What I will be back to claim.
Just as soon as I take care of my own problems.
Starting with Kirill Kasyanov and that fucking bastard who calls himself Jonathon Archer. He might be a real FBI agent, but everything from his name to his background is false. I knew it from the moment I saw him on the video feed Neil provided me of Ava while she was held captive by Christian.
It is the reason I turned to Serena the night of the gala. Her family’s involvement with my father goes back long before I was born. I needed that information and so I put the plan together the minute I learned about Kenzi.
It pained me to keep what I knew about her sister secret when Ava had been nothing but worried for Kenzi, but I couldn’t risk putting my wife even further in danger.
“Isn’t spying on your wife at your own funeral a bit morbid?” The voice is light but there is a hardness that taints it, an edge that she can’t quite hide. I barely hear her approach. Herfootsteps are light on the grass, shadow barely visible due to the dim clouds crowding the sky. I wonder what my wife would think if she knew the truth about the woman who so casually snuck up on me. How she spent the last few years of her life training to be an assassin.
A ghost.
“Isn’t showing up at the funeral of the man you killed a bit stereotypical for a psychopath?” I shoot back, my eyes never falling from my wife. “It’s terribly predictable, don’t you think?”
“Sociopath,” she corrects calmly. As if it makes any difference what you call it. Crazy is crazy and wherever she has been has given that to her in spades.
Keeping my eyes forward, I shift slightly, drawing her into my periphery. After all, one should never turn their back on a serial killer.
A paid one at that.
I can’t help but point out one thing, though. “If my wife sees you, Kenzi,” I smirk. “She’ll kill you.”
The sociopath shrugs nonchalantly, her jacket rustling slightly.
“Vas even told me she has a picture of you with your eyes scratched out pinned to her wall with one of my knives,” I continue just to see if I can get a rise out of her. “The tip goes straight through your throat.”
“Sisters disagree all the time.” Kenzi smiles widely, her lips parting to reveal pearly white teeth. Fuck, she resembles aStrzyga. A female demon in Russian folklore that is much like a vampire. At least she isn’t a rotting corpse, but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t drink the blood of her enemies.
Hell, the bitch probably bathes in it.
“She’ll get over it,” Kenzi sighs softly, her light tone dipping slightly before she pulls it back in place like nothing happened. “Especially once she finds out I didn’t, in fact, kill you.”
“Still shot me though,” I mutter a bit petulantly, the pain in my abdomen flaring at the memory. I can still hear Ava screaming my name. Her wail haunts my dreams.
“You told me to make it look real.”
“And you did.” My lips curl in distaste. “By blowing up the ambulance. You could have shot me in the shoulder.”
The woman falls silent for a brief pause before she snorts the thought away. “Nah.” She scrunches up her nose at the thought. “Needed to make it believable. No one would have panicked as much if you had been shot in the shoulder.”
“That was what we agreed to.”
“And I altered our agreement,” she presses on. “Stop being such a big Russian baby about it. It’s not attractive.”
We lapse into silence which isn’t all that uncomfortable seeing as how we are two predators standing side by side. Two people who had violence thrust upon us without our consent.
We are kindred souls in that aspect.
Compared to her sister, Kenzi is an enigma. I wonder if she had the same knack for lying before she was sold to the Chameleon Agency or if it is the result of her training. I’ve talked to her several times and her ability to switch her emotions on and off at the drop of a hat is something both awe inspiring and concerning. She is obviously trained to fit into any situation she can, flipping from one personality to the next like she is turning the pages of her favorite book.
Little is known about the secret underground agency, but from the intel I managed to gather they are a mediator of sorts.
Who gave themselves a horrible name.
The Chameleon Agency.
Pfft.
