Page 80 of Trigger Happy Ending

“Fuck.” I exhale. Well, that explains the nightmare. Explains a lot, actually. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. She chose this life.”

“How so?”

“She was an Agency operative. So was my dad, but he died before I was born.” Raine’s voice lowers as she looks up at me through her lashes. “Told you I had daddy issues.”

She wasn’t recruited? If she wasn’t recruited then …

I struggle to put the pieces together, because the picture that’s forming in my mind is fucking horrifying.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You were raised to be an assassin?”

She holds my gaze. “Yes.”

Her confession weighs heavy on my chest. She’s never had a childhood? I mean, my childhood sucked, but this? This is a whole new level of child abuse.

“Who trained you?”

“The Agency.” She flicks her hair forward before pulling it back over her shoulders. She does that when she’s nervous. “Well, the Academy within it did.”

My eyebrows knit together. “Academy?”

She looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. “You really don’t know anything about the Agency, do you? They have a school for assassins, Soren. A whole fucking program. They taught me how to fight, manipulate, and eventually kill. When everyone else my age was learning math and reading, I was learning how to dismantle a shotgun in under sixty seconds. My science classes were about poisons: which ones are deadly, which ones to use to put someone to sleep. When girls my age were gossiping about boys and dating, I was being taught how to use sex as a weapon. They shape you until there’s nothing left but the asset they want.”

What the fuck kind of James Bond bullshit is this?

Not a lot of things in this forsaken world can make me feel empathy, but to be stripped of a childhood? To be honed into a weapon from the minute you could talk and walk? That’s fucked up.

“How old were you?”

“Six when I started learning fight styles and martial arts. Fourteen when it got serious. That’s when my mom …” She pauses, her throat stuck on the words. “I found her.”

She rolls her shoulder back, a distinct knot clicking. “I remember wondering if there was something wrong with me when I found her. I didn’t cry. Didn’t react. Just was …”

“Numb.”

“Yeah.” She raises her eyes to meet mine. “Exactly.”

I know the feeling. The emptiness of realizing you’re alone in this world. I felt the same when Kade, James, and Brock were killed in front of me. I remember the hollowness, the way my body caved in with grief. But I was in my late twenties and was somewhat equipped to handle the brutality of the situation.

I wasn’t a fourteen-year-old girl.

“For so long, I swore I would do whatever it takes to find the truth about why she was killed and who is responsible. I vowed I’d rip their fucking heads off. But all I’ve done is chase ghosts.”

“It was a hit?”

“I know it was.”

“Why didn’t the Agency look into it for you?”

“Because they don’t do anything unless it serves them. In our line of work, people die. Chasing answers for every asset’s death isn’t something they entertain.”

“But you’ve been seeking answers?”

She purses her lips together and nods. “On the down-low, yeah. There’s an operative, Smyth—a tech guy—he’s been helping me dig into her murder quietly.”