Chapter 11
Agatha tried to ignore the shock on Rio’s face as she held her son. She had never wanted Rio to know. One, for Nicholas’ protection, she was supposed to have severed all ties from her former life, and two, she wanted to avoid an interaction like this where she’d be forced to explain.
It was just her luck Nicky was here at the same time she and her fake wife were. Manhattan was so fucking big this never should’ve happened. Agatha planted one more kiss on her son's cheek. He pushed at her face as she put her coffee on the bench next to her so she couldn’t spill it on him.
“Where have you been, Mama?” His giggle dying and a frown replacing it.
“Remember when Mama said she’d have to go away for a while and only talk on the phone?” Agatha replied as she swayed her five-year-old.
Nicky nodded. “But you said you’d be far. This isn’t far.”
Agatha scoffed at her son's sharpness. It shouldn’t surprise her anymore, there had been so many other occasions where he’d caught her out like this.
She nodded slowly. “No, you are right. This isn’t very far, is it?” She tickled his stomach, and that giggle reappeared.
Nicky’s head twisted and Agatha sucked in a breath as he locked on to Rio.
The other woman cleared her throat. “Erm…hi…I’m…I’m Rio.”
Nicky was silent and Agatha thought she might have to prompt him into a reply before he said:
“Nicky.”
“Nice to meet you, Nicky,” Rio said, her smile warm.
“You’re pretty.”
Agatha blinked at her son's forwardness which again she should be used to as he got it from her.
Rio’s cheeks flushed red before she said an awkward thank you.
“Nicholas?”
That voice froze Agatha in place. It had felt like so long since she’d last heard it when in reality it had only been two weeks.
“I found Mama,” Nicky squealed in excitement, completely unaware of how Agatha’s arm had tensed as she held him.
“I can see that, but what have I told you about running off?”
Agatha turned in the voice's direction, her eyes locking on to those green ones she’d fallen in love with all those years ago. It was comical to her now that she felt absolutely nothing.
“I thought you were relocating.”
“I did.”
“Where? To across the road?” Wanda snapped.
Agatha felt venom crawling up her throat ready to spit and harm her ex with. She steeled herself instead.
“Let’s not do this in front of him,” Agatha gritted out as Nicky stirred on her hip.
Wanda narrowed her eyes before her gaze shifted to Rio. Agatha watched her size Rio up before her face split into a fake smile.
“Wanda, nice to meet you.”
The awkwardness Rio usually displayed when she met new people disappeared when she answered:
“Rio, you too.”
Agatha wondered where the confidence had come from.
“Mommy, isn’t Rio pretty?” Nicky asked.
Agatha tried to hide her smile at her son asking the question she’d never get away with asking herself.
Wanda inhaled a seething breath as she said, “Extremely. Now we gotta go.”
Nicky whined as Agatha lowered him to the ground. He squeezed her legs one more time before he took Wanda’s outstretched hand. Wanda began to tug him away before Nicky turned.
“Mama because you’re back can you come visit?”
Agatha locked eyes with Wanda who pursed her lips.
“We’ll figure something out, okay baby?”
Nicky pouted but accepted Wanda’s words with a nod.
“Bye, Rio. Bye, Mama,” Nicky said as he waved.
The two wives waved back.
Agatha inhaled deeply as she retrieved her coffee from the bench. Where the fuck did she start when trying to explain all of that? To Agatha’s surprise, Rio spoke first.
“You two have a beautiful kid.”
Agatha could tell the compliment was sincere even as Rio’s voice waved.
“That was my ex,” Agatha told her.
She watched Rio’s entire body relax at her words. She smiled.
“And technically Nicky’s not hers. He only has my DNA and the donors. She got custody because I run from exploding buildings and shoot bullets at criminals in ski resorts.”
Rio chuckled. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”
The women continued their walk in a comfortable silence, each taking sips from their respective coffee cups. Agatha loved Central Park in April, after the bleak winter the park seemed to come alive again in the form of the sea of pink from the cherry blossoms sprouting from their trees and the array of colours from flowers (not all of them she could name) popping out from the earth. When she was younger it always symbolised hope. That yeah, maybe she’d had the worst couple of months of her life with seasonal depression and her mother’s verbal abuse, but things were looking up.
She looked to Rio then, her fake wife’s eyes darting everywhere as she took in her surroundings. Rio looked like a kid at Disneyland.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Rio hadn’t looked at her, it was Agatha laughing that grabbed her attention.
“What? Did you say something?”
“I just said it’s beautiful.”
“Oh,” Rio said as if she were mortified by the fact that Agatha had to repeat herself. “Yes, it is.” She paused before she spoke again, her voice near a whisper, “I…I never got to come here much so it’s all still surreal to me.”
Rio still hadn’t looked at her.
Agatha collected her thoughts. She wanted to say the right thing, didn’t want Rio to regret sharing parts of herself, parts that seemed like she didn’t talk about often.
“Fuck me,” Rio said after a while. “Who knew me opening up was all it took to shut you up,” she laughed then. “I’m going to have to do it more often.”
Agatha smiled. “You will. Takes a lot to shut me up.”
“Oh, trust me,” Rio’s lips curled further, “I know.”
“What is it about plants you love so much?”
Rio looked at her for the first time since they’d parted with Nicky.
“How do you know that? I’ve never told you that.”
Agatha raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Are you serious?’ Before she answered:
“I’m an FBI agent and even my expertise wouldn’t be necessary to figure that out, Rio. You spend every waking moment in the garden, Rooftop Gardening: Hidden Secrets is glued to you whenever you walk about the house, the way you spouted out the difference between Cedar trees and Pine trees as if were common knowledge at The Met, your favourite colour is green, should I go on?”
Rio stuck her tongue in her cheek. “Didn’t realise you were so desperate to get to know me.”
A realisation hit Agatha then. That remark, that was something she would’ve said. Rio always had a way of meeting her where she was at. Whether that be with disarming comebacks, during missions, during casual conversations. Agatha would challenge and Rio would have no problem challenging back with the same energy.
She’d never had that with someone before, and she definitely didn’t think she would find it in the seemingly strange and awkward woman she met on the first day of their marriage.
Agatha had met her match, and she felt sorry for the world that it’d probably have to pay for it.
“Who was the one who was googling me earlier again?”
Rio’s lips snapped shut and Agatha laughed.
Rio let the silence drag on for a beat before she said, “I like plants because they don’t talk.”
Agatha knew the reason was deeper than that, but it was evident that Rio wasn’t ready to tell her. She nodded instead of prying. She took another sip of coffee before Rio spoke again.
“Can I ask you something? You…you don’t have to answer.”
Agatha stopped to look at her.
“Why did you become an agent? It seemed like you had everything.”
Agatha realised she wasn’t ready to say the deeper reasoning behind Rio’s question either. She shrugged. “Pictures are just pictures.”
Rio’s eyes searched her. To Agatha, it felt like she was looking at every curve, every line, every feature and then looking past those as well. She felt so seen and it terrified her.
Rio nodded like she understood there was more but like Agatha would not pry.
“Yes, they are.”
***
It had been two weeks since Rio had met Nicky in Central Park, and in those two weeks, they had been on three missions where Rio had pushed Agatha out of a plane, almost drowned her when she forced them to escape a mission through a trapdoor that opened up at the bottom of the Hudson River and very nearly sent them hurdling off the side of a cliff during a car chase.
During each of these incidents, Agatha seriously wondered if Rio had made a deal with the devil. Rio was fearless, she acted as if she couldn’t be killed, as if she were Death herself. And when Agatha had asked about it, Rio would simply shrug as if it were nothing, as if falling from the sky was something everyone did.
Agatha couldn’t name what it was Rio exuded when she was like this, all she could say was that it felt like Rio was a robot going through the actions without a thought…detached? Maybe?
And the icing on top of the cake for Agatha was that she hadn’t been mad at Rio afterwards. Sure, the first time Rio pushed her out of a plane without a parachute was a shock to the system and she’d screamed bloody murder at her fake wife, but when it had passed…
Adrenaline. Agatha was dizzy with it like she’d taken a pill or something.
She wasn’t kidding when she’d realised, she had met her match. For every insane thing Rio did Agatha wanted to match it, supersede it. So, when Rio had grabbed her mid-air and landed them safely on the tarmac of the private airport, Agatha pulled out a flashbang and threw it at the tanks of plane fuel being prepared for use. The tanks had caught fire in an instant spreading across the tarmac and engulfing the plane with their mission targets inside. They’d tried to flee, to escape without the flames licking them. They failed. Agatha watched with a smirk as the east coast's most notorious sex traffickers burnt alive by the flames she’d caused.
She’d almost killed herself and Rio in the interim. She’d been so wrapped up in the moment that she hadn’t noticed the flames shooting towards them from the spilt gasoline that surrounded them. Rio had, had to drag her away.
The only reason they’d had to escape from a trapdoor was because Agatha had been dilly-dallying to slip the poison into corrupt French politician Raphael Dubois’ drink. She was proving to Rio she could get it done just before all their safe options out of the building got closed off at 1 am. Somewhere in between proving her point and completing their mission, she’d gotten lost in Rio’s eyes, in her smile, in her laugh and the minutes had dwindled to nothing.
As for Rio almost driving them off the cliff edge, technically that was neither of their faults, the mission hadn’t gone smoothly, not all of them can do. Rio was driving recklessly because they had to avoid being caught. The Salem Seven mafia were on their tails. Rio had swerved near the cliff's edge to avoid a car ramming into them and Agatha had been the one to grab the wheel and drive them over it. She was just glad they weren’t in their Land Rover and instead their Ferrari Portofino. They’d jumped out of the car and into the ocean with minor injuries.
When they hadn’t been fighting crime, the two had started to become more comfortable with one another. Rio didn’t hesitate before telling Agatha random facts about herself and Agatha didn’t shy away from showing Rio more than just her bold and sarcastic demeanour.
Days they’d been at home they’d started making breakfast together. Agatha could cook, Rio couldn’t. She tried, of course, but everything was either burnt or undercooked and Agatha always had to take over or guide Rio through the instructions step by step. Rio joked that she was surprised Agatha could even cook because she’d probably had a private chef. Agatha had told her she had and that shut her up.
Nicky called often and when he did Agatha didn’t hide. At times she’d even put him on speaker so he could talk to both her and Rio. He’d tell them about his day at school and they’d tell him a child-appropriate version of their latest mission. Nicky informed them he wanted to learn Spanish because the new girl in his class who had moved to the States from Mexico didn’t know any English. He felt bad for her, wanted to make her feel included, and Agatha had never felt prouder.
She’d offered Rio up to teach him and as reluctant as her fake wife was, she eventually agreed after Nicky’s pleading. No one could ever say no to that boy.
Neither of them spoke about their past again, neither of them ready. That can of worms would be opened in due time.
Now, on the official one-month anniversary of their wedding, Rio and Agatha were in the back of a pickup truck somewhere in Argentina after infiltrating and dismantling an illegal dog racing ring. They hadn’t showered in days. Rio was covered from head to toe in dirt, soot, and dried blood and her bottom lip had been busted open from when she’d gotten punched in the face.
Agatha thought she’d never looked more beautiful.
Rio glanced over at her from where they sat side by side in the truck. “Quit staring at me before you give yourself an aneurysm.”
Agatha smiled, her eyes dropping to her crossed legs without meaning to.
This fucking woman. Since when do I get nervous? I don’t ever get nervous.
“Are you blushing or is that sunburn?”
Agatha wanted to strangle her.
“Sunburn.”
“Liar,” Rio said with a smirk.
Agatha couldn’t have this. She needed the upper hand.
“Don’t pretend you weren’t staring at my ass when I had to climb that roof earlier.”
Rio's ears went pink, and Agatha laughed.
“Exactly. So, shut up.”
Rio rolled her eyes playfully. “Sue me.”
“I don’t blame you; I would look too.”
Rio scowled at her and Agatha winked.
“Oh, happy one-month anniversary by the way. As a shock to the both of us, we haven’t killed each other…yet.”
When Agatha turned to look at her, a smile on her face, Rio’s eyebrows were furrowed.
“What?” Agatha asked an edge of concern in her voice.
“Nothing. Just hasn't felt like it.” Rio shrugged. “I guess time means nothing when I’m with you.”