Dani is Dani. She’s a hammer, so everything looks like a nail. It’s not her fault, and her heart’s in the right place.”
Ava stepped out of the shadows. Her perfectly tailored suit was unrelieved black today, with a silver necklace shining brightly against her vest. She carried her sleek leather bag to the table and set it down with a soft thump. “I’ve been doing my mission prep. I picked up a couple things for your girls while I was shopping.”
“We don’t need gifts, Ava.”
Ava ignored her and pulled a small case out of her bag. “For Maya. Those earbuds she’s using are outdated. She can connect her watch to these ear cuffs. They use bone conduction. They’re impossible to buy on the open market and extremely stylish. She seems to appreciate style. And these…”
“Ava, stop.” Nina shoved the items back in the bag and pushed it toward her sister. “Stuff won’t help. What they need is for me to make a decision. And I’m not sure I can this time.”
Ava gripped the handle of her bag for a moment, her muscles tense. Then she exhaled. “Do you remember Beth? EF-Gen14-B?”
“Only vaguely.” She mainly remembered the A-designation from that cluster, the fighter who had been in some of Nina’s training groups. That girl had been focused, driven. Harsh, at times.
“Beth was soft, especially for a B. The trainers were terrible to her in class sometimes. I think she might have been the smartest of all of us, but she refused to strip scenarios down to logic. She always said humans were variables that couldn’t be simplified. She sounded like…”
“Zoey,” Nina supplied.
“Yeah. Her sisters went down on a mission about a year after you left. I didn’t know at the time because I was still being…” She trailed off and took a deep breath. “They didn’t want her after that, so they sold her to the highest bidder—some asshole up in Virginia who made his money in the black market. He kept her in the basement, fitted with a shock collar, running books for him.”
Nina closed her eyes, as if that could block out Ava’s words.
“I got her out,” Ava continued. “Three years ago. Dumped that asshole in the Potomac, but only after I stole his entire empire out from under him. Beth’s been running it for me ever since.”
“Congratulations.” Nina didn’t drink often, but she’d never wished harder for a bottle in her hand than at that moment. “Why’d you do it? Rescue her?”
“Because I was her,” Ava said in a flat voice. “Because after they broke me down far enough, the Center contracted me out to the biggest criminal in D.C.”
Nina’s eyes burned. Knox had told her—over and over, in a million different ways—that the world was a hard place. That people only really cared about themselves. In retrospect, she could see that he’d been warning her. Indulging his guilt. Hating himself.
None of those things made him wrong.
There was something clawing at Nina’s throat and gut, a pressure that she could barely contain, much less categorize. Rage and pain and loss and a helplessness so deep it felt like she could fall into it.
All the agony in her life, and she’d never felt hopeless before.
Tears burned down her cheeks. When she spoke, she tasted salt. “I’ve spent the years since I left the Center trying to be more like Zoey. Should I have been trying to be more like you?”
“Christ, no.” Ava’s voice sounded as hollow as Nina’s chest felt. “I killed the man they gave me to, you know. You or Zoey would have found a better way out, but I manipulated him for years. I played all sorts of twisted games to get close enough to take everything he owned before destroying him.”
Her brown eyes glittered as she continued, and Nina couldn’t tell if it was with rage or tears. “I might be the richest person on the Eastern Seaboard by now. And I almost took it all and left. Left Beth behind, not to mention all the other people the Center gave away like broken toys. But even when I hated you, I wanted to be like you.” Her lips curved in a pained, bitter smile. “I never could quite manage it. I saved Beth for the wrong reasons. I do everything for the wrong reasons. Without you and Zoey, maybe I’m just bad.”
“That … or you were right all along.”
“Is that what you think? Is that why you can’t decide what to do?”