Chapter 2
Raine
I’m in a feral mood. And that was before I rode through miserable-as-hell weather to the place I despise the most: The Agency’s headquarters.
Hidden deep in a Massachusetts forest, sits the Agency’s private estate.
Made of stone, it’s cold and gothic. Like a place ghost hunters would have a field day in.
It might almost be beautiful … if not for the grotesque gargoyles crouched along the roofline.
Demon-faced sentinels, watching who comes and goes.
Years ago (when I called this hellhole home), I swear I saw one of those stone pupils shift. Whether it was covert surveillance (probably) or something genuinely paranormal (I’d prefer this option if I’m honest), I’ll never know. Both are entirely plausible.
Killing the engine to my Ducati, I rip off my riding gloves and remove my helmet. My eyes rise to the manor that looms before me.
My mom would roll over in her grave if she knew the Agency ended up raising me in this hell.
Even though she was an operative herself, she never wanted this life for me.
I should have run the day I found her dead on the floor in our apartment, but I had nowhere to go.
No one to turn to except the Agency. I was too young, too vulnerable, and too fucking sad to know better.
And as the saying goes, you’ll choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven every single time.
Although I did try to run once. Only once. Never again did I attempt an escape after the punishment I received. My eyes drop to my scarred wrists, little flesh bracelets, a permanent reminder from the second worst day of my life.
I press my fingerprint to the scanner, and the front doors click open, revealing a familiar lobby.
The interior is the opposite to what one might expect when looking at the manor from outside.
Black-and-white checkered polished marble stretches across the floor.
Twin staircases unfurl on either side, curling upward, vanishing above to the second floor.
I purposely stomp up the stairs, taking two at a time, leaving muddy footprints behind.
I ignore the few operatives who pretend not to see me.
They pass with their heads dipped, faces downcast.
I didn’t want to speak to you assholes, anyway.
Strutting deeper down the carpeted hall in the east wing, I arrive at Door 03, knocking once. There’s no answer, so I take it upon myself to enter the room only to find it empty.
“Of course he’s not here,” I mutter to myself as I flop into a leather chair facing Agent O’s desk. Nothing to do but wait, I guess. It’s a classic O tactic. He will keep me waiting to serve as a reminder of who is in control, which—surprise, surprise—is never fucking me.
Agent O’s my boss. He’d call himself my mentor (more like master), maybe even a father figure (far from it). He once could’ve been though. A father figure, I mean. Maybe even a small, fucked-up part of me wanted him to be. But no guardian would ever do what was done to me.
O will tell you he trained me; the reality is he abused me.
And yet, here I am, at his beck and call like a faithful dog. Stockholm Syndrome. It’s a real thing.
The minutes drag, and I find my eyelids feeling heavy as I stare at the steady sheets of rain lashing the stained-glass window behind O’s desk. Now seems like a good time to play my favorite game. It’s called “I could have been anyone.”
Sometimes, I pretend I’m a nobody with a nine-to-five and a mortgage.
Other times, I’m an overstimulated mother who enjoys reading smut and watching Bravo.
Today, I might be an overachieving academic with a knack for flipping homes.
I try not to go too in-depth with my imagination, particularly around being a mother. I have to stop myself from wondering what it’s like to grow life and sustain it, rather than take it and destroy it. Motherhood is a security risk for women like me.
Actually, fuck this game. It’s depressing.
I reach into my pocket for my switchblade, flipping it open. I consider carving FUCK YOU into O’s desk. You know, just to be cunty.
Instead, I choose to press the tip of my knife into the pad of my middle finger. I draw a pinprick of blood and watch as it slowly drips down my skin. My first kill flickers through my mind, as I stop the droplet of blood from reaching the palm of my hand.
You never forget your first kill. Or your first fuck.
Of course, you remember them for very different reasons. I’ll let you guess which one was more satisfying.
I was eighteen when I became a murderer.
When most girls were beginning college, I was forced through a series of brutal initiation tasks to see if I had what it takes to graduate from the Academy, the Agency’s top-secret school for hired guns.
I passed with flying colors. Taking a life, especially for the first time, is a transformative experience.
It stays with you. Completely and utterly rewrites who you are from the core.
It changes you.
Forever.
My eyes glaze over as the memory fades away.
Finally, footsteps approach, and the door opens, flooding the room with a familiar strong cologne and even stronger ego. Agent O carries a folder, closing the door with a harsh click. He glides in as if he hasn’t kept me waiting for a fucking eternity.
He reminds me of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho—not because of his looks (O’s tall, broad-shouldered, has a thick head of silver hair), but because he quite literally is an American Psycho.
I’m not sure how high up the food chain he is at the Agency, but I know he must be ranked high.
He calls the shots, briefs the missions, and has basically been the one constant person in my life since my mom died.
“Angel.” He smiles. It’s not friendly. “It’s good to see you.”
O never uses my real name. It’s always Angel. Never Raine. A quiet theft of self, one syllable at a time. He takes his seat across from me, unhurried, positioning the folder carefully in front of him.
“How was your ride?” he asks, sitting back like we’re father and daughter catching up.
I smile. Because that’s what you do when you’re a good little weapon.
“Fine.” (It wasn’t.)
My switchblade snaps open again. His mismatched eyes lock on my knife.
Ugh, those rotten eyes. One sapphire blue and the other a pale, milky orb. A glass eye. He could’ve picked something close to normal, but no, he chose a grotesque shade of white.
“You look well.” His voice walks the line between fatherly and something creepier. His eyes do the same thing. “We’ve got a lot to discuss. I trust you’re not in a rush?”
This illusion I have control over my own time is infuriating. Even if I was in a rush, it wouldn’t matter, O would still take as long as he wants.
I bite back the words clawing up my throat.
I want to rant and rave, demanding to know why I’ve been requested here.
I just finished an assignment. I should be back in Boston researching my mother’s murder.
Not that I can let O know I’m doing my own digging.
He’d see red. Punish me, probably, because even after all these years, my mother’s murder remains classified.
I dig the tip of my blade into the armrest, resisting the urge to throw it between O’s eyes. “No.”
“Angel.” He sighs, picking up his phone, pretending to be preoccupied. “Put your goddamn knife away, please.”
Sighing heavily, I slide the blade back into my jacket. “Why’d you ask me here?”
“There’s a new assignment.”
“But I just finished one.” I exhale an exasperated breath through my nose. “I need a break. Send someone else.”
O looks up, his face glowing in the reflection of the computer screen which is now flickering to life. His eye reminds me of a pearl rotting in its socket. “Are you whining?”
I know this conversation is over. “No, sir.”
“You know you’re the only Black Widow I trust.”
The Agency loves its euphemisms. “Black Widow” sounds mysterious, right? In our world, it means seduce and deceive. The Russians called women like us Swallows, but of course, the New World Order Americans had to be different from their Soviet counterparts.
“Yes. I know.”
“Only someone as exceptional as you can pull this off.”
This is what he does. He fucks with my head. Cold and mean one moment, tender the next. Makes me feel needed, wanted … almost cherished. Like I’m his favorite child. And because I’m totally fucked up from this life, I grab onto his praise like it’s the golden ticket.
I’m fucked in the head a bit (a lot), I guess.
“We need your special talents.”
He makes it sound like I juggle swords and breathe fire.
(Both of which I can do, for the record.) Although O isn’t referring to that.
He’s insinuating that this next job needs my natural skill set, my appearance, and ability to manipulate.
The Agency harnessed my beauty and taught me how to draw information out of men with the flick of my hair or the stroke of my tongue.
My communication methods are effective as they are terrifying.
Before my targets know what’s occurred, I know all their secrets—and they are dead.
Which makes me a terrific spy and a very dangerous woman. Have I told you I can hit a bullseye from 150 yards away? That’s pretty fucking special too.
“To pull what off exactly?”
“A retrieval,” O finally answers.
This is O at his most cryptic best. I’m pretty sure I can feel my eyes roll, because, sure. A retrieval. That explains everything.
“A retrieval,” I repeat like a goddamn parrot. “Of what?”
I’ve done a few retrievals in the past. Normally, it’s something sparkly and priceless, sometimes a person. Other times, documents. State secret shit that doesn’t interest me in the slightest.
“You’ll be briefed when your partner arrives.”
My body stills at O’s response. “Partner?”
A flash-fantasy erupts behind my eyes: me, leaping across the desk, jamming the blade into O’s jugular while that gross glass eye stares, dead and useless, as he bleeds out on his precious mahogany desk.
Too bad it’s just a fantasy, and I don’t ever get to do what I want.
“I don’t work with partners.”
I hate that my voice has gone up an octave, but I’ve proven I work better alone.
I’m not a collaborator, wouldn’t have a faintest idea on how to be a team player, or whatever the fuck.
Doing this job alone—the research, surveillance, how the task is executed—I’ve never failed, not once, because I am in complete control.
So to now lose complete control in this upcoming assignment? My insides are screaming. “I can’t be responsible for someone else.”
O pinches his nose, remaining silent. It makes my pulse quicken.
“That’s not what I said.” O’s voice sharpens, sick of my shit. “You won’t be responsible for him. But you will work with him. Side by side. Until the assignment is complete.”
“But—”
O’s hand slams down onto the desk. I don’t flinch.
“Did I stutter? Was there some part of this conversation that sounded like it was open for negotiation?”
My mouth tightens into a thin, hostile line. “No.”
“You will follow these orders.” O’s eyes narrow, threatening. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
O relaxes back into his chair, the leather creaking underneath his weight. “Good girl.”
My skin fucking crawls. “Can you at least tell me who it is?”
Better the devil you know.
“Agency family,” he says at last. “Ex-military.”
Oh, superb. This gets better and better. An ex-soldier with something to prove.
“Codename’s Bodysnatcher.”
The name is meaningless to me. I don’t know who that is.
I stick to myself most of the time, refusing to forge connections with anyone.
If I’ve learned one thing in my life, it’s that attachments cause weakness.
And I can’t afford to be weak in my line of work.
Weakness gets you killed. Or worse, the person you love killed.
I hear him before I see him.
Steady bootsteps drum across the hardwood, stopping outside O’s office. There’s an unmistakable energy shift before the door creaks open. His scent hits first, and it’s a combination of my favorites: rain-soaked leather.
I glance sideways at the dark figure who now stands in the doorway, and I just about stop breathing.
A delicious combination of desire and fear coils low in my stomach.
He’s straight from my twisted fairytales, a wrecking ball of muscle and brutality.
Six-foot-five at least. The kind of man who could break you in half with one hand and leave you begging for more.
He’s fucking gorgeous.
I hate him on sight.