the executive decision to separate them. But the words didn’t sound like commiseration.
They sounded like accusation.
“You think I left you?” she demanded, anger driving back the pain for one blissful, relieved moment. “When I got you back to the Center, I waited outside the clinic for hours before someone came out. They told me you were dead, Ava. That you didn’t make it.”
“And you believed them.” Ava’s eyes held no understanding. No sympathy. “They told me you abandoned me. I didn’t believe them. I had faith that my sister wouldn’t give up on me. That’s how I made it through the first year of torture, you know. I was so sure that if I just held it together, you’d come back for me. You’d get me out.”
“I would never have abandoned you.” Nina’s throat swelled with an ache that threatened to choke off her breath as well as her words. “You were all I had left.”
“You did abandon me,” Ava snapped. “And why not? I was replaceable. When I finally figured out you weren’t coming, I rescued myself. But you didn’t need me by then, did you? You’d just picked out a new family.”
The very idea would have been laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. Nina loved Dani and Maya with all her heart, but they existed in addition to the ragged holes left behind by the loss of her sisters. They didn’t fill them.
Ava would either believe that or she wouldn’t. More words wouldn’t convince her, so Nina steeled herself and returned her focus to Knox. “I want to hear what else the captain has to say.”
Knox’s face was a hard mask. He clenched his jaw, and the furrow between his brows deepened. “I have no excuse. I made a hard call to protect my people. I wish I could take it back.”
“Why?” Nina tried to smile, but it felt more like a grimace, so she gave up. “You did your job, and you did it well. That’s something to be proud of.”
He flinched.
“Captain Knox is irrelevant,” Ava said coolly. “If you truly believed I was dead, then now you have an inkling of how deep the rot goes at the Franklin Center. They took everything from us, Nina. They took Zoey. They took the last ten years of our lives. I’m going to take it back, and I’d much rather have you fighting with me than against me.”
Nina twisted her wrists again, grounding herself with the bite of hard plastic into sore, sensitive skin. What Ava wanted couldn’t be as simple as vengeance—if she’d known enough about Nina to send Knox and his team after her, then Ava could have just walked up to the warehouse anytime. She could have sent an electronic or voice message or a mediator or a goddamned carrier pigeon.
She hadn’t needed to resort to kidnapping. But she had.
“All right.” Nina refused to let her voice waver. “You win.”
Maya made a noise of protest. “Nina, no.”
“You win,” Nina repeated. “I’ll go with you. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Her sister’s brown eyes narrowed with familiar shrewdness. Suspicion had run deep in Ava from the very beginning. She’d been obsessed with peeling back the layers of people’s motivations, treating them like gadgets she could disassemble, lay out in a neat row of parts, and discern their innermost secrets.
Sometimes she could.
“You never were a good liar,” Ava said softly. “Don’t try to play me, sister. This isn’t a surrender. You’re initiating negotiations.”
“That would imply that I want concessions.”
“Don’t you?”
Nina wet her lips. “Captain Knox did his job, so he and his people should be allowed to leave. He can take Dani and Maya with him—he owes me that much. And I’ll stay.”
“I’m not leaving you here with her,” Dani growled.
Ava ignored her. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, her gaze burning into Nina’s. “He lied to you. He betrayed you. And this is what you barter for? His safety? I’d be doing us both a favor if I put a bullet in his head right now.”
Nina would not look at Knox. She would not. “How am I supposed to maintain a vengeance boner for the Franklin Center if I’m no better than them?”
Anger shuttered Ava’s face. She rose in one smooth movement and dragged the chair out of the way. She walked to one of the mercenaries and pulled a knife from the sheath at his belt. “No, Nina. You don’t get to save everyone. If you want to negotiate, here’s my offer. I’ll let one