She nodded and went to work, gently prying it out with her fingernail. She shook her head. “Nothing. Just a photo in a locket. Dammit!”
“We’ll find it,” he assured her, but he had to admit his own disappointment too. “I’ll bring these things back to the command center and the Order will take care of the rest, Sia. Then you can let all of this ugliness go and get on with your life.”
Nothing could’ve prepared him for her bleak, haunted expression or what it did to him inside. “Life as I knew it ended six weeks ago, when my inaction caused the death of a friend and beloved husband and father. I won’t stand by and let bad things happen ever again. If I’m willing to do that after everything I’ve lost, then I should have refused my banishment and begged the colony to kill me.”
He let her rant, sensing she needed it. She wasn’t a woman to lose control, and the fact that she felt safe enough to do so with him moved him more deeply than he cared to admit.
“Do you miss it? Your old life with your people.”
“Every day.” She smiled sadly. “But it doesn’t matter. I can never go back and I’ll never be able to redeem myself to the colony, so I must do it here. I have to do something purposeful with this new life—for myself as much as I want to show my people that I’m not the awful person they believe me to be. I need to prove that I have honor, that I’m worth something.”
“You don’t have to prove a damn thing to anyone, Sia. You are all of those things already.”
She gave him a humorless laugh. “Flattery from you?”
He shook his head. “The truth. I’m just telling you what I see.”
Her eyes softened as she looked at him. Before he realized it, her fingers came to light gently on his face, tracing his hideous scar and clamped jaw. “Do you want to know what I see? You are everything I didn’t expect. A brave warrior. A man of deep honor and conviction. I see someone who’s been hurt very badly and not only survived, but emerged stronger.” She stroked his ruined cheek, tender light shining in her eyes. “What did you survive, Trygg? I know your early life was hard. I’ve heard something about the program you were in—a Hunter, isn’t that what you were called?”
“Yes, that’s what we were called.” He exhaled sharply, but allowed her touch to linger on him for a moment before moving away from her warmth. “What we were was killers. Held like prisoners, treated like animals. Worse than animals. We had one purpose from the time we were born, and that was to deliver death on our master’s command.”
Sia listened, unflinching. But when she spoke it was with a soft, careful voice. “Why did you stay?”
That answer was as simple as it was final. “I didn’t know any other life. None of us did. Even if we had, there was no chance for us to seek it out. If we tried to run, we died. If we disobeyed or showed the slightest defiance or regret during our training, we died.”
“But even as children, you and the others must have been strong. Was there no way to overtake this madman and save yourselves?”
“Dragos planned for that possibility. Every boy in the program was fitted with an unbreakable ultraviolet collar that would detonate if tampered with…or whenever Dragos ordered our termination.” Trygg’s hand came up to his neck in reflex. “Sometimes I swear I can still feel the cold black polymer against my skin.”
Sia’s gaze lowered, her breath escaping on a shallow sigh. “He sounds like the worst kind of monster.”
“He was,” Trygg agreed, recalling too many of the faces of his brothers in the program, many of whom had served as horrific lessons to Trygg and the other boys that there was no escaping Dragos or the UV noose he’d fitted them with as soon as they could walk. “Dragos trained us to be monsters too. He trained us well.”
Sia said nothing for a long moment. “And it was the Order who finally freed you?”
He nodded. “I owe them my life. I’d lay it down for any one of my warrior brethren.”
“That kind of loyalty is a rare gift,” she murmured, her expression distant and regretful, as if she hadn’t ever seen that kind of faith in anyone herself. “How did they save you, Trygg?”
“When they defeated Dragos, an Order warrior named Gideon found a way to remotely disable the lock codes on the Hunters still in the lab. Like me, most of them were young boys. I was fourteen.”
“So, did you join the Order immediately?”
“No. I made my own way in the States for a while. It wasn’t until I arrived in Italy that I sought out the Order and offered my life in service to them.”
He chose to stop there, telling his history with an utter lack of inflection, precisely how the program had taught him to be. No emotions. No need for care or affection. Just cold, machine-like efficiency. No Hunter came out of the program without a heart as cold and sharp as a blade.
If he didn’t watch himself, a woman like Tamisia could smooth those sharp edges.
Make him weak.
Hell, she already was. How else could he explain the fact that he had let her hijack his mission tonight? Now he was sitting on her bed with an envelope of evidence spread out before him and questions badly in need of answers, yet all he could think about was the pleasure of Sia’s touch. Her expressive, sky-blue eyes filled with tender emotion…and desire.
“What happened to the Hunters who were freed?”
He shrugged his shoulder. “I’m only aware of a handful. One of them, named Scythe, lives with his mate Chiara here in Italy.”
“Is he as big and grumbly as you?” Sia asked, her pretty mouth curving.
