in a way that was simply not in the realm of her experience.

She looked at her right hand, running the pad of her thumb over her fingertips in a bewildered attempt to understand that electrifying burst of sensation. It had been . . . she had no words for it, no way to explain something so wild, so extreme it defied her efforts at categorization.

The true paradox was that she hadn’t lied—no matter the almost painful sensation of the contact, Max was as silent to her psychic senses as a piece of wood or a block of plascrete.

Silence.

For the first time in her life, that word meant something other than the conditioning that had acted as a cage even as it kept her alive. Max had been a wall of pure silence, an unexpected oasis in a world filled with noise. But her response to his touch had wiped out that startling peace.

She stared at her hand again. “I don’t understand.”

Max knew the answer, she thought, she’d seen it on his face. But the question was—did she want to know the answer?

A telepathic knock sounded in her mind the instant after that thought passed through it. Recognizing the signature of her boss in Justice, Jay Khanna, she pulled together the threads of her perfect facade and said, Sir. He wouldn’t guess at the reality of her condition. No one else ever had. Even the M- Psy saw only the fragmentation of her telepathic shields—to them, it was a simple psychic issue, nothing to do with the scars she wore deep inside, where no one could see them.

Ms. Russo, I need to go over part of the Valentine case with you.

Sophia waited. She’d long ago learned how to bury her true thoughts, her true self, in order to survive.

According to your notes, when you recovered Ms. Valentine’s memories, you saw her stab her husband seventeen times?

That’s correct, sir. A human-to-human spousal murder wouldn’t normally have merited J involvement, but Ms. Valentine was the daughter of an influential individual with a controlling interest in a major power plant. Valentine Senior had used the same thing Max had—a natural shield—to ruthless advantage in business, until even Psy “played nice” with him.

Sophia had often wondered why the Council hadn’t had him discreetly assassinated, and come to the conclusion that the male provided undisclosed goods or services that were valuable enough to afford him some protection. Humans, driven and shaped by their unpredictable emotional natures, often came up with ideas and concepts that were staggeringly unique. It was why Max had caught Gerard Bonner while the Psy profilers were still arguing about the “psychological parameters” that defined the sociopath.

How many times, Jay Khanna now said, did you see her husband abuse her in the days leading up to the murder?

Sophia betrayed no surprise—part of her had been expecting the question since the moment she met the arrogantly beautiful Emilie Valentine. None, sir.

Think about that carefully, Ms. Russo. We’ll speak again before the case goes to trial.

Letting the veiled order fade from her mind, Sophia considered what her response would be on Jay’s next telepathic visit. The ability to “bend” memories was the most tightly guarded secret of the Justice Corps. Everyone thought Js could only project what was already in a defendant’s mind. In most cases, yes.

But there was a select group of Js who had the ability to manipulate memories without leaving a trace, changing images and words, sounds and actions until a simple tumble down a set of stairs could be made to look like an abusive push.

Sophia was one of the best, had been brilliant at it even as a child. Because she’d spent every spare moment honing the skill, aware that that nascent ability was one of only two reasons why the decision makers had let her live after she’d been ruined from the inside out, her mind a place where nothing quite made sense anymore.

Nobody ever asked, and she never told . . . but the splinters in her soul were permanent. She’d never recovered from the terror-filled days she’d spent trapped in that cabin in the mountains, never again understood the world as she had before the glass cut her face to shreds.

Max finally fell asleep late into the night, his body still humming with his violent response to Sophia’s fleeting touch. So in a sense, he’d expected the intensity of his dreams . . . but not their subject.

“You little shit!” Hands shaking him hard, so hard, as a screaming mouth spewed obscenities at him.

He stood frozen, trying not to cry. He couldn’t cry. That would only make her more mad.

“Just like your father.” It was screamed into his face. “Piece of filth.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he couldn’t help it, his voice broke.

For an instant, her face went unnaturally calm. There were no more screams, no more painful shakes. She just stared at him.

And he knew that his mother wanted to suffocate the life out of him.

Max’s eyes snapped open, his hand going for the stunner under his pillow. It took him close to two minutes to realize the danger was only in his head. She’d almost killed him in the memory, come so close that sweat broke out along his spine even now, his skin taut with remembered terror.

Getting up, he walked into the bathroom to throw cold water on his face.

It snapped the remaining threads of the dream, his mind beginning to function again. The connection was indisputable—Sophia, a J, had touched him . . . and he’d had a dream from when he’d been small, so small that he couldn’t have been more than three at the time. He’d never before remembered anything from that period of his life.

The consequences of further contact didn’t escape him—but when it came to Sophia Russo, Max had no intention of retreating.

Max invited Sophia into the privacy of his apartment the next morning when she came to meet him for the drive to Nikita’s office. Shadows bruised the skin beneath her eyes, her bones cutting blades against that normally lush skin. “Tough night?” he murmured.