Page 139 of The Masks She Wore

?“She spoke to Malachi several times, although at the time, I didn’t know his name. I think they might have known each other before, years before this, but Mom never said for sure. They spoke for a year and a half before I was finally accepted. After I graduated, we continued on with our jobs. They were like assignments, I suppose. We never stayed in one place for more than three months, but we did revisit if it was needed.”

?“Malachi never mentioned you,” Zo told her.

?She shivered, goosebumps erupting across her skin, her nipples hardening as I continued to change the many bandages and check her stitches. “Mom didn’t want my name drifting around the world as one of Malachi’s Initiates. You aren’t known by your names, just by the masks you wear, but the Initiates are known around the world. Most know their names, know their affiliations. Malachi Adler is known.”

?“Why?” Zo asked.

?Rae watched me carefully. “Because the Alascer’s are ghosts and the people who work for Malachi, no matter how careful the anonymity, are not. The world doesn’t know about the Alascer’s, but the world knows about the Shadows. They know about Malachi Adler and his family.”

?I couldn’t argue that logic, but it still didn’t excuse Malachi from keeping it from me. “So, we have some answers, but still not the ones we need. We still need to find Blanchard,” I told her. “Do you know that name? Do you know what your mom found out about us that made them go after you?”

?Her throat bobbed. “No,” she stated evenly. “She, like Malachi, liked to keep secrets from us. Important ones. If they know about me and the program, perhaps we can come to the conclusion that they are program failures. Bitter that I survived, and that mom found whatever secret out. Perhaps they want to destroy Malachi and think that going after me would help with that. Why does it matter?” she asked, shaking her head. “They’re trying to kill me, so we need to kill them first.”

?All of her stitches still looked good, the shallow cuts already healing. “Arms down,” I instructed.

?She winced, her jaw feathering, as she lowered her hands to her stomach.

?My eyes lingered on her perfect breasts, my cock throbbing. Fuck, I missed her. I missed touching her, feeling her wrapped around my cock.

?“Jack,” she whispered, her voice thick.

?My eyes lifted to hers, finding her pupils fully dilated. God-fucking-dammit. “Keep it in your pants, Bennett,” I told her, checking the injuries on her shoulders.

?I leaned in, pulling her bandages up, checking those stitches. It had been one of the deeper cuts other than the stab wounds.

?“You can’t trust him,” she whispered in my ear when I was close enough, causing me to still.

?I leaned back just enough to meet her eyes, my brows furrowing. “Who?”

?Her eyes were flaming, unblinking. “We disappeared to escape him,” she said quietly. “Blanchard is an alias.Hisalias. Mom taught him everything she knew about this world. A little over two years ago, 2017, something changed. Mom thinks someone got to him, maybe it had to do with the secret she found out about, but there was no proof, all we could do was run.”

?That was the problem with this world. People could jump sides whenever they wanted. Corruption was everywhere, in everyone. There was always something else around the corner.

?Rae’s father switched sides two years ago for an unknown reason, they ran. Rae stayed gone for a while before they found her, trapped her, tortured her into forgetting before releasing her back into the world to play this game, against the wishes of whoever his boss now is. There could be a lot of reasons they went after Marla and Rae now. Maybe his boss had no idea who they were and letting Charles go after them was a kind of payment for joining him. Or maybe it was a test and Charles was okay with completing it because he found out about the affair.

?Maybe the bosses were tied in with whatever Marla found out or maybe that didn’t come into play at all. Maybe that secret didn’t matter in the slightest.

?It could be half a dozen different other reasons.

?“Charles hired the four then,” I said, reapplying the bandage when I felt the stitches were still good.

?She nodded, coming to the same conclusion as me. It truly didn’t matter the real reasoning though, whatever Marla had found out about us or why her father switched sides, what mattered now was finding them and giving them what was owed to them. We’d put the rest of the pieces together when he was in chains.

?“I have to ask you a few more questions,” I told her, easing her to a sit.

?She grunted and winced, sliding her hand over the wound that had bled this morning. I wasn’t sure why she whispered it to me, maybe she worried about Zo’s reaction. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter, I had to tell Zo.

?“Whatever you need.”

?Zo sat back on the coffee table, studying her as I sat beside her. She held out a glass of water to her, which Rae took gratefully, gulping it down.

?“What’s your favorite color?” I asked, searching her eyes.

?She adjusted herself, trading Zo the cup for her nightgown. “Growing up, it had always been pink, as an adult, it’s r-r-r—” She snarled and shook her head. “R-r-r…” She closed her eyes and worked her jaw, breathing through her nose. “Blue,” she spit out as if she were choking on something. “Dark blue. Fuck.”

?I helped ease the nightgown on. “You’ve remembered a lot, but the programming is still sewn into you. It’ll take some time before it fades completely.”

?“I know,” she snapped and then closed her eyes. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” she went on, finding my eyes. “I’m not angry at you.”

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