Page 18 of Beautiful Vengeance

“Of course I’m sure,” he snapped, growing irritated. “She doesn’t move like Kiyomi moves.”

“What? How can you know that? She might have changed her posture or gait, or—”

“No. It’s not her.” This woman might resemble Kiyomi in some ways, but to him the difference was obvious. This woman didn’t have half the grace or poise that Kiyomi did.Noone did.

He shoved back his chair and stood, abruptly turning for the door. “Keep searching. And don’t ask me to look at anything else unless it’s a near-perfect match.”

Because he couldn’t take any more disappointments where she was concerned.

Chapter Six

She’d been dreading this moment for a long time now.

Confronting the empty chair before her the next morning, Kiyomi tamped down the urge to fidget or shift in her seat. Of all the things she’d done in therapy so far, this empty chair exercise was the hardest by far.

She’d done it twice already using different scenarios, and each time the emotional toll was greater. Though she’d been dreading this particular session for weeks, it was necessary if she ever wanted a chance at healing the wounds inside her so she could have a somewhat “normal” life after this was all over.

Today’s session was going to either make her or break her.

She was conscious of Trinity sitting off to the side of the room situated above the stables, watching silently. Kiyomi had asked her to be here for this. No one else could understand what was about to happen better than Trin, and if Kiyomi’s fears came true and she lost it, at least Trin would be there to cushion the fall.

“Are you comfortable?” the female therapist asked on screen via the secure video chat they used for these sessions. She had worked with Trinity for the past few years, her credentials were impeccable and she was a retired Air Force colonel. Trinity had sworn by her and her discretion, so Kiyomi had agreed to give it a try.

“Yes.” She might seem composed on the outside, but inside she was a giant freaking knot of nerves, afraid of what would happen when she cracked open the vault she’d sealed all of this shit inside years ago and subsequently just kept stuffing more into it.

“All right. You know what this involves. Last time we talked about what eight-year-old Kiyomi was feeling after her mother died and she was placed into foster care and then into the Program. Today we’re moving forward in time.”

Kiyomi took a deep breath, keeping her expression impassive. It felt like she was under a spotlight. Even here in the safety of this private room, with only the therapist and Trinity as an audience, she was still programmed not to show discomfort or fear.

“In the chair in front of you, I want you to imagine a teenage Kiyomi. She’s sixteen, maybe seventeen. Can you picture her?”

“Yes.” She was a hardened version of her younger self by then, though not nearly as hard as she would become in a few short years after that.

“What does she look like?”

She described her image of teenage Kiyomi. The teenager was dressed in form-hugging clothes, her long hair styled perfectly straight as it fell around her breasts. Her posture was stiff, her eyes watchful. Mistrustful.

“What’s happened to her in the past few months?”

Her stomach muscles grabbed, the painful things she’d shoved into her emotional vault pounding against the inside of the lid with angry fists. She forced her body to relax and took a calming breath. This was so hard. “Training.”

“What sort of training?”

“CQB. Weapons. Recon. Infiltration.” Plus a million other things, mostly to do with honing her powers of seduction and manipulation.

“Anything else significant?”

Yes. The thing that had put that hard edge into teenage Kiyomi’s gaze. “Sex.”

The therapist made a soft sound of acknowledgment. “Tell me more about that.”

The therapist already knew most of this because they’d talked about it beforehand. But the whole point of this exercise was to allow Kiyomi to feel empathy for the girl in the empty chair. To grieve for all she’d been through, and everything she’d been deprived of.

Her fingers twitched in her lap before she could control them, her heart rate increasing already. This was going to hurt so bad… “It was her first time.”

“I see. Was it consensual?”

She hesitated. “Yes. Or at least, she thought so at the time.”

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