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I just hold his furious stare. Because there is nothing else to say. No excuses to make. Thatisthe reason why his parents are now dead and why he has spent the past six years of his life in hiding.
He lets out a truly vicious string of curses in Italian, a lot of it directed at me and my former colleagues. Then he drags in a breath, as if with great effort, and forces it out again. The searing rage in his eyes fades as he composes himself.
“When you speak of the Hands of Peace, you keep sayingthey,” he remarks. “And you said that you chose the name Isabella when youescapedfrom them. Is that why you’re here at Blackwater, pretending to be a random mediocre student? Because you left the cult and are hiding from them?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because they found out that you’re still alive.”
“Which is a problem for me. But it doesn’t explain why you are in hiding too.”
“Because I betrayed them. Six years ago, I was given the mission to kill you. I didn’t. I disobeyed their orders and let you live. Which means that I forfeited my own life. In the Hands of Peace, you only have two options. Blind obedience. Or death.”
A considering look blows across his features, and he is silent for a while. Then he asks, “Why didn’t you leave? Why did you wait until they found out that I was still alive? Why not leave before they found out, if you knew that it was a death sentence?”
“Because it’s not a fucking football team,” I snap, frustration bubbling up inside me. “You can’t justleavethe Hands of Peace. Once you’re in, you’re in it for life. And if you’reborninto it… Well, guess what? You will never know one single moment of free will in your entire life because every choice has already been made for you.”
The moment I finish speaking, I realize that I probably shouldn’t take that tone with the guy holding a gun to my head. But I can’t bring myself to apologize. I’m too angry for that. So I just glare up at him, waiting to see if he will punish me for my outburst.
He doesn’t. Instead, those emotions flicker briefly in his eyes again. Then he draws in a deep breath, as if he is bracing himself for something. It sends a spike of alarm through my spine.
But when he at last speaks again, I understand exactly why he needed to brace himself. Because he finally gets to ask me the question that must have been whirling inside his head for six years now.
“Why did you spare my life that night?”
Dread and panic mix inside me like foul-tasting poison. Because I don’t want to answer this. It’s too personal. Too tightly connected to the fear and the useless bloody dreams I keep buried inside me. Too tightly woven into that gaping wound in my heart that is torn open every time I delude myself into thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could be a real person with a real life.
“Answer me,” Rico growls, pressing the gun harder against my forehead.
But I can hear the desperation in his voice too. He needs this answer. He needs it more than any of the other answers I have given him.
He gives me a warning look and tightens his finger on the trigger.
“Because you sighed!” The words rip out of me so forcefully that I swear I can taste blood on my tongue.
Rico jerks back a little and blinks, completely stunned.
“Because you fucking sighed,” I repeat, my voice breaking. All the fight bleeds out of me, and I slump down so that I’m kneeling while sitting on my heels instead. A broken sob threatens to spill from my lips as I look up at Rico with desperate eyes. “I didn’t kill you because when you woke up, you didn’t react the way any of my other targets ever had. You didn’t look scared. You didn’t plead with your eyes for me to spare you. You didn’t even look angry.”
The pain in my chest just keeps spreading with every word, and I have to fight down the urge to press a hand over my heart to stop it from breaking. Instead, I drag in an unsteady breath.
“You didn’t do any of that,” I continue, holding his now thoroughly confused gaze. “Instead, you only looked disappointed and resigned. And then you fucking sighed!” This time, I do yank my hand up and stab it against my chest. “And I felt that fucking sigh all the way into the heart that I didn’t even know I had. Because I knew that sigh. I knew exactly what it meant. What the entire expression on your face meant.”
He stares down at me, eyes wide and confusion still evident on his features.
I drag in another shuddering breath, and then force myself to finish. To finally speak the words that I promised myself that I would never utter aloud.
“I let you live because I saw in your eyes whatIhave always felt too. That I don’t want to die without even having lived.”
34
RICO
Her words send a chill down my spine because of how dead right she is. That was exactly what I was thinking when she held a gun to my head that night. I knew that I was going to die and that there was nothing I could do about it. And I was so fucking disappointed that I would never get to start living for real, like I had promised myself that I would.
After that kidnapping when Eli was thirteen and I was twelve, where a rival family abducted him and tortured him for a week while thinking it was me, my family tightened security around me. I was pulled out of school and instead continued my education with private tutors inside the safety of our compound. I had to drop out of all the sports and activities I had liked as a child. My entire world was cut down until it basically only contained the Morelli compound and a few visits to town and to the Hunters’ mansion every now and then. But only when my family deemed it safe.
