Zander hugged her tight. “If you ever need anything, I’m here. Just call me, we’ll come for you. No matter what.”
“Thanks, Zander. Thanks for everything.”
He shrugged. “It’s what family does.”
Yeah. It was.
“Bartolli!” Zander cried, turning to him. “Figure I owe you and North a beating for kidnapping my sister.”
“And I owe you one for letting her get kidnapped,” Jared fired back.
“Guess we’re even then.”
“I guess we are.”
Is that . . . were they getting along?
She let North put her into the van and do up her seatbelt. He was quiet. Thoughtful.
She wondered what he was thinking. But she also thought he might need some time with his thoughts.
So she sat quietly next to him as Jared drove to the hotel to pick up his guards.
They were going home.
“Tell us,”Jared said as they all ended up in his bed with Angie in the middle of them both.
“North should be in the middle,” she said.
North shook his head immediately. “I can’t be penned in like that. Especially to sleep. It’s a miracle I can sleep with you both as it is.”
“All right,” she said. “However you want to do this is all right with me.”
Jared sat up and stared at them both. “Tell us what happened, North. Tell us about how you ended up as part of The Collective and how you ended up here.”
North nodded and sat up too. Jared moved her onto his lap so they faced him.
“You know that The Collective ‘collects’ children?” North asked.
“The Fox explained the basics,” Jared told him. “That they recruit children off the streets or from orphanages. Arrange homes for them and train them into assassins.”
“Right. They give us all letters or numbers. I guess the letters thing became limited. Pretty sure there was a N before me. I don’t know if he died during a job or The Collective killed him.”
Angie sucked in a breath.
“You know that I was in an orphanage in Romania, that I can’t really remember my family. Well, Mr. Z found me there. I don’t know how he chose what children to take. But he took me and placed me in with a foster family who were part of The Collective. It was better in some ways. I got an education, food, clothing, somewhere to live. But I was also trained every day. To lose my accent. To move quietly. How to kill. How to fight. Howto infiltrate all sorts of places from high-society functions to the roughest area of any city. We’re supposed to be chameleons.”
“I can’t believe they get away with doing that,” she said, feeling ill.
“Who is going to stop them? Mr. Z is a powerful man. He’s secretive and private. No one knows who he really is or where he lives. I’ve never fully seen his face.”
“How did you come to be with me?” Jared asked. “Were you in that alley on purpose or was it a coincidence?”
North glanced away for a moment. “It wasn’t a coincidence. The Collective set that up. They arranged for those guys to attack you. Then I was supposed to come in and save you. Earn my place at your back.”
“Fuck,” Jared muttered.
“I was placed with you,” North said. “But I was only supposed to work for you. They never told me to sleep with you. To want you. To feel something for you. That was all me. I’d never felt anything since I was a child. So it was so strange to suddenly have these feelings. You cracked my shield, Jared. Then Angie came along and it started to shatter.”
