“So are you.”
My eyes fall shut, and I bite my bottom lip anxiously. Whose side is he on anyway? Even if he is right, he is my father, and he should take my side.
And I’m five.
Or I’m right.
Nope, definitely acting like a child.
Fine.
“Ugh,” I groan, stomping to the coffeepot to refill my cup. If I am going to confront Kenzi, I am definitely going to need more magic mojo. I take a deep, measured breath before making my way to the dining room table where my sister waits.
I sit on the chair to her right. She doesn’t say anything or acknowledge me as I do. There is a brief beat of awkward silence before she pushes a plate of pancakes toward me and a clean fork. All right, then.
Picking up the fork, I dig into the fluffy pancakes. The sound of chewing and scraping forks fills the awkwardness. The only other sound comes from the hushed voices of my family in the kitchen. We sit like that until the food on both of our plates is cleared and there is nothing else to distract from what is to come.
“I was so excited to go to London,” Kenzi murmurs brokenly, her eyes cast down at her plate, refusing to look at me. “I remember getting off the plane and heading out toward the car Father arranged to take me to the college.”
She takes a shuddered breath, her bottom lip trembling. “There was a man waiting,” she continues. “It didn’t seem right. When I tried to turn away, he grabbed me. In broad daylight. And no one did a thing to stop him.”
I keep quiet, letting her work through her story at her own pace. I have never been known for my patience, but for Kenzi, I make the effort. She is different from what I remember. Not that I expect her to be the same. Even in the barn, I noticed just how little of the Kenzi I know remains. There is a cold, calculated look in her eyes she didn’t have before.
There isn’t any innocence left, because the world went and stole it. Like it stole from Libby from me.
Elias Ward ruined us. Took everything special. I let Dante take care of Kendra, but Christian is still out there somewhere, and he is mine. For taking Libby from me, the one who kept me believing in fairy tales. The most innocent of us all.
“They drugged me,” she whispers after a few minutes, her gaze flitting to me. “I don’t remember a lot, but it wasn’t…” She pauses. “They took me to a place—” She shakes her head, trying to sort through the foggy memories. “A place where they train you to seduce and kill. Cold-hearted assassins are what they tried to make us all into.”
“Tried?” I cock my head to the side and stare at her for a moment, taking in her pale face and blue eyes. “You look pretty assassin-y to me back in that barn with all your kung-fu.” Her lips twitch slightly.
“Not too bad yourself.” She praises me sadly before letting out a long sigh etched with pain. “We’re so screwed up.”
Picking up my coffee cup, I lean back in my chair and cuddle the warmth of the cup with my hands. “Yeah,” I chuckle lightly. “But I think you’re more screwed up.”
She shoots me awhat the fucklook.
I shrug. “Just saying.” Taking a sip of my coffee, I smile behind the mug.
“The fact that you can make a joke about it means you are so much more fucked up than me.”
She has a point.
“What can you tell me about Madam Therese?” I ask her. Kenzi visibly shudders, goose bumps erupting on her skin. She rubs at her arms self-consciously and scowls at the plate in front of her.
“She is in charge of etiquette and recruitment,” she sneers. “Real piece of work, that one. She is the one who made a deal with our—my,” she corrects herself, “father.”
“They take people who won’t be missed,” Kenzi continues. “They don’t discriminate. Men, women, children. They are all just bodies to be used by them. Those who are brought in are put through a test to see where they belong. Endurance, seduction, you name it and there is likely a test for them to measure it. Once you are done with the tests, they decide where to put you, and then your training begins.”
“I don’t understand,” I whisper, guilt gnawing at me. “You weren’t someone who wouldn’t be missed.”
Kenzi scoffs. “The only person who would have known I was missing would have been Libby.” She gives me a pointed stare. “You ran away, and even if you hadn’t, no one would have let you call me anyway. Christian and my” —she chokes back a sob— “my mother were both in on it. The only person who would miss me was Libby, and she never bothered to call at all.”
“Libby says she spoke to you every week,” I insist. “You talked for hours on the phone about classes and friends you made. She never believed anything was wrong.”
“Did I ever send her a picture?” Kenzi raises a questioning brow at me. “Were there ever any texts with pictures of my dorm room? Or video chats? Did I ever text her out of the blue or answer any of her text messages?”
She didn’t. Now that I look back at what Libby told me, she didn’t once mention simply texting Kenzi or having any kind of video chats like they normally would when one of them was away. I can’t believe we were both so blind.