slipping my imaginary armor over my heart before he can shred it. I’m prepared for anything, my death included, but Megan and Wyatt are my weakness. I hope I’ve done a good enough job hiding the tracks that lead me back to them. Not that they’ll find an easy target in Wyatt. He’ll rip them apart with his bare hands before he lets anyone lay a finger on Megan. Or me. I swallow, shaking off the memories of my little makeshift family. Now is not the time or place.
“There are currently ten division heads working for Zodiac. There should be twelve, but we recently lost two, which is where the initiates come in. There will be five of you, the best from the rest, so to speak. We don’t have as significant a foothold outside of this city as within, but we do have you guys. Two of you will step in to fill the last two spots, but you’ll have to prove that you are worthy of the task.”
“Of course I will,” I sigh, not expecting anything less. He grits his teeth before looking away.
“What aren’t you telling me, Diablo?” I whisper. He turns back to face me, his warm breath washing over me as he drops his head far enough that when he speaks, his lips graze mine in a barely-there touch.
“Only two of the initiates will walk away from this. The others can’t live once they’ve seen inside the inner sanctum.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, not surprised in the least. Isn’t this the way it always goes for me? I open them back up and stare at him, locking down my emotions tight so he can’t read me.
“Anything else I should know before you lead me to my potential death?”
He sighs, crawling off me before reaching down and yanking me to my feet.
“Reid,” I prompt when he doesn’t say anything else, but I can see the tension in his shoulders.
“There has never been a female division head,” he admits, making me laugh.
“Fucking peachy.”
“Seriously?” I gaze up at Reid, who grins down at me.
“Pretty cool, huh? Zodiac has a hard-on for anything space related. His grandfather was apparently some famous Russian cosmonaut, but who knows for sure.”
I stare up at the enormous domed building before me and shake my head.
“Can’t really say I gave much thought to what an evil lair looks like, but I wouldn’t have guessed a planetarium in a million years,” I confess.
“That’s the beauty of it, Cherry. Everything’s subjective. People see what they want. Driving home at night, they pass this place with a smile, thinking about being a kid looking up at the stars. They never consider the possibility that the stars are just a distraction from the dark deeds occurring below them,” he muses, leading me toward the hidden doorway at the back of the building.
“Maybe,” I concede, “or maybe people are all too aware of the horrors real life has to offer and thinking of stars and making wishes is symbolic. A way to keep the faith and remember that this shit will one day pass.” I shrug.
“I never took you for a dreamer, Cherry,” he teases, closing the iron door behind us and leading me down a dimly lit hallway.
“Dreams are free and accessible in the darkest hours. They offer you an escape, they give you hope, and for those brief moments in time, you are free to be whoever you want. The best thing, though, is that nobody can steal them away, because they are yours and yours alone. When you live among thieves and pickpockets, you learn to appreciate the priceless treasures that are so easily deemed worthless to others.” I walk ahead of him, feeling his eyes on me, judging me. Most people think I must be dumb. I mean, how can a street kid who didn’t go to school be anything other than stupid?
But people’s underestimation of me says more about them than me. I’ve been out to prove something to not just myself, but everyone around me since I was a kid. Street smarts aside, the library became, in its own way, my home. I devoured everything I could get my hands on, soaking everything up like a sponge, thirsty for knowledge in the way only someone who had been deprived of it could appreciate.
I’d been kept in a bubble at the house on the hill. I didn’t see or speak to anyone unless I was paraded around like a pretty doll before being returned