Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
Melissa
Everything is fucking sore. I roll out of bed slowly, wincing when my muscles pinch with every movement. Hella was decent enough to actually let me sleep in my bed last night, though not without that damn possessive jab about keeping my legs shut for anyone else.
Fucking delusional. I'm pretty sure he wrecked me beyond repair just hours ago.
A sudden ding from my phone cuts through my granola munching. My chest tightens.
Fuck, I hope it's not Chase. That mess is a live wire I can't handle right now.
Minutes tick by as I eye the device, hesitating, before I finally snatch it off the table.
Unknown: How's my favourite pussy this morning?
A smile spreads across my face. It must be Hella, since he made me share my number with him for, you know... protection.
My thighs squeeze together as I envision those piercing blue eyes locked on mine. The way his jaw muscles twitch when something sets him off. That cocky smirk right before he says something that pisses me off.
My pulse hammers against my throat.
He's not just bad; he's so much worse.
Chase? I thought I scared you off with my vivid description of how fucking wet I was for you last night…
My grin feels lethal as it spreads over my face. “Ha! Now who's funny?”
Minutes crawl by. I'm setting my phone back on the table when another ding stops me cold. An MMS loads, and my stomach flips. Chewing my lip, I brace myself for whatever he's about to unleash.
The image opens, and I nearly choke on my granola as Jada strolls through the kitchen.
“Morning!” She bounces in with too much energy for this early in the morning.
I shove my phone deep into my pocket, but the damage is done. The image burns behind my eyelids. Those tattooed abs contracting, his hands wrapped around himself, that glistening drop poised at his tip. The caption
This look like Chase to you?
Might as well be seared into my retinas.
My stomach tightens as I picture my lips closing over him, tasting that slick bead at his tip before sliding down, his thickness filling my mouth until my throat aches with the strain.
My eyes flutter shut, a moan threatening to spill from my lips.
“Melissa?” Jada's voice cuts through my haze. She’s been talking this entire time, and I've been drowning in my cock-induced fantasy, completely ignoring her.
“Sorry, what?” I ask, grabbing my bowl and heading for the sink like nothing happened.
Her eyes narrow. “What's going on with you and Hella?”
Nervous laughter spills out as I wave her off. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
She walks to the table, patting the chair beside her. “Look. No bullshit?” Her eyebrows lift expectantly.
I pour some coffee into a mug and walk back to the table, my fingers wrapping around the warm ceramic like a lifeline as I settle into the chair. “No bullshit.”
“Hella is a really good guy now. Don't get me wrong…”
I pause mid-sip, the cup hovering at my lips. “Now?” Steam rises from the coffee, kissing the tip of my nose as I blow across the surface. “I mean, I don't think I ever considered Hella a good man, but you say now like he used to be worse. Didn't think that'd be possible.”
She snorts. “Oh, it's possible. I'll get to why in a second, but before I tell you this story, I want you to understand that although some of his tendencies are still there, under it all, he's a good man to those he cares about, and that's about a handful of people, not including his brothers.”
I lower my coffee. She’s got my attention.
A sly smile curves across her lips. “I'm going to tell you so that you can see how he is with you, to how he was back then, and then maybe you'll know a little about his darkness.”
My gaze drifts to the window, tracing the patterns of morning light on the glass before finding her eyes again. “Do we need rum?”
Her laugh cracks through the kitchen as she pushes away from the table. The cabinet hinges bitch when she stretches up to the top shelf, grabbing the bottle and two glasses like muscle memory. Rum glugs out in heavy pulses, amber catching the shitty overhead light. Liquid sin.
She slides my glass across the table, the sound sharp against wood, then fills her own. Rum disappears down her throat in one swallow, before she sets the empty glass down with a soft clink. “Okay, where do I begin…”
“Maybe at the start?” I suggest because I’m helpful like that.
She snorts. “The start is fucked. Let’s go with the part where I met your favourite asshole.”
My spine tightens at the words your favourite like she’s poking a bruise I didn’t admit I had.
She leans back, eyes going somewhere behind me. “You ever heard of Vanguard?”
“No.” The word feels small. Wrong. “Sounds like a gaming clan.”
“Yeah, nah.” Her mouth twists. “Government-funded base in the mountains down south. Real pretty from far away, real fucked up on the inside. Run by a guy named Kurr. Chief Tactical Officer. He likes rules more than he likes oxygen.”
I want to joke, to cut the rope she’s tying around my throat, but her tone has my body going still. She rattles off, like she can see the list.
“Subject will not disclose experiences from detention. Subject will not attempt escape. Subject will engage in intimate contact only with approved targets.”
My fingers clamp around my mug. “What the fuck.”
“Exactly.” She tips the bottle again, splashing more rum into her glass, then into mine. Breakfast of champs. “They called us Agents. Weapons. Some were hitmen. Some were spies. Honeytraps.” Her eyes flick to me. “That’s what I was supposed to be.”
The word sits wrong on the table between us. Honeytrap. Sounds sweet. I already know it’s not.
“They take kids no one’s gonna go looking for,” she goes on. “Runaways. Orphans. Street kids. Sometimes they just… buy them. Dump us in the mountains and tell us we’re lucky to have a purpose. Train us till we bleed. Till we forget normal exists.”
“And Hella?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I want to.
She huffs a sound that’s not quite a laugh. “He was already there when I got brought in. Sixteen. I was fifteen. He’d been Vanguard’s little monster for about two years by then. Agent class. Kurr’s favourite experiment—the boy that didn’t break.”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” I mutter into my cup, wincing.
“It should.” Her gaze sharpens. “Because the shit they did to him should’ve shattered him. Instead, he went quiet. Colder. You look at the others, you see madness. You looked at Hella back then?” She shakes her head. “You saw nothing. Just this… blank space that followed orders and broke bones.”
I swallow, my tongue thick. Hella quiet is already bad enough. I try to picture him without the jokes, without the smirk, without the constant grinding against every rule in the room.
It’s fucking terrifying.
“They divided us,” she continues. “Agents went with Commanders—combat, weapons, infiltrations. Honeytraps went through the other side. Charm school with guns and chokeholds. We learned how to smile, how to cry at the right time, how to make a mark think they’re the hero while we lace them in poison and secrets.
First Commander Nines would rotate us through, see what we were good at.
Knives. Sex. Intel. Everyone had a gift, apparently. ”
Her mouth curls around the word like it tastes bad.
I’m gripping my glass so hard that the sweat from my palm squeaks against it. “And you?”
“I was supposed to be the girl men confessed to after they came,” she says flatly. “Stare, flirt, string them along, fuck them if the mission called for it, slit their throat, go home. Easy.” Her laugh cracks. “Except I was shit at it.”
I blink. “You?”
“Don’t sound so shocked.” Her smirk is brief.
“Turns out, I could flirt okay. Touch okay. But when it came down to sealing the deal? I froze. Not with training dummies. With actual marks. Real men Kurr brought in, high-value. I’d hesitate.
Feel bad. Think about their kids. Their wedding rings.
Nines kept telling me to detach. Kurr kept watching me like I was a broken toy he needed to fix or throw out. ”
My stomach knots. “So what happens to broken toys?”
Her jaw tightens. “You get reassigned. Best case, you end up in internal service. Worst case…” She shrugs, but the movement is stiff. “You get put on the market.”
I stare. “The… market.”
Her eyes meet mine, steady. “Rich men love virgins, Melissa. Especially ones trained to obey, with government paperwork and loyalty protocols stamped in. Kurr had rules. One of them was that certain assets must remain untouched unless cleared. Virgins were investment stock. You don’t waste stock on low-level missions. ”
A chill runs down my neck. “You’re saying—”
“I heard him,” she cuts in. “Talking to another commander. Saying if I couldn’t pull intel between my legs, he’d at least make back his money by auctioning off whatever was left of me.
Some big shot out of Japan was already interested in a ‘mixed-blood asset.’” Her lips twist, mocking herself.
“Half Japanese, half Māori. Sexy, obedient, still in the wrapper. Fucking bargain.”
My brain trips. “Jesus, Jada.”
“Jesus wasn’t in that mountain,” she says dryly. “Just Kurr.”
This rum is doing jack shit to help this conversation.
“So what did you do?” I ask.
She takes a breath, slow and controlled, then lets it leak out. “I did the only thing I could. If being a virgin was my price tag, I had to break it myself. Before Kurr could sell it.”
It hits like a slap. “You decided—you just—”
“Picked someone and got it over with?” she finishes for me, eyes dark. “Yeah.”
Pretty sure my heart is going to beat right out of my chest. “And you picked… him.”
“Hella.” His name comes out on a simple exhale. No drama. No apology. “Because by then, I’d watched him for months. I knew he didn’t take what he wasn’t ordered to. I knew he wasn’t interested in the girls thrown at him. Anything Kurr dangled, he walked right past. Fucking untouchable.”
“So you went straight to the ice cube,” I say slowly. “On purpose.”