Page 4 of The Pretty Savage

"But the job is done?" I made a face, telling him everything he needed to know. "Oh," he murmured when I refused to say anything verbally. "Alena mentioned something."

"Yeah." Something that kept me awake and ate at my insides. "Do you know what it is about?"

"I have no idea, kid," he murmured, leaning closer to me. "But if he's here, then it's something big."

Yeah, that was what I was afraid of. Master rarely ever came to the control center. He didn't have to.

There were people that could do his dirty work, while he gallivanted all over the globe, pretending to be a perfect citizen when in reality he led one of the biggest shadow organizations in the world. I always laughed whenever I saw the photos he posted on his Storygram, hiding the monster that lived inside of him, dancing with his daughters, kissing his wife.

He had no idea that I was watching.

I’d learned the hard way that none of these people, no matter how much we seemed to care for each other, truly loved me. None of them would take a bullet for me, and I wouldn’t take a bullet for them. So I kept my enemies close, and those that seemed to be my friends even closer, because it was always those that were closest to you that would betray you if they had a chance.

"Well," I took a step back, "I'm gonna go find Alena and see if she knows anything."

"You didn't kill anyone important recently, did you?" he asked matter-of-factly, since we all knew how I was. "I mean, if you did, we could hide it together, you know?" Laughter bubbled up over my lips, spilling into the otherwise quiet room.

"Thank you, Thomas," I squeezed his bicep. "But I'm fine. I have been a good girl lately."

"Why don't I believe you?"

"Because you know me," I answered with a grin, walking backward. "I'll see you later. Hopefully."

Because we both knew if they weren't happy with me, I probably wouldn’t have been here for the meeting. They wouldn’t exactly bring me in for a questioning. No, they would’ve gotten rid of me, turning me into just another number on the board of people that were presumed missing.

If The Schatten wasn’t happy with me, I was as good as dead.

My mother was a monster.

A perfect leviathan that knew how to hide her true nature from the rest of the world, until she made a mistake. She was the boogeyman other mothers warned their children about, but she was still my mother. She still loved me in the only way she knew how to, and she still made sure I was safe.

But her monstrous nature always prevailed, no matter how hard she tried to fight it. Or maybe it was her fight-or-flight instinct, but often it was difficult distinguishing between monsters and victims, and I had no idea which category my mom fell into.

I guess it came as no surprise that I became a monster too. After all, genes were wondrous things, and we carried the sins of our parents in our bones, even when we tried to forget it. The generational trauma, the fear they felt, the atrocities they committed, all of it traveled with us, and we couldn’t evade it.

And for me—I was too young to even try. I never knew a life without violence. I never knew the color of carpet that had no bloodstains on it.

Maybe that was why I accepted The Schatten easier than some other people. Maybe that was why I became an agent at the age of ten, instead of eighteen like many other kids that were brought to The Schatten Estate. After the police took away my mom, the social workers huddled in, taking me to one of the homes for kids like me. But after three failed foster families within two years, and a lot of weird looks from the ladies that worked at that house, I knew I was anything but acceptable for them. The first place I lived in was nothing but bare walls and sounds of crying echoing around the walls, telling me I would never fit in there.

I still remembered the day when a man and woman walked into the room I was called to when I was just seven years old, telling me they just wanted to talk to me. Five days later I was packing what little belongings I had in the black, plastic bag I was provided and moving to the other side of the country—to The Schatten Estate.

But the sense of belonging, the sense of having a home, was something that evaded me, no matter how many times I lied to myself that The Schatten was my home.

I lied to myself that they were my fucked-up little family, even though I had no love for most of them. Perhaps because they were familiar, the only thing I truly ever knew, and no matter how much I hated this life or how much I wanted to get out, habits were a hard thing to shake off. As I searched the rooms for Alena and Master, I couldn't help but feel the fear slowly coming alive in my heart, because I didn't want to lose the only thing I knew.

And fear wasn't something we often felt.

It was our enemy, the emotion they killed in us from the moment we stepped into training. The first time my lip quivered and my hands shook, my handler slapped me across the face, making me see stars.

I wished that was the worst thing they had done to me in all my time with them.

It happened just six months after I came to The Schatten Estate, realizing slowly what was happening here. But once you were in, there was no going out, and blinded, brainwashed, and desperate for love, I accepted everything they threw at me, because I was trying to fill the void left behind by the lack of my mother’s presence.

The first time I found a bunny in the backyard of our orphanage and brought him inside, my handler took him and sliced the knife over the bunny's neck, showing me how love could make us weak.

And I only ever made the mistake of thinking about love once after that day.

I had simply pushed it all into the little dark chest in the center of my being, making myself forget about all the emotions that could not benefit me.

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