Page 85 of V for Vindictive

“I see your sass hasn’t changed,” she complained with her smiling mouth giving her away. “I worried this world would beat it out of you.”

Grabbing her hand with mine, I took a ginger sip of my warm coffee and stared out at the endless sea. “It tried, but I’m the granddaughter of one badass bitch.”

Grams clicked her tongue, but she beamed with the compliment. She tugged me closer and brought our heads together. It was a moment where we both closed our eyes and simply enjoyed the silence and much-needed embrace.

Then she released me and leaned against the balcony rail, her intelligent eyes breaking apart the secrets I kept hidden in my heart. “I know you’re an adult and full-fledged Hunter now…” I glared, and she smirked. “Oh, don’t give me that look. You’ll always be a Hunter. Those bastards at the Organization can’t take that from you, Vivienne. Remember that. AHunter isn’t what they made you; a Hunter is what you made yourself, and the code is the same. We still believe in keeping the innocent safe, even if it looks different now.”

Grams always did believe in the code of a Hunter. Even without the Organization, that didn’t change for her. It was the entire reason she pushed me to think for myself, not to simply do what I was told. Not to trust someone else’s version of life. And I was grateful at the very least she encouraged me to use my head instead of blindly following orders. Maybe that was her way of preparing me for this shit-show. Maybe that was the seed of rebellion she’d planted.

“You’ve been lost since…” Grams trailed off, her soft-spoken words dying on the salty wind.

I wasn’t used to the woman being at a loss for words, and I shifted uncomfortably. “I unfairly blamed you, Grams.”

She lifted her hand, lips thinning and eyes watering. I took a step forward, intent on hugging the woman for all she was worth. It was rare for my grandmother to show emotion, and it made my throat constrict so tight I had to swallow several times to soothe the discomfort. But when I tried to get close, Grams shook her head and crossed her arms, rejecting me.

“No, V. This is on me. I was so afraid of what it might do to you, I forgot that life is unfair and ruthless. It comes for you whether or not you’re ready. I was wrong to keep the truth from you. It only made it harder on you. It left you vulnerable and afraid to embrace the greatest parts of life,” she entreated, her tone afflicted with so much regret it was heartbreaking to hear on the normally confident woman.

“Grams…”

She swallowed visibly, wiping away renegade tears with angry fingers, and set her determined eyes on me. “The days ahead will test you more than the ones of the past, and I know you’re confused and struggling to understand who it is you are and what you want. If it’s one thing I can tell you, love and life are complicated without the struggles you face. You’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to hurt yourself and others when you do. But it’s in those times of error we truly learn about ourselves, so I don’t want you to be afraid of stumbling.”

Tears tumbled down my face, but I stood strong against the abrupt wind hitting our bodies and the emotion shamelessly burning down my cheeks.

My grandmother finally smiled and reached her hand out to me. Biting my lower lip, I grabbed it and she squeezed once before heading inside. “Oh, and V,” she called out as my gaze followed her into the room.

“Yeah?”

Her eyes trailed over to the door before finding their way back to me. “Sloan’s a good man. Phillip is too, if not a little self-centered. But I think it’s okay for you to spend some time figuring out who makes you the happiest.” My lips twitched into a smile before she added, “You’re young. Explore a little. Kiss a few, or kiss them all. Isn’t that what the kids are doing nowadays, anyway? Hitting it and quitting it?”

Did my grams just say“Hitting it and quitting it?”Who the fuck was this lady? She certainly wasn’t my grams.

I call bullshit.

Words escaped me, and I just stood there like a dumbass, gawking at the woman who’d never talked about sex my entire fucking life.

Grams shrugged with a sneaky grin, her eyes looking off somewhere in the distance, to days long ago. “I loved your Gramps, but I only knew thatafter I’d gotten into my fair share of beds. At one time, I easily shuffled through four or five.”

My eyes widened, and hers twinkled like that was exactly what she was aiming for.

Sadist.

“We were all consenting adults, V. And busy. Like me, they weren’t terribly concerned with being in a relationship, and it was fun. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

What the actual fuck…

Four or fivepeople? Grams, the same lady who lived and breathed fighting, had a roster of friends with benefits? Booty calls? Who was this person? Who replaced Grams with this sexy imposter who apparently Marilyn Monroe’d the Hunter world at some point? Forget the fact that she’d gone from talking about regrets to now pushing this extreme narrative of “Love one, love all, embrace your ho-ho, V!” but I couldn’t reconcile the woman standing in front of me with the woman who’d painstakingly raised me over the years.

Maybe nymphomaniacs run in the family.

Before I could demand Grams explain herself, she waved at me and left the room. I was abandoned to my thoughts, blindsided by yet another mind-boggling plot twist. And for some reason, I couldn’t get the theme song fromPokémonout of my head, unintentionally singing “Gotta catch them all” under my breath as I rushed to dress and head downstairs.

“You’re still here?” I asked, flabbergasted by a familiar figure looming in the sitting room.

Phillip was off gathering some much-needed intel on the boyband of evil-doers working under Lux, and Grams had dragged Kris with her to do something she refused to talk about. It was all very James Bond of her as she whispered like I didn’t have the hearing of a goddamn creature of the night,“Don’t say a word to her, you hear?”

Kris only smiled at me apologetically before she was whisked off to a place I wasn’t allowed to know to do something I was also not permitted to know. But Grams never did anything maliciously, and despite the letter I’d pored over for weeks when she first left, I wasn’t concerned she’d never come back.

I wasn’t worried about losing her again.

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