Hidden Chaos (The Chaos #3)- Keta Kendric Page 0,3

patting my head like I was a puppy. Malin was the tougher of the two women who rarely called me by my name. It was always, “girl.” Reika was the nicer of the two women. She gave me hugs, helped with my homework, and reassured me with care and concern when I needed it.

I stood in place, staring at the body, and letting the sight of what I had done to the monster settle into me. I didn’t have to let the knowledge of the ten girls who had brutally died at his hands swallow my guilt because oddly, I didn’t feel any. My keepers had been preparing me for this task for months. There would be no turning back after crossing this line, the one that had allowed me to take life, reconcile it with reason, and not feel guilt.

I lifted my gaze from the fallen monster I had banished from this world and took in the women who peered down at me with pride-filled gazes. My keepers were fierce and possessed a wealth of knowledge about death that made me speculate what their jobs had been before they had taken the roles to foster and train me.

They were always tight-lipped about giving me the history on how they had known my mother, but I had picked up bits and pieces of conversations that revealed that Malin and Reika had grown up in the same orphanage as my mother.

“Your final test is complete. Now, you graduate to the next level,” Reika, the brunette and shorter of the two told me. She managed a caring glint and ran a reassuring hand down my back despite the horror in front of us.

“This is how you protect yourself if your life is ever threatened by members of the Ferali Syndicate or federal law enforcement agents,” Malin added.

I nodded, hoping I would never meet members of either group if death was the only way to protect myself from them. At twelve years old, I had committed my first murder and knew more would follow.

My eyes trembled under my lids, flirting with the idea of opening to the darkness filling my bedroom. Now, sixteen years after my first kill, my lessons were still as fresh as if I had learned them yesterday.

The women who trained me presented themselves as convincing foster parents to the outside world, but they’d taught me a lot more than reading, writing, and arithmetic. After they were gone and I was left to fend for myself, I hadn’t been confronted by the forces they had been training me to protect myself against.

Until now.

What the hell was I going to do now that the two women I considered family, Desiree and Mecca Evans, were marrying members of an organization I had been trained to kill?

3

Patrena

Weeks later…

I was not in the back seat of Khane ‘The Kannibal’ Vallin’s truck. My eyes were so tightly shut I felt the clenching tremble while praying a prayer of peace, that when I opened them, the last hour will have been a dream. It had to have been a fantasy. There was no way to reconcile the hell I had just witnessed as reality.

There I was in all my normal nosey glory, having a spa day with Desiree and prying into her business because the Lord knew I didn’t have any. I had even strapped a big fake ponytail to the top of my short hair and was twirling and whipping it around my head like I had grown it. Next thing I knew, I ended up being an eyewitness to Khane brutally killing five men and turning the spa into his own personal freak show.

“I’m sleep. I’m sleeping. I’m dreaming. I’m having an intense dream,” I muttered. None of that just happened. Yes it did, a little voice inside my head teased.

Had two men actually attempted to sexually assault Desiree and me in the middle of their kidnapping attempt? Did that happen too? Yes, it did. And he even managed to snatch your nice ponytail off while doing it.

Why had I consumed that damn wine while Des and I were getting our pedicures? Now, my damn dreams were so vivid that they were taking over my consciousness. Sleep. I’m at the spa, and they are massaging me so good that I’ve fallen asleep.

“Ms. Davis, do you have a problem with anything you’ve witnessed so far?” a male voice questioned in a smooth and deadly tone that was uniquely Khane’s. It was so vocally alive, upon