Page 6 of The Pretty Savage

"For me?" The last time he had something special for me was a handgun he had put in my hand and my first mission at barely above the age of ten. "What is it?"

That smile came back on his face, his eyes filled with mischief. "Let's go to my office. We can talk there."

He didn't wait for either of us to answer or to make sure we would follow him as he started going toward his office. That was how cocksure he was of his power, even as it slipped, that we would do everything he wanted us to do no matter what.

But not for long. Not for much longer.

"Calm down," Alena hissed, wrapping her hand around my upper arm as I took a step forward. "Don't let him piss you off."

"I'm not pissed," I lied. I was furious, but I couldn't let him see that. I couldn't let him see that I was looking forward to the end of this mission if only to be rid of this world. I had my own money now. I’d saved everything I could over the years, and I had enough to start a completely new life.

The problem was, I would never be able to live in peace for as long as he lived.

3

VEGA

The stale cigar stench slammed into me the moment Alena and I entered Heinrich's office, finding him seated behind his large mahogany desk, with his lips wrapped around the offending cigar. His eyes were firmly plastered to the two of us as Alena closed the door behind her and followed me toward the two chairs placed in front of him.

The dark brown tones that were used in the design of this office made it seem so much smaller, as did the fact that the man always kept the curtains pulled over the windows, not allowing any light to push through. This place had been making me fucking claustrophobic from that very first time I stepped in here, and with the exception of a few new books, everything else still looked the same.

"Would you ladies like to have something to drink?" he asked us the moment we sat down. Poison, maybe, so I wouldn't have to listen to him talk anymore? "Some coffee for you, Vega? You look tired."

God, I wanted to erase the smug look off his face, but instead of jumping over the table and doing just that, I gripped the armrests of the chair and leaned back, smiling at him.

"No, thank you. I would much rather get this over with so that I can go and sleep, but thank you for your concern. While we're at it," I leaned forward, feigning concern, "you look rather pale, Heinrich. Are you okay? Is it your heart again?" The color drained from his face, the cigar hanging loosely between his fingers, and a teeny-tiny triumphant dance ensued in the middle of my chest, because I wanted him to know.

He was a monster but he was still just a human, and his health… Well, let's just say that he wasn't a twenty-year-old billionaire anymore.

"If you want to, we could train together while you're here. I mean, all that extra weight around your belly cannot be healthy, right? What did your doctor say?" The tic in his jaw started becoming prominent, those beady, dark eyes narrowing ever so slightly, and we both understood what I was trying to say.

He could try and make my life a living hell. He could even try to make me disappear, but I knew things about him no one else did. I knew things because I made it my mission to know every nitty-gritty detail about his life, about his family, his two daughters, and the one son he barely ever talked to because he got a woman that wasn't his wife pregnant. I knew the shopping route his wife, Ingrid, took, and I had his youngest daughter Emilia’s schedule for her classes at the University of Frankfurt. I knew the plate number of Ilse's car, his older daughter, and I knew the code to enter her building. I knew more than he could ever hope to know about me, and the difference between the two of us was that I had nothing left to lose.

He taught us that love and family would only bring heartache and unnecessary weakness, but he forgot to heed his own advice and went and got himself stuck with a family he supposedly never wanted to have.

"I'm fine," he spat out, extinguishing the cigar in an ashtray, while the smoke wafted around him. "Thank you for your concern, Vega." Translation: you made your point, Vega. And I did. I made my fucking point and he better listen to the hidden warning in all those words.

"If that's what you want." I shrugged, leaning back into the chair. "My offer always stands. You know I always loved training with you."

"I do," he murmured, placing his elbows on top of the table. "But training is not why we're here."

Alena shuffled in her seat right next to me, but I refused to look at her. He had something for me, and judging by that self-satisfied smirk on his face, it was something big, otherwise he wouldn't have brought me here.

"This came for you." He picked up a black envelope I failed to notice earlier and threw it to the other side of the desk, close to me. "I had to pull quite a lot of strings for this, but?—"

"What's this?" I asked, taking the envelope in my right hand, still looking at Heinrich.

"Open it," he urged.

"What. Is. This?" I gritted out, still looking at him and refusing to open the envelope. I could feel something underneath my fingertips, engraved on the other side, but I didn't want to look. I had an inkling of what it was, because he couldn't shut up about that particular place for years when I was a kid. Only one of us ever went there, and he never came back.

"Come on now, Vega," he chuckled. "Don't be stubborn. Just open it."

I turned to my left, looking at Alena's seemingly cold expression, but her eyes couldn't lie. She knew about this and didn't have enough time to warn me. She knew how much I suffered when the only person I ever cared about in this hellhole had to go there. When Tyler, a guy that was like a brother to me, was sent to St. Vasili's Academy, only to go missing not even three months later, never to be found.

I begged, pleaded with Heinrich to send me there, to let me find him, but he refused, telling me there was nothing I could do. And besides, it wasn't as if they would just let a child waltz in there. St. Vasili's Academy was a school that was once just a church, gifted by Karel Cerny in 1170 to Heinrich der Löwe, the Prince of Bavaria, as a wedding gift to him and his new wife, Matilde.

But ten years after the Second World War, people like the Schafer family along with many other shadow organizations, thought it would be a good idea to have a school for people like me—people that were trained assassins, and people that would one day inherit their crime empires.

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