Page 8 of The Pretty Savage

"Okay," I nodded, hoping I didn't just sign my death sentence, "I'll do it."

And the creepy smile that erupted on Heinrich's face the moment those words tumbled over my lips was a sight I would never forget.

“You know,” Heinrich murmured. “A lot of people told me I was a fool for taking such a young child in, but I’m glad that they all were wrong. Some people carry violence in their blood, but you, my darling—you are the embodiment of violence.”

He had no fucking idea.

4

VEGA

You would've thought that working for a secret organization would mean that I would get to fly on a private jet with all the other perks people so often wrote about in the books Alena liked to read. Well, they were all wrong.

There were no private jets or direct flights to Munich, because Heinrich operated in a paranoid state, and he never wanted us to go directly to the places we had our missions at. Hell, most of the time I had to connect at least two or three flights just to get to the simplest of fucking places, because he didn't want anyone to figure out where we were going or where we were coming from.

It didn't matter that virtually, Vega Konstantinova didn't exist. I was a myth, a monster from the shadows, and there was nothing that could tie me to Heinrich and his little empire.

And it wasn't only me.

I was pretty sure that Alena's real identity had also disappeared the day she came into the command center, much like mine did. Azra Bektic died that November 9th, when Heinrich shook my hand and smiled, assuring me that everything was going to be fine.

But nothing ever was.

Yet here I was, still doing his dirty little deeds, but not because I didn't know any better. Not because I felt some fucked-up sense of loyalty like some of the other agents did. No, Heinrich knew what he was doing when he mentioned Tyler and the involvement of the Zylla family in his disappearance. He knew I wouldn't say no, because of that promise I made, and I walked straight into his trap.

But I didn't care. Not anymore.

As much as I hated having to fly from the middle of nowhere Massachusetts to Frankfurt, and then taking an ICE train all the way to Munich, only to take another regional train to Wolfhöle, I liked the time it gave me to go through everything. I didn't exactly have days to study the contents of the file Heinrich gave me. The moment we finished our conversation in his office, I was on the move—arranging my flight and train tickets with Angelique, my clothes, and soaking up as much information as possible about my heritage, because it was the same information the Academy had.

According to that file, I was Vega Konstantinova, the only daughter of Vladimir Konstantinov, a member of Chernaya Ruka, an organization led by the Sokolov family. My mother died when I was just a child, as per the file, and the irony wasn't lost on me, considering that my real mother really did die when I was just a child. But just like every other time I dared to think about the woman that gave birth to me, a woman that took us out of our home country when I was just a baby and fled to America, I pushed every thought, every emotion, into the little black box in the back of my mind and pretended she never really existed.

It was easier dealing with the reality than my own thoughts, and I flipped the page in the file, showing my entire family tree, from my great-great-grandparents to my parents. Heinrich and his buddies really did think of everything when they prepared this, and it was only lucky that I already spoke Russian along with three other languages apart from English, but I highly doubted anyone would try to talk to me in Russian at the Academy.

Hell, I highly doubted anyone would pay any attention to me, considering I wasn't an heir to an empire. I was simply a soldier training to become a part of Chernaya Ruka, getting ready to replace my father.

I snorted at the thought, remembering what Alena told me.

Try to be invisible. We all know you draw attention everywhere you go, but just… It might be easier if you blend in.

But even as those words left her mouth, we both knew I wouldn't be able to blend in. My mouth was sometimes faster than my brain, and one thing I hated more than anything was injustice, and I could never stand on the sidelines while somebody else suffered—somebody innocent.

God knew I was no saint. The gates of Heaven were something I would never get to see, but it didn't mean I had to destroy innocent lives just so I could have a little bit of fun. And I’d seen it happen more times than I could count.

I’d seen the effects this kind of life had on many agents when they lost their minds. When they lost their humanity because they couldn't keep their emotions switched on after committing horrific acts. After destroying the lives of the people we were tasked to kill. But I clung on to my humanity with both hands, because I refused to be just another mindless killer in the vast sea of other monsters.

I knew what my mother was from the very first time she locked me inside that closet, telling me to keep quiet while she entertained her guest. Little did she know that the closet had a hole in the door and I saw every single movement of her arm as she lifted that hammer and slammed it into his head. Maybe that was why I clung on to my humanity, because I never wanted to become her.

But just because I wanted to hold on to my humanity, it did not mean I still wasn't capable of doing things other people would frown upon, and at this moment I only had one goal in my mind—learn everything I could about Adrian Zylla and his family.

I closed the manila file that had all the information about me and pushed it inside the black backpack I carried, only to pull out another file. The one Alena handed over to me just as I was about to head out of the command center. It was thinner than my so-called heritage file, and I knew without even asking what it was.

I expected to see at least a picture of Adrian Zylla, or something that could help me to recognize him, but I forgot the Zylla family was even more paranoid than Heinrich, and there was not a single picture of any one of them. All we knew was that Gerard Zylla and his wife Wilhelmina Zylla had two sons—Dain Zylla and Adrian Zylla, and only one of them was still alive.

Dain was at the Academy at the same time as Tyler, and shortly after my best friend disappeared, so did Dain. Gerard and his minions then spread the news that Dain got killed on a mission that went wrong, and that his younger son, who was just seventeen at the time, was going to be training to take over instead of Dain.

I knew Heinrich wouldn't make this easy on me, but flipping through the pages, the only information they managed to gather were the probable places where they must have been hiding—or, well, living. No one really knew where their center was, no one knew exactly what they were involved in, but we all knew you could call only one person if you wanted to make the world burn, and that was Gerard Zylla.

My eyes roamed over the data of the assassinations allegedly performed by the Zylla family. The influence they had on the US government as well as UK and France, but none of this information could give me the nitty-gritty details of who they really were. What did they like? Did they love each other? Did they care for each other?

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