Page 67 of The Puppetmaster

He suggests a shrug. “Because I felt like it. And because I like you.”

Heat rushes through my body and all the way up to my cheeks. Did he really just say that? He likes me?

“How can that be?” I blurt out helplessly. “How can you like someone like me?”

There it is again. That reoccurring doubt. He knows my darkest secret, he knows how cruel I am, how heavily the guilt weighs on me. Yet he claims to like me.

He sighs heavily and wraps an arm around me before he squeezes me closely.

“Alena,” he says in a voice softer than I’ve heard him speak before. “You should really let that go. Give yourself a break.”

Let it go.

There it is again, that one command that has elevated me so often, granting me a gratification that is intangible.

But it doesn’t work for this. I can’t just let it go, and I shouldn’t. Too heavy weighs the guilt that’s been a constant reminder of my troubled character for years.

I almost killed a person. I destroyed that person’s life forever.

How could I ever let that go?

Chapter 41

Alena

Dear Puppetmaster,

There is something that almost no one knows about me, a dark secret that I keep hidden from anyone new who enters my life.

But I want to make an exception with you. Because you’re not just anybody.

You’re the man whose strings I want to hang from, and you’ve already given me a taste of the salvation that awaits the lucky ones who are chosen to become yours.

Please take this story for what it is: the most valuable thing I can give you.

I trust you will handle it with care.

Okay… here it goes.

I’m not a lady. I can walk in heels, I can doll myself up to appear like one, and I can be soft like one, but where I come from, none of these virtues mattered.

Physical violence has always been a part of my life, for as long as I can remember.

But no, whatever you’re thinking now is wrong. I’m not a victim. There was no abusive father or mother, no bullies in school who I had to fend off, no brothers or sisters who were beating me up any chance they got.

It wasn’t like that.

It was rough where we grew up, that’s for sure. There were gangs and drug dealers on every street corner and it was so normal for me that I hardly noticed. I wasn’t aware how dangerous our neighborhood was until later, until I started high school, because that was the time when everybody started pointing out to me how dangerous my life was.

I was surprised at their words to say the least. Because how could I realize that what I knew wasn’t normal? My reality was a pit of darkness and I never even noticed.

But I knew one thing: violence. If you want something, you have to take it. And if someone is threatening you or the ones you love, you have to fight. A simple set of rules dictated my entire upbringing.

I wasn’t exactly a member of any of the gangs that controlled our hood, but I was a force to be reckoned with. I was stronger than I looked and I was schooled in combat because I took martial arts classes from an early age. I earned respect with my fists, even though I looked like someone who’d duck away if anything ever came flying her way.

That was probably my biggest asset. People underestimated me.

But it was also my downfall, because I had no self-control.

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