“I trust you,” she says as his knife points to her throat. 
His hardened stare softens ever so slightly, and she knows she has caught him off guard. Her wide eyes gaze up at his, silently beckoning the memories of their bond, that he had chosen to bury long ago, to his mind. She can see something starting to change in his face; the furrow of his brow as he realises the danger he has put her in, the soft parting of his lips as he tries to search for the words to warn her, the faltering of his grip on her hair not wanting to hurt her for a second longer. 
‘What are you waiting for?’ 
His bosses’ voice sends bristles down her spine. Just like that in front of her eyes, any sign of his former self that had started to claw its way up to the surface is mercilessly forced back into the depths of his fear and she sees his eyes lose their soul once again. She knows she has lost him to whatever terrors his boss had put him through over the last few years.

Her Adam.

She had found him wandering by the river all those years ago, his innocent face starting up at hers in terror, clutching a rotton rabbit toy with a missing ear to his chest. There had been many people over the years who had trespassed onto her land, some claiming to be lost, some attempting to infiltrate her business, some simply running away when they realised they had been caught, but she had never seen a young child so frightened and naïve roam into this part of the forest without malintent. She knew her husband would call her foolish. She knew he would remind her that nobody could be trusted in their line of work. She was most scared that he would remind her that they had not even been able to keep their own daughter safe. And now, seeing what they had done to Adam, how he must have suffered and what he had been turned into, she felt the painful sting of regret.  But in that moment, seeing the shaking frame of the malnourished orphan boy gave her a warm pain in her chest that she had not felt in a long time, and Adam became part of her family. The son she had never had to replace the daughter she had tragically lost to her enemies.

She felt Adam slowly forcing the tip of the blade along the length of her neck, carefully following the ridges of her, windpipe and she grimaced as she recognised this was a technique for torturing captives, one she had used herself before, but had protected Adam from seeing throughout his childhood. She closed her eyes, trying to distract herself from the physical pain, and cast her mind back to the day Adam’s boss had come to take him away, the day that naïve little boy had his childhood stolen away.

Peter was not just Adam’s boss. He was his real father. He was as much of a father as you could be in the biological sense but a far cry from what a father needed to be. He had poisoned Adam from the first day he found him and Adam was too innocent to see it. She almost wished she had not sheltered him as much, it would have made him less trusting and more jaded, but perhaps he would not have left with Peter that day, and she would still have her son. The stolen firearms business in this part of England operated within a small circle, so when Peter bulldozed himself through the front door on Adam’s 16th birthday, it did not seem strange given they were about to close a million-pound deal. However instead he presented some papers. Papers claiming he was Adam’s biological father, claims that he had been kidnapped by the company and that it was time for Adam to come back to his real family. After much discussion, Adam seemed intent on placating Peter to keep the peace and minimise stress for his mother, so agreed to visit. He promised his mum he would come back in the evening and that he would hate even a few hours away from the family that he knew. He never came back. She later learned that it had been leaked to Peter that the million-pound deal was a ruse to distract him whilst her company completed a deal with a foreign company that would leave Peter ultimately penniless. This was his Peter’s ultimate revenge. He tortured Adam, broke him mentally and trained him to be one of his mindless henchmen, so that he could be the one to put a final end to his mother, the boss of Peter’s rival firearms company.

She glanced over at her husband who was screaming and shouting, held down by 5 of Peter’s henchmen who were just about manging to keep him on the ground. ‘Traitor,’ and ‘betrayal’ were phrases she kept hearing on repeat. But she did not agree with her husband. Adam was not hurting her because he wanted to but because he had been broken enough to feel that he needed to in order to protect himself. He knew that if he didn’t Peter would do to him what he had asked Adam to do to her. Although part of her wished that Adam would suddenly turn around, launch himself at Peter, win the physical battle and save his mother, just in the way you would expect him to in Hollywood movies, she knew this was a fantasy. For years she had looked for him, used all of the resources at her disposal to save Adam, but Peter had always been one step ahead, and would not risk sending him into the field unless he knew he had conditioned him enough to finish the job. But that one sentence. ‘I trust you.’ It had stirred something in Adam.  It had confused his years of training, if even just for a moment. And it gave her that glimmer of hope that he was still there. Which was all she needed.

Seconds later the doors burst open the explosion of gunfire filled the air. She had known Peter would attack today- she had moles in his company so knew he had been planning to kill her. She knew he would likely use Adam to do it. She had organised for her partner company to storm Peter’s ambush and save her and Adam, but Peter had changed his location at the last minute, so her backup team had been delayed. But Peter had been the first successful fatality as she witnessed him crash to the ground when the first bullet hit. As she lay on the ground, bleeding out slowly from the wounds Adam had inflicted, she noticed he was staring silently at her, expressionless amongst the cacophony of fighting.

‘I love you son.’ She whispered as the light slowly left her eyes. And as the dark descended she smiled, serene amongst the chaos, as she saw a tear roll down Adam’s cheek - another fleeting episode of the her little boy, alive despite the terrors he had endured.