“We thought you were someone else…a name on our list.” My words break apart again, the voice in my head repeating itself over and over like I’ve fallen into a manic episode.
Is he really here?
“What do you mean, a fucking list?” he growls, his brows creasing as he eyes me suspiciously.
I force in a deep breath.
Saint might never look at me the same again, or worse, he might be horrified by me, thinking I really am broken beyond comparison.
Worse than the last time we stood this close.
“Indie?”
His voice tugs my attention back to him; it’s so softly spoken compared to just a minute ago, and it has the butterflies fluttering the cobwebs off their broken wings inside me.
“I thought you were someone else…and I was there to kill them.”
Saint’s brows almost shoot to his hairline, letting my statement sink into each area of his brain, before he drops his head and rubs a thumb and index finger against his closed eyes.
“Am I having trouble with my fucking hearing? Did you just say…kill?”
He glares up at me, and I feel smaller than I ever have before, shame starting to leak inside me, and I can only manage a whisper.
“Yes.”
He drops his gaze, arms dangling between his legs as he stares at the ground. “What the fuck have you been doing, Indie? Who the hell do you work for?”
A sudden urge to explain myself fights its way out my mouth, the words stumbling over each other. “I—We have our own business. We use it to kill off some membe—”
“Jesus fucking Christ, don’t finish that sentence.”
He glances up at me in total disbelief, looking at me like I’m a total stranger.
Yeah, I’ve changed too, Saint. I learned how to survive in my own way.
I’ve done okay so far—I only ever hoped you’d be proud of me for still standing.
My arms wrap around my chest, protecting myself from whatever judgement’s going through his head.
He rises off the bed when I speak again, trying to fill the silence whilst he paces between the small space between us.
I can’t find strength in my voice. “What?”
“What do you mean,what? You’re a fucking assassin now? How the fuck did you get into that work? And whohiredyou?”
I grind my jaw, defensiveness heating me from the inside out. “No one. Regina and I work on this alone. It’s our thing. No one has any idea who we are or what we do—”
“Gina’s involved too?” He cuts me off, and annoyance seems to have entered the chat, because I’m ready to swing a right hook at him if he does it one more time.
“She does the technical side,” I bite out.
“So you do the killing side?”
I can see the clogs turning around in his head, trying to fit the pieces of information together. The last time he saw me, I was a shell.
Fractured. Hurting. Lost.
You’d take one look at me and think I was never coming back.
