Page 41 of The Pretty Savage

My mind was frozen, my breathing chopped, labored, the name of the organization feeling like poison spreading through my body, destroying what little sanity I had.

"The Schatten," I whispered, unable to keep my eyes off of Vega, and as I turned around, searching for her in the crowd, I realized she was now standing at the front line. Her face was clear of any emotions as she gazed up at the hanging girl while her friend's lips kept moving.

"Exactly," Jax confirmed. "The Schatten. I have no idea how she got here or what is the deal with her, but I'm going to find out. I mean, I’m not sure that she is the one working with them, but if she is?—"

"Leave that to me," I bit out, narrowing my eyes at her. If she worked for The Schatten, for the one organization I wanted to see fall more than I wanted to destroy my father, then she wasn't someone I would want in my bed.

She was someone I needed to incinerate.

She was a snake, and snakes weren't allowed in my Garden of Eden.

15

VEGA

I stared at the girl hanging from the rope even as the majority of the people that were gathered around started dispersing. And I stared, and fucking stared, until the incoming headache started warning me that I had to move and look somewhere else, and possibly eat and get on with my day, but I couldn't move.

I was good at putting on a show, a face, a mask reserved for the rest of the world, but the moment I saw the state of the poor girl, the way she was tied with her hands behind her back and the slices over her stomach, I felt sick. Yolanda kept freaking out and I knew it was my duty to calm her down, but I couldn't calm the tempest inside my own heart.

I’d seen this kind of thing before. I had been trained for this kind of thing with The Schatten, but I refused to participate in their little games when they wanted to send messages to their enemies.

I had heard from other people that this was Rebecca Aberron, one of the girls I fought with yesterday and won. The one that pummeled into me as if her life depended on it, and while I didn't personally know her, I felt the grief over the loss of her life. Maybe she wasn't innocent—none of us were, at least not at the Academy—but whoever killed her did it in the most inhumane way possible, leaving her hanging and exposed.

I had no idea if The Schatten had done it or if it was somebody else imitating the technique, but it left me with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. My nerves were already frayed as it was, and I couldn't shake off the feeling of being watched, just like the multiple other times after arriving here.

I was looking forward to the start of classes, to the possibility of snooping around and learning more about this place. Wanting to learn more about the notorious Adrian Zylla, who was described to me by Yolanda, in great detail might I add, as the scariest one of the bunch. And I could see why he would terrify her, but he wasn't the biggest monster I’d ever had the pleasure of encountering.

Whoever did this, though… That person was a monster.

"Are you coming?" Yolanda asked, approaching me slowly after standing for the last ten minutes with a couple I didn't know, talking in hushed voices. "There's going to be a general assembly, and it seems that classes will be canceled for the day." Exactly what I didn't want.

"Yeah." I nodded absentmindedly. "I need to go to the toilet first," I said, looking over at her just as the guards started lowering down the girl, finally putting her soul out of its misery. "Can you just show me where to go?"

"Yeah," she murmured, looking over her shoulder toward the entrance, where the three guards started putting Rebecca's body into a black bag. "Come on. I don't want us to be too late."

She started walking ahead of me, heading straight for the main entrance, her eyes firmly plastered on the door, avoiding the sight of the body and the dried blood on the ground. On the other hand, I couldn't help but look.

Rebecca's eyes were missing along with the skin on her face, making her look like something out of a horror movie. I should've been used to all the death and horrors considering what I did, and maybe to a point, I was used to it, but there was a massive difference between killing as part of your job and torturing someone and humiliating them like this.

Yolanda was a few steps ahead of me, already reaching the door, when my eyes landed on the carved inscription on Rebecca's belly, making my steps falter.

In the shadows we live, read the long, angry slashes marring her pale skin. But it wasn't the sight of her or the visual that had my heart pounding, threatening to jump out of my chest. It was the meaning behind those words.

The same words they made us swear when we joined The Schatten, promising we would stick to the shadows and make ourselves invisible. Promising we would obey each and every order from our superiors and hide from the rest of the world.

"Fuck," I breathed out, knowing without a doubt that whoever did this had some kind of connection to The Schatten. But who? And why would they send another person here when they already had me?

Most of all, why would they kill Rebecca?

I dug through my brain, trying to remember the family she was from, and when it finally came to me it still made no sense. Her family was tied to the Italian mafia, but they weren't big fish. More like foot soldiers that did the bidding of one of the families by keeping up with appearances and having more or less legal businesses.

Why fucking kill her?

"Vega?" Yolanda called out for me. "We gotta hurry if you need to go to the toilet."

"I'm coming," I croaked out, keeping my eyes on Rebecca as they zipped up the black bag, walking toward the door. The pain in my body was nothing compared to the turmoil in my heart at the sight this morning.

Yolanda kept hovering over me like a mother hen, making sure I was okay to stand, but it was as if my entire body froze the moment my eyes landed on Rebecca, making me forget all about the pain and the fact that with every breath I took my ribs screamed in pain.

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