Pike (The Pawn Duet #1) - T.M. Frazier Page 0,69

in the army of the Fourth Reich for four years. Little did they know what they’ve been training me for.”

“What exactly is that?” Nine asks.

She spins around and I’m trapped in her gaze. “Justice. They were training me, and I was going to use that training on them and get much deserved much needed justice.”

“You mean revenge,” I argue.

She nods. “In this case, they are one in the same. Although justice makes it sound more superhero and less…”

“Like premeditated murder?” Nine finishes.

“I guess you can say that,” she replies, on a laugh, nervously shaking out her hands. “Because it’s true. No matter what words you use.”

I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Revenge for what?” I ask, because I need to fucking know.

“It’s a really long story,” she replies, her eyes glassy with unshed tears.

“We ain’t going nowhere. Tell us,” I probe, needing to understand her affiliation with the racist bastards. I look to Nine. “No interrupting. Let her fucking speak.”

She thinks for a few beats. “My father was in the same field of study that I’m in. Was in. He went undercover before I was born in the Fourth Reich. The took us, the whole family, to their gatherings. We all repeated the sick chants. Cheered at the propaganda. At night, when we were home, he’d tell us how successful his research was and that we were a big part of that success. All we had to do was keep playing our part, and we’d all be rewarded when his research landed him a guest spot on CNN and a book turned into a movie. His delusions of grandeur were so big it made him greedy. It made him stay long after he should have pulled out.”

I resist placing my hand on her thigh because as much as I want to comfort her, she doesn’t deserve my comfort, and I can’t risk what touching her again might do to my resolve to see this thing through. “What happened? What went wrong?” I ask.

She looks to the ceiling as if the answer is taped to it. “I don’t know the details, but they must have found out who my father really was and what he was doing there. Twenty years is a long time, and I don’t think they liked the idea that they were taken for fools for that long. I remember when my father came back to the beach house one day looking frazzled. Scared. We had to leave really fast. We didn’t even pack. We just got in the van and took off.” She takes her eyes from the ceiling and looks to me.

“They caught up to us. There was gunfire. My sisters screamed. My mother’s face was the palest I’d ever seen. She was terrified. There was a noise like a crushing pop, and then my mother’s face was splattered with red.”

My father…he’d been shot in the head. He was dead. My mother tried to take hold of the wheel, but his foot was pressed up against the gas. There was nothing she could do.

We blew through the guardrail. There was so much screaming. The water was too fast. Too deep. I screamed for my mother, but she didn’t answer. My sisters…they were all contorted, and I don’t know if they were still alive, but they weren’t conscious. There were no more screams. I tried to feel for a pulse on my sister Mindy, but the water was up to my neck and then over her head, and I couldn’t feel anything.”

She smiles at me through her tears, and I want to fucking kill every single person whose ever caused her to cry. “You found me that night and took me home. I was delirious. It didn’t hit me––what happened––until they started shooting at us on the beach. I surrendered because I didn’t want you to die for the sins of my father.”

“What happened after they took you?” I ask, realizing now it wasn’t a rescue after all.

“Psychology happened. When Darius saw me, I knew he was ready to kill me. But the only reason he’d have for wanting me dead would be if I believed he was the villain, the man who killed my family.” She takes a deep breath to steady herself. “So, when I saw him for the first time, I wrapped my arms around him and cried to Uncle Darius that we were in a car accident because someone ran us off the road and shot at us and that