Page 88 of Pretty Little Assassin

Madam pauses, peering through the holes and cracks in the walls as if looking into each room. Half avoiding the guards, half looking for our stepfather.

Another empty room means another chance to step out and breathe a bit. But this time, the room isn’t as empty as it seems at first glance.

As soon as we step into one of the guest bedrooms, a Primacy operative swings around to grab Madam by the throat.

I didn’t see him there. I was distracted, thinking about Viktor’s breath on my breasts, and the cold-blooded ecstasy that I’m going to feel when Mercy slits my stepdad’s throat.

I don’t stop to feel bad about it. I step with perfectly executed action.

One move. One puncture to the right organ. The guard is dead before he can call for backup.

Madam rubs her throat with her hand.

“Closer than I’d like,” she says. “One of these times you might not get lucky enough to silence him before the others hear.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it.”

“Good point, Asset 13.”

Her use of my operative name is a nod to my level of skill and her respect for me.

“It took me eight years to start building VEIL,” she continues as I listen at the door to make sure this room is safe for a moment. “Eight years of telling myself I had gotten out, which is a thing I tried to believe right up until I found out his latest marriage included another stepdaughter. Then four more, building a machine to stop what happened to me from happening to anyone else. I have never once been able to decide which of those two numbers I should be more ashamed of.”

“Is that why you recruited me? To keep me from falling into the same system of abuse?” I ask the woman who rescued me, trained me, and has never missed a birthday.

“I am proud to have you as one of my assets, Valentina.” Madam chuckles. “I was already planning to reach out to you because you’re my sister. But you killed your first alpha abuser before the asset I sent over that night could do it. It was my pleasure to take your raw talent and guide your hand toward becoming what you are now. And I also recruited you so you would not be alone.”

After my father died and my mother turned to gin, I had no one. When she married my stepfather, I was something to sell. Useful or disposable. For the past eight years, I knew I was talented. But I was essentially nothing more than an asset on a revenge quest. I never knew that the very machine I was working for was being driven by my sister.

Sister. That word sounds right in my head.

“What is it that you think I’ve become?” I’m hesitant to hear Madam’s, my sister’s, assessment.

A killing machine? A psycho like Alley Cat who relishes watching the life drain out of an alpha’s eyes? A lost soul that needs purpose before I wind up doing something even more stupid?

“You’ve become what I always knew you would be—the most effective, talented, and deadly assassin VEIL has ever had.”

I keep my face where it is.

“Don’t tell Zero that. She’d be pissed.”

A tiny grin tugs at the side of her cheek. We really aren’t that different after all.

“Zero does have one tactical advantage over you.”

“What? No, she doesn’t. What is it?”

I enjoy this bit of banter amidst the current escalation we find ourselves locked in. I like seeing Madam with this new lens. Unfiltered. Unmasked. And ready to break even her own rules.

“She obeys directives.”

I wrinkle my nose at her.

“Rules are mostly suggestions in the field. Sometimes I need to improvise in order to not die.”

Madam stops walking.

It takes me two steps to notice, and when I turn around, she is looking at her own wrist, checking the time.