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DAISY LAZARUS
In the basementheadquarters of Lazarus House, a baby’s wail added to the chaos surrounding Daisy Lazarus. Like fingernails on a chalkboard, the cry grated down Daisy’s spine. Two brothers shouted at each other. A third threw a gadget at the wall, shattering one of the wall-to-wall screens depicting city news. Others argued over intel on a computer at a central table. Daisy covered her ears from the cacophony of sound.
So many people. So much noise. So little she could do.
Her own sin of despair circled the drain of her mind. For years the sin numbed her, as though the fire that stole their mother’s life had also charred her emotions. It also stole her feeling, her will to continue with this so-called life. She touched the silvery burn marks on her face. They weren’t too obvious thanks to her advanced genetics, but she felt them as though they’d seared her yesterday. The bumpy flaws on her skin brought a new surge of despair. Swiftly, she hid her thoughts by moving her hand to swipe over her smooth, long silver hair.
The heat. The pain. The shame.
Two days ago, her numbness disintegrated, leaving her unprotected—a soft pink embryo. Now she felt too much. Her estranged family had rescued and put their blind faith in her, despite her villainous history. How could she process it all? Where did she fit in with this heroic family—did she fit at all?
Their story about the day she was abandoned was very different to Julius’s, the Syndicate leader and their father. But wrap it however they may, the truth remained—for the good of the world, she’d been left behind to die.
Her whole life had been based around that fact.
She’d been stricken from their memories. No one wanted her. No one needed her.
Her recovery from that fateful fire still haunted her. She’d lain bandaged on a hospital bed, her body burning without flames. Phantom tears—her eyes were too damaged for real tears—searing her cheeks because she couldn’t save her mother… and she couldn’t find her brothers and sisters. A man she’d never met whispered to her, “They left you because they didn’t love you. But I do. I’ll never leave you. I’m all you’ve got now.” He took her burn-free hand and squeezed it. “It’s you and me against the world, my darling.”
His palm had been cold and clammy.
“Daisy!”
Her gaze snapped to the right, her body alert and ready to fight, but it was only Mary. The woman who’d made the call to leave Daisy behind and the subsequent adoptive mother of the Deadly Seven. An assassin herself, she had once been a psychic. Somehow knowing that only made Daisy hurt more about her abandonment. Couldn’t Mary have predicted Daisy’s fate? Shouldn’t she have prevented it... if she’d wanted to?
Daisy peeked at her inner wrist tattoo. The yin-yang symbol was unbalanced and more black than white. It meant her internal sin saturation was getting a hold of her. Despair had sneaky hooks. Sometimes she didn’t know she was underwater until she was already drowning.
Mary bounced a crying baby in her arms.
“Daisy,” she said as she walked over. If the woman asked once more for Daisy to recall information that could help find the missing mates, she would scream.
Mary must have seen the resistance in Daisy’s eyes because she paused. She stilled in a way only a predator can, seemed to consider something, but then handed the baby to Daisy.
“Could you hold Amari for a while? I don’t think Wyatt is in any state to calm her. We could use your help.”
Daisy glanced at her brother, the warrior of wrath. He was one without his mate, and while he’d tried to balance his sin by soaking up the happiness of parenting, it wasn’t working anymore. In his Deadly battle suit, hood down and around his shoulders, short black hair askew, he paced the floor. His nostrils flared like a raging bull. Veins popped in his neck and forehead. He’d smashed the television with his furious throw, but still stood before it, staring at his fractured reflection.
Daisy knew well the effects of being out of balance. She’d studied them for the Syndicate when she’d kidnapped Sloan’s mate Max. She, herself, had suffered multiple blackouts and come-to with blood on her face and hands knowing in her bones that she’d ended lives. Even now she itched to check her palms.
Mary gave Daisy the baby, then chased Wyatt down before he picked up another gadget Flint had been working on. Flint, Mary’s husband, had kept a respectable distance from Daisy. She often saw pity in his kind eyes, but unlike Mary, he wasn’t trying to push a parental relationship on Daisy. He thankfully gave her space.
Unlike Julius who’d demanded the world from Daisy, Flint seemed to be the sort who would gladly support her as she made up her own world.
She liked him for it.
Every cell in Daisy’s body froze under the weight of the baby in her arms. From her swaddle, Amari blinked up at Daisy with wet, blue eyes.
“Why has it stopped crying?” Daisy asked anyone within range. “It was making noise and now it’s not.”
She searched the room for help, but no one paid her attention. The baby cried again and Daisy relaxed, then promptly freaked out because it had started crying again. With her heart in her throat, she paced the length of the room, jiggling the bundle in her arms. That’s what Mary had done. It should work.
But Amari still cried.
Was she hungry?
But Mary fed her not that long ago, hadn’t she?
Maybe she missed her mother. A slice of guilt hit Daisy and she wished she could do more to help her siblings find their kidnapped mates, but the truth was, over the past year Daisy had been included in less of Julius’s machinations than at the start. Looking back, she could see that he’d distanced himself from her as much as he could without raising suspicion. Perhaps it had started the moment Daisy realized he’d lied to her. He’d said her siblings had always known she was alive. The distance grew when she discovered Julius had DNA samples of his family—his first wife and daughter—in a locket around his neck, hoping to bring them back as replicates.
