“No, I’m realistic. Comes with the assassin uniform and tattoo. And you need to be also. Life is harsh and you don’t need me to tell you that. You’ve lived as much awful as I have. Think about it, Jayne. Do you really think that asshole in the backseat would spare your life?”
Probably not. No one had ever shown her any mercy.
If she’d learned anything in her handful of years, it was that no one other than her sister could be trusted. Honestly, she didn’t even trust Jinx.
Not entirely.
Everyone betrayed. It was the one thing in life that she could depend on. The one absolute constant besides death.
People were always looking out for their own best interests. They didn’t care who they hurt.
Or how badly.
That was the saddest part of humanity.
When she was a child, her own father had sold her out to lessen his jail sentence. He’d traded her freedom for his own and had been fine with it.
That had been the harshest lesson of all, and it still burned inside her with an unforgiving fury. Even though he’d been dead for years, it wasn’t dead enough.
Not after everything he’d done to her and Eve.
Some things just couldn’t be forgiven.
Your brother never betrayed you . . .
No. He’d spent his handful of years trying to protect her. And Sway had died before he’d had a chance to really live. A chance to grow old.
But in a weird way, she viewed that as the greatest betrayal of all. He’d left her to this life.
Had abandoned her just as her father and mother had.
For that, she hated him at times.
How could you, Sway?
“Jayne?”
“I won’t do it, Jinx.”I won’t be like everyone else. Someone has to do the right thing.
Just once.
“Damn it!”
She cut the transmission. Right or wrong, she wasn’t going to be what life kept trying to make her.
Heartless. Bitter. Vindictive.
You won’t take my soul. I won’t let you. .
It was the only thing she had left. They’d stolen everything else from her long ago. Her childhood. Her innocence.
Her sense of fair play.
Her family.
What was left?
A hallow shell of the woman she’d wanted to be. A ghost who struggled to feel anything other than despair and misery.
