Page 83 of The Pretty Savage

Heinrich was obsessed with ancient Egypt and the symbols from that period, making the scarab beetle the official logo of our organization. I often joked that he thought himself to be a pharaoh, but I wasn't laughing now. Not when the file that definitely belonged to the organization I hated from the bottom of my heart rested on the table of a man I was slowly falling for.

I sat down on the chair in front of the table, unable to keep myself in an upright position anymore. It wasn't my injuries that had me shaking, but the knowledge of what I was going to uncover once I opened it.

My hands shook as I pulled the thick file from the table, looking down at it with more fear than I ever had before. It wasn't the fear of what was inside, but it was the fear, the shame, that would no doubt follow once all my suspicions were confirmed.

I flipped open the imposing first page, my breath hitching the moment my eyes landed on a picture of me taken just last year. Alena needed to update our files, and I never questioned it, much like the others never questioned it. But to see it glaring back at me here shook me to my core.

I had no idea how Adrian had this or why he had this. Did he already know? Did he already know I was working for The Schatten?

He played me, I realized. He told me what I needed to hear, what I so desperately wanted to hear. Even a fool could understand I had issues if they only had a chance to read through this file.

A dead mother, no father, taken in by The Schatten at the age of seven, trained over the years, first mission barely above the age of ten… He fucking knew!

My chest constricted as the claws of despair scratched at my throat, reminding me once again that I could never trust another person. I was a fool, a fucking fool. So fucking desperate for a grain of love, for a grain of understanding and care, that I fell into the trap of a man that only wanted to use me.

Before I could swallow it down, the first sob erupted from my chest, cleaving my soul in half. I wanted to trust him. I was about to talk to him today, tell him everything and ask him for help. I was going to confess my deepest, darkest secrets, because I thought I had seen something in him, something that also existed in me.

Loneliness.

Pain.

The way he talked about his brother these last couple of days, the way he talked about his life, made me think we weren't all that different. It made me feel like he could be the one to erase the misery I was living with for so long, and he… He betrayed me.

He used the moment of weakness to smudge my vision, to make me think someone in this world could really care for me. He shattered the walls around my heart, and I let him. I let him because I was too tired of fighting against the world. I was too tired of living like a shadow.

And he fucking used me!

My eyesight blurred as I went over the information about my previous missions, my strengths and my weaknesses, the weapon of choice I always used, the body count I left behind me, the psychological evaluation when I was just a kid, until I skidded all the way to the end, seeing a familiar-looking paper added there.

Mission objective: Vega Konstantinova

My blood ran cold, my anger brimming in the pit of my stomach as I saw what Adrian was tasked to do. He was supposed to kill me.

He was supposed to destroy me, much as I was supposed to destroy him, but I obviously failed, and he was going to win. He destroyed the stitches I clumsily put on the wounds of my heart, ripping them open with no care in the world, and all for what? To destroy me?

How long did he have this document? How long did he play this game with me, while I was an idiot who couldn't see the truth, who didn't even try to uncover the details about his life?

This file had everything on me. Every single thing, including my real name, my mom, my past, all the things I went through, every single nightmare I had shared with that fucking therapist when I was only a child. Everything.

He had everything on me, and I had nothing.

This whole time I was dreaming of the future I could possibly have, while he was buying himself time to finally strike and destroy me. The Brotherhood, Dante and Jax, I couldn't believe it all wasn't part of the ploy to get me to trust them, to share the secrets of The Schatten with them, just to be killed in the end.

They weren't my friends. They weren't people I could trust.

There was no one in this entire fucking world I could trust. As if someone had thrown a bucket of ice-cold water over me, the realization I was trying to avoid dawned on me—I was completely alone.

If Adrian had a file that had obviously come straight from The Schatten, it meant they were working with him and his family. It meant I could trust no one but myself.

And that meant I needed to get the fuck away from this place, immediately.

I closed the file and placed it on the side when I saw another one lying just underneath it. I didn't know my heart could break this much, but as I opened it, it wasn't information on people from the Academy.

It was me and my mom, standing in front of the house we lived in. I couldn't have been more than four years old in the picture, but I looked so happy. So fucking innocent.

She looked happy, with her green eyes and dark hair piled on top of her head, holding me in her arms as she grinned for the photograph. I had no photos of my mom. I barely had any memories of her, but as I saw her in this photo, as I saw her bright smile and the happiness she radiated, I knew without a doubt that everything she did, she did to protect me.

My thumb rubbed over her face as tears cascaded down mine, while the deep-rooted hatred I tried not to think about bloomed in my chest.

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