Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
There’s no antidote. According to my father, anyway.
I’ve been an operative for eight years, and I’ve killed more people than I can count with a weapon I never asked for.
But I remember every name.
Toby was the first. I was thirteen, and I didn’t even know what I was. I just knew I had the biggest crush on him, and when he pulled me aside down that dark hall and kissed me, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
Only he’s the one who died, collapsed on the floor of the Royal BC Museum while I screamed and screamed and didn’t understand what had happened to him.
He’s the one who went to heaven. I’ve been in hell ever since.
After that, my father told me the truth. About my mother, about what she’d done to me, about why. She thought she was protecting you, he said. We both did.
There was no protection; there was only a curse.
But here’s the thing about being a monster—you can either let it destroy you, or you can learn to use it. MI6 first found me when I was twenty, and they saw what I could be. A perfect weapon. A honeytrap who never had to worry about things getting complicated, because the moment it got physical, the target was already dead.
From my start at MI6 to my role at SOE, I’ve used my curse to serve my country for almost a decade. I’ve seduced arms dealers and corrupt politicians and men who thought they were untouchable. I’ve kissed them and watched the light leave their eyes and told myself it was justice, or at least necessity.
And I’d gotten good at it. Too good, maybe. Good enough to stop thinking of them as people and start thinking of them as targets, which is what every agent aspires for.
Until Dmitri Olkov.
He wasn’t supposed to be different. Mid-fifties, paunchy, with a comb-over and a laugh that sounded like a seal barking. He should have been easy. Another name on the list, another body that looked like natural causes.
But Dmitri had a daughter. Eighteen years old, studying medicine in St. Petersburg, and he talked about her constantly, showed me pictures on his phone while we drank champagne in his hotel room. She wants to be a surgeon, he said, his eyes soft in a way I hadn’t expected. Can you imagine? My little girl, saving lives.
I should have kissed him then, while he was distracted, while his guard was down. That’s what a good operative would have done.
Instead, I hesitated.
And in that hesitation, everything went to shit.
Dmitri noticed something was wrong. Maybe my expression changed, maybe I tensed up—I still don’t know what gave me away. But suddenly, he wasn’t a mark anymore; he was FSB, trained to spot threats, and he was looking at me like he finally saw me clearly.
The next few minutes are still a blur. He went for his gun. I went for the door. There was a fight in the hallway, then the stairwell, then the street. By the time I made it to the extraction point, I had two cracked ribs, a concussion, and a trail of witnesses who could place me fleeing a hotel where an FSB officer was screaming about an assassination attempt.
The Russians couldn’t prove it was us. With my blonde wig shed, my appearance altered, the trail went cold. But they knew. Mank had to burn assets we’d spent years cultivating just to get me out of the country without starting an international incident.
Dmitri Olkov is still alive, still has a daughter studying medicine in St. Petersburg, and I’m still asking myself why I couldn’t just kiss him and be done with it.
The answer, I think, is that I’m broken. Something in me has cracked, some wire crossed wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’ve spent fifteen years turning my curse into a weapon, and now, the weapon is misfiring.
Mank never asked for details. He just looked at me with those sharp eyes, handed me a box of files, and said, “Take some time. Get your head right.”
Three months of filing later, and I’m still not sure my head is right. But when the Vanguard mission came across Mank’s desk—a surveillance op requiring a journalist cover, one I’d spent years perfecting on the side, no honeytrap required, just observation and assessment—I’d practically begged for it. A chance to prove I was still worth something. A chance to use my brain instead of my body, even though I’ll have to use the latter if the time ever calls for it.
And now, here I am, walking through the warehouse door with my phone burning a hole in my pocket, checking every thirty seconds for an email that hasn’t come.
The lift groans its way up to the top floor, lurching a couple of times ominously before it deposits me into the controlled chaos of SOE.