Page 65 of Pretty Little Assassin

Then she’s moving again, knives out, shrieking, and it’s gone before I can put a name on it.

More Primacy guards pour into the room out of nowhere. Blood is everywhere, including running down the front of my forearms. My mother’s blood as I hold her.

The wet warmth of it makes me feel as though I’m coming undone. The life is literally flowing out of her, and there’s not a fucking thing I can do to stop it.

“Valentina,” her words struggle to push past the mouthful of blood collecting at the sides of her lips.

“I’m here, Mom.”

I won’t let myself cry. Not now. Not when her words are too important for me to hear.

“I love you, sweetheart. I never wanted to leave you. I⁠—”

“I know, Mom. Save your breath.”

She smiles weakly up at me. The light in her eyes begins to dull, just like the sound of fighting all around me.

“I don’t need to save it now, my girl. I need to tell you that I never left you. Even when your dad died, even when—” She stops to cough. “Even when I went to rehab. Even when I got trapped there. I was still with you. I always will be. I love you, sweetheart.”

I open my mouth to tell her that I love her too. My words are stuck behind a cry that I refuse to let her hear.

“I know that now, Mom, and I love⁠—”

She’s gone. She’s gone before I can finish it.

I love you too, Mom.

“Valentina?”

“Valentina?”

Zero’s voice doesn’t register.

“Did she short-circuit?” Donnie’s voice is back in my comm. He must have overridden the volume controls somehow and turned them back up.

Alley Cat’s hand gently pokes my arm to get my attention.

The fighting has stopped. The room is littered with dead bodies, none of which are my stepfather’s.

The service door in the back wall is standing open. The keypad light is green.

Two ways out. I counted them, then stopped, and I missed the guards because my mother was in the chair. And then I missed my stepfather’s escape because my mother stepped in front of a bullet for me.

Nothing is moving.

Not the fallen Primacy guards, not the team of friends around me checking to see that I’m still alive and with it. Not my mother’s body still clenched in my arms. Nothing feels alive right now. Everything is frozen.

“Little assassin.”

Viktor crouches beside me on his knees. His hand reaches out, holding my face and turning it toward him.

“Valentina.”

His voice creeps inside me. I don’t know how. It finds a way through the cracks of grief, guilt, and strength.

When I look at him, I see his blood-splattered, scar-covered face. A cut over his left eyebrow wasn’t there an hour ago.

He’s looking at me the way you look at a thing you killed everything in your way to get to. And like he would do it again, over and over, every time.