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My mother stepped back and took a deep breath, dabbing beneath her eyes with her finger. “Goodness, I’m going to make a mess of myself,” she said with a laugh. She reached toward the boy and tugged him over. “You can keep calling me Mom, of course, but if you’re more comfortable with first names while you get to know us, I’m Iris. This is our son—your brother—Carter.”
Carter gave an awkward wave, and I did the same thing back. Neither of us knew what to say about that. From the looks of him, he’d been born a few years after I was kidnapped. We’d never existed in the same space until now.
Then the door to the other part of the house flew open, and a short woman with frizzy gray hair burst into the entranceway. She spoke before anyone could get a word out. “Now I know my son told us to stay in there, but I was beginning to think that he was blowing smoke up my ass with the story of his daughter coming back from the dead.”
Her presence made the room feel cramped. I took a step back, and more people flooded in behind her. But the plump old lady took all my attention from the others. She was small and wizened, but she bulldozed over Damien’s brief protests, and I knew immediately that I didn’t want to be in her path.
She looked me up and down as she approached, and I wondered what she saw when she looked at me. Her sharp eyes didn’t look as if they missed much. A prickle ran down my back
“Grandma Ruby, you’re scaring her,” Carter said, giving her a playful poke in the arm.
She shot an affectionate glower at Carter, and I could finally breathe. “Now Carter, let me have my fun. She’s as much my grandbaby as you are.” The woman looked at me and smiled. “Rachel,” she said with undiluted affection in her tone, and pulled me into a hug just as my mother had.
I didn’t know how to react surrounded by this much affection. It felt like they were excited to see a woman who wasn’t here. Who even was Rachel? I knew that’d been my name years ago, but I’d never used it within my memory. Each time they called me by her name, I felt like an imposter. I was Decima, and I didn’t know how to be anyone else.
I knew better than to ask to go by the name my kidnappers had given me, though. I could only imagine their looks of horror.
So, I stood there, allowing the crowd to come and devour me with tight hugs. Aunts, uncles, and cousins looked me over, commenting on how much I looked like my mother or father—comments that I knew were more for politeness than anything.
My eyes caught on a few of them more than the others—people who were easier to read, maybe? Maybe their personalities complimented mine, making it easier to meet their gazes. One family in particular—my first cousin, aunt, and uncle on my father’s side—drew my attention.
The man and wife each had fiery red hair. Their daughter, who looked around my age or a tad older, had the complexion of a redhead, complete with freckles her foundation couldn’t quite hide, but she’d dyed her wavy locks black. My aunt and uncle clasped each other’s hands as they took me in, but my cousin seemed almost as interested in her phone as my arrival.
Maybe I should have been insulted, but something about her disinterest reassured me. I wasn’t a big deal to everyone. To her, this was just another day. Maybe it didn’t have to be such a momentous occasion.
Damien began tossing out names, and I tried to commit each one to memory. The woman with the dyed black hair was Margaret. Despite her apparent boredom, my father clapped her on the shoulder. “Margaret’s twenty-five, so she’s the closest in age to you. I’m sure you two will get along great. She and your Aunt Mabel and Uncle Henry come around a lot, so you’ll see plenty of them.”
He was talking as if I was going to be living here from now on. A prickle of apprehension ran over my skin, even though I knew he wouldn’t be taking that step so quickly.
Margaret lifted her gaze from her phone. Her voice came out low and monotonous. “Did they torture you? Like kidnappers in crime shows or whatever?”
“Margaret!” Aunt Mabel said with a gasp.
I wasn’t actually offended by the question, but I wasn’t sure how to answer it either. I guessed Noelle and the others had kind of tortured me by forcing me to train, but I couldn’t say that without getting into the whole “I was raised to be an assassin” thing it seemed better to keep on the down low.
“No,” I said, forcing a small laugh. Every pair of eyes focused even more intently on me, curious as to how I would answer her. “No, of course not. I didn’t even know that I was kidnapped until recently. They acted like I was a part of their family.” A brutally disciplined and distant family, but close enough.
Grandma Ruby was the next to speak. “They kidnapped you. How did you not realize something was wrong? They took you from us, and they never even mentioned that you came from somewhere else?”
I gave an apologetic grimace. Did she really blame me?
“I guess I was so young that after a while the old memories didn’t stick with me,” I said. “I grew up with them, and they acted like their way of life was normal and that they were the only ones who could protect me from the dangerous world.”
And the whole time they’d been the most dangerous people in it. People who’d already torn apart my real family.
“Well, something has to be done about them,” my grandmother spat out. My grandfather—Bo, one of the others had called him—came over and slung his arm around her shoulders, but she barely seemed to notice his presence in her fury. “It’s disgusting what they did to you and to us.”
Her husband looked down at her. “Don’t be getting upset. She’s here now, and that’s what matters the most. Isn’t that right, Rachel?”
I nodded, and the smile that had felt forced before seemed to stick in place without much effort now. How lucky was I that I’d found a family who cared so much about someone who was essentially a stranger to them? Even if their questions made me edgy, they only asked because I mattered to them.
If I’d died during a mission for the household, Noelle would have replaced me, and she and her colleagues would all have moved on with their lives. Nobody there would have mourned me.
I was finally a part of something bigger in a good way, not just a pawn to be maneuvered and manipulated for the sake of someone’s selfish ends.
With that thought, the secrets I was keeping to protect myself left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. Julius’s face flashed through my mind. Then Talon’s and Blaze’s. Garrison’s.
They were a family in a way, but they weren’t like this one. I was tied to them through loyalty and mutual respect, not blood. But they knew my story and what I’d done with my life. They knew everything about me, and they accepted it all without restraint.
