Page 3 of The Pretty Savage

An exasperated sigh left her, telling me everything I needed to know—she didn't want to deal with my shit tonight. "Of course you do. Send me your location and I'll see who's around to send there."

"I already did. You might want to tell them to hurry up. It's a busy area."

"Vega!" she admonished. "We talked about this. You can't go around and kill people wherever you want to."

"No," I chuckled. "You talked, I listened, and I decided that it wasn't gonna work for me. Besides," I looked down at Chad, whose lifeless eyes were now staring blankly up at me, "this one deserved to be taken off of the streets."

"Don't they all?" It wasn't a question, but a statement, and while I didn't know much about her past life, I knew that the horrors she had seen have shaped her into the ruthless woman she was today. "I'll send someone."

"Okay. See y?—"

"Vega," she stopped me just as I was about to drop the call. "I need you to come back to the command center." My frown deepened. "There's been, uh… a change of plans."

"A change of plans?" I deadpanned. "What kind of change?" Silence met me from the other side, her breathing the only indication that she was still with me. "Alena?"

"Master wants to see you."

Everything stopped.

My breathing.

My heart.

My train of thought.

Master rarely came to the command center, and whenever he would stop by it was never for anything good.

“I’ll be there,” I murmured, dropping the call and putting the phone into my back pocket quickly, as if it would burn me.

2

VEGA

Memories were so often the balm we needed whenever the world became too loud and when the pressure on us was too much to bear. We held on to them tightly, afraid to ever let go, because they were sometimes the only things that were tethering us to the ground. For most, the best memories were those of their first bicycle, their first pet, and that really special birthday their parents had arranged for them, but my first memorable moment was the dark hallway and the command center buzzing with activity. My first memory was an image of a woman, not much older than I was now, with her blonde hair tied up into a high ponytail and cold eyes that felt as if they could see deep into my soul. There was no warmth there, no smiles for a seven-year-old child, but it felt… right. It felt like home, no matter how fucked up that thought was.

It felt like a place I could call my own, and now, thirteen years later, I could still remember the scent of the rain that fell on that day, and the passing houses as my handler at the time drove us toward the place where anything could happen. Where I could do whatever the hell I wanted.

I could only blame myself for mistaking a prison for a home. It took me years to realize that just because someone had offered me a house, it didn’t mean that they had my best intentions in mind. The fake smiles, the feigned politeness—those were always at the forefront of my mind whenever I thought about our home base. This was the place where I met Alena for the first time, and sometimes I feared that this would be the place where I would die.

But now, as I walked down that same hallway that once brought me peace, I felt nothing but dread, because this was the first time Master had cut a mission short. It was the first time in years that he had called me into his office, and I had no idea why.

My brain kept going over every scenario from the moment I left that alley, through my red-eye flight out of New York and all the way to this morning. And I hated the unknown. I hated being kept in the dark, and to say that the call I had with Alena fucked with my head would be the understatement of the year.

"Hey, V," Thomas, one of the older operatives, greeted me the moment I stepped inside the control room, while the rest of the people turned around as soon as they saw me. You could say that I, well… I didn't exactly play well with others. Most of the operatives in our organization had partners, while I preferred to work alone.

Every single partner I had in the past had only managed to slow me down, and nothing else. But then again, most of them haven't lived in the shadows since they were kids. Most of these people joined The Schatten organization because they were fed up with the government, and because they didn't care about toeing on the wrong side of the law. Some mistook it for an organization that was actually fighting against organized crime, and those dreams would always be shattered whenever they realized that we weren't the heroes.

We were the villains.

We were mercenaries, paid by those that wanted more power, more money. Those that knew people who needed to disappear. But that didn't mean I couldn’t play with them in my own way, which, granted, got me into more trouble than anyone else, but it was worth it.

They were paying us, but I wasn’t interested in their rules—I already had mine.

"Hey, Thomas," I greeted him back, going down the small set of stairs to the center of the room where he stood. "Fancy meeting you here."

"I'm always here, kid." He smirked, because we both knew that the only time he went out in the field was when Alena begged him to do so. An ex-Navy SEAL, Thomas turned his back on everything he ever knew and joined The Schatten with no regrets—or at least that was what he always said, lying through his teeth. The truth was a lot more bitter than the lie, and you couldn't exactly wrap a pretty bow around the truth that ate you alive. "What are you doing here?" he asked instead, arching an eyebrow. "I thought you were in New York."

"I was, but not anymore."

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