Page 83 of Beautiful Vengeance

Except Megan’s taunt did hit home. Somehow the words pierced all the armor, finding the one weak spot she hid away from the rest of the world. Janelle tightened her jaw.

I’m not defeated. Fuck you all, I willneverbe defeated.

“Yep,” Amber agreed. “I’ve got the blueprints for your facility, a roster of your minions, intelligence officials complicit with your activities, a list of private donors, and —oh, what was that other thing?” she asked, turning to glance at Trinity, still at the back of the room.

Trinity smirked, holding Janelle’s gaze. “All your money. Every last fucking penny. It’s gone.” She raised her eyebrows in an insolent expression. “Poof.”

They’re lying.

But against her will, her heart constricted. There was no way. No way they could have found everything. She’d been too careful.

Without her money, she couldn’t finish her facility. Couldn’t fund the private lab she’d gone to such lengths to secure, or conduct the experiments necessary for her plan.

“It’s over,” Amber said in a flat voice. “You failed. And now you’re going to pay for everything you did.”

Janelle didn’t answer, but she couldn’t stop the reflexive raising of her chin. Despite what they might think to the contrary, she’d never hated her nieces. They’d merely been a convenient means to an end.

But now she did. She loathed them with every fiber of her being. Wished she could break her chains, dive across this table and smash their too-familiar faces in.

Relax. Don’t let them get to you. You haven’t lost. There’s still time.

Megan’s jaw flexed as she stared at Janelle with utter revulsion. All these years later, the initial recruiting reports had been right. She was far more emotional than her sister and had a harder time controlling it. She wouldn’t have made it past the initial screening phase in Janelle’s new program.

“Anything to say for yourself,Auntie?” Megan taunted.

Janelle refused to give them the satisfaction of a single word in reply. They were nothing to her.

Megan snorted. “Great talk. And since you’re not going to give us jack, this interview’s over. You’re being transferred to a max-security MI6 facility where you’ll be held until your extradition to the U.S. They’ll hold you there in some dark pit in solitary confinement while you await trial, and then you’ll stay there until the day you get the needle.”

“Yep,” Amber agreed, leaning forward to prop her arms on the table as she faced Janelle. “And when they eventually strap you to that table and stick that needle in your vein? I’m going to be there watching. Smiling. Maybe I’ll even do the honors myself. Enjoying every second of sending you to hell where you belong.”

Megan stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the concrete floor. Amber didn’t move. She sat there holding Janelle’s gaze for several minutes.

Neither one of them blinked, both refusing to be the one to give in. Janelle almost chuckled at the childishness of it. Pity Amber hadn’t been as beautiful as Kiyomi. Amber had a steely core Janelle could admire. This entire effort would have been so much easier if she could just have used her own niece instead.

Finally, Amber pushed back from the table. “We’re done. Next time you see me, it’ll be when you die.” She followed Megan to the door.

Trinity started after them, then stopped and faced Janelle. “Oh, and Kiyomi? Is gone. Flown out this afternoon to some place you could never find her—even if you hadn’t been chained up like the psychotic animal you are.” She walked past Amber and Megan to open the door. Two guards in body armor came in, both holding shock wands.

Amber paused in the doorway to face her one more time. “I’m glad our parents died in that accident. At least our mother never had to find out what a monster she was related to.”

Janelle gritted her teeth against a cry of pain as the assholes lifting her from her chair jerked her sideways, jarring her shoulder as Amber’s words reverberated through her skull. They thought they’d won?

Hardly. As soon as she got out of here and captured Kiyomi, she could create the perfect breed of female assassin on her own in a fraction of the time it would have taken to get through all the government sanctions and other bullshit. She could do it her way, following her own rules.

But that old demon of resentment rose up once again. The need to prove everyone wrong and always have the upper hand.

Lifting her chin, she gave her nieces a taunting smirk and a parting shot. “What makes you think it was an accident?”

****

Marcus leaned forward, elbows on his knees as he watched Kiyomi, waiting for a response after he finished speaking. After helping her shower and tucking her into his bed at Laidlaw Hall, he’d just told her everything about what Amber and Megan’s aunt Jane had intended.

Every evil, twisted and disgusting detail he’d learned from Amber and Trinity throughout the last sixteen hours. Things that kept him from sleeping far more than the pain in his hip and shoulder. “Say something, love.”

She stared pensively into the fire, gently stroking Karas’s head with her right hand. The dog wasn’t allowed up on the bed, but Marcus had made an exception because Karas wouldn’t leave Kiyomi’s side, and Kiyomi seemed to draw comfort from her presence. “I hate her,” she finally said, so softly he had to strain to hear her.

He settled beside her in the bed, fully clothed, and took her right hand. Her left arm was still bound to her chest, her fingers swollen and discolored. She had to be hurting all over, but she’d refused all but one dose of pain meds prior to the drive back here earlier. “I hate her too.”

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