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“How long have you known?” Her brow furrowed, eyes narrowing at the man before her. “How long have you known that you were our father and never said anything?”
“Since the day you were born and I held you in my arms.”
A choked sob left her lips, and her shoulders slumped forward slightly. “You let him…” Kenzi paled slightly as dark thoughts swirled in her mind, unbidden. “Did you let him…”
Ava rushed forward, her arms going around Kenzi, hugging her tightly to her chest, front to back. “He didn’t know they’d sold you,” she assured her sister. “He was in the dark, just like me. He didn’t know. I promise. He didn’t know.”
The two sisters stood together, one behind the other, frozen in their own little world of quiet despair. In the time I had come to know Kenzi, I had never seen her break down. She hid behind her wit and charm. It cracked something inside me to see her utterly broken down, tears streaming in little rivulets down her face as Ava held her, whispering words of love in her ear. It had no doubt been a long time since Kenzi had been held and loved.
I snuck a glance at Vas, who was standing a few paces to my right. His eyes were pasted on Kenzi and washed with regret. He was no doubt thinking of Libby. I could not imagine how hard it must have been for him to see Kenzi. She was an exact copy of Libby on the surface, but if you looked beneath the dewy pale skin and brown hair to her cold blue eyes and tight, angular features, she was nothing like her sweet, docile sister.
Pain tightened his features. His shoulders were tense, and his hands were clenched into fists at his side. If I had any doubt about how he felt about Libby before, there was none now.
Dante looked defeated from where he stood watching them. His normally proud stature slumped in defeat. He hadn’t cast even one glance at Kendra, who still sat sobbing on the floor, quietly now instead of the soap opera act she’d been giving earlier.
We all stood there. For how long, I had lost track, but soon, the scene changed. Kenzi shook her head, tears running dry, and she pulled herself from her sister’s embrace.
“I can’t,” she whispered sorrowfully. “I can’t do this.”
Ava released a small sob of her own when her sister stalked away from her, back turned, gun still firmly in her grasp. She was a trained killer, after all.
A predator.
“Kenzi,” Ava hollered after her, but her feet remained planted in place. “Kenzi, please.”
But it was too late. Everyone had their breaking point, and even though I doubted Kenzi had reached hers, the predator in her sensed the oncoming weakness and did what a predator does best.
Squashed it.
Because a predator with a weakness easily became prey.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
The acrid taste of fury was hot on my tongue as I glared after the silent footsteps of my sister. Seeing her cry, holding her in my arms, it felt almost wrong. Kenzi had always been the strong one between the three of us. The pillar. Now it felt as if she was a shell of the person she used to be, beaten down by the trauma she’d been subjected to.
I couldn’t begin to imagine what she must have gone through while I thought she was away at college. There were no words of reassurance I could have offered her. No flowery platitudes or pretty prose meant to wash over the stains beneath the exterior. The minute Kenzi wrenched herself from my embrace, I knew she was shutting down. Matthias had done the exact same thing. She was protecting herself. Hiding her weakness beneath layers of stone so that no one could use it against her.
“Is she—” Kendra’s voice filtered through the silence. “Is she gone?” The bitch’s tone was soft and hesitant. She was playing at being the damsel in distress when she was nothing but a viper.
Growling, I bent down and grabbed the collar of her dress, dragging her up from the floor. Dante stepped forward to intervene, but the icy glare I cast his way froze him in place. I wouldn’t hurt her, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t give her a piece of my mind.
“You can quit with the act, Kendra,” I snarled, shifting my hand to her hair and wrenching her neck back. Without her heels on, we were eye level with one another. “You aren’t the victim here; you’re the villain. The sex trafficker. And if you weren’t pregnant with an innocent baby, I would gut you from stem to stern.”
“I didn’t—”
I yanked harder on her hair, cutting off any excuses she was about to offer me. “Fuck your excuses,” I snarled. “You sold your daughter to become a fucking assassin. To learn how to seduce and kill people for a corrupt corporation you profited from. Don’t pretend like you had no idea, because I have proof that you were complicit.”
“You don’t understand,” she whined. “I didn’t have a choice.”
I laughed, the sound grating and devoid of warmth. “We all have choices, and you chose the wrong one. You should have protected her.”
“Like you protected Libby?”
My breath stalled in my lungs as my gaze darkened.
“What did you just say to me?”
“Ava…” Dante warned from beside me. I ignored him.
