Wasted Lust - JA Huss Page 0,57
I’ll just give you my answer now. No.”
“Not even if it means you can prevent dozens, if not hundreds of other girls from having to navigate the world like you? Hmmm? You’re so selfish that you’d turn your back on your Company sisters who need help?”
My thwarted plans the day Jax found me at the airport hit me in the chest like a bullet. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She gives me a funny look and I squirm in my seat. Shut the fuck up, Sasha.
She drags her stare from me and concentrates on filling a tea cup and adding two teeny-tiny spoonfuls of sugar. “I’m well-loved around here. I have over twenty-five saved souls on my list of accomplishments.”
“Excuse me?”
“All boys, so far. As you well know, they are much easier to save.” And then a small chuckle erupts from her lips and I get that chill again. “Jax might disagree, but his situation is unique.”
Jax? He said he wasn’t Company. If he lied to me—
“We did our best in that case. But the Company, as I’m sure you are aware, has legions of assassins on staff. You yourself are one of them.”
“I wasn’t. I have no number.”
“Zero? That’s a number, isn’t it? Last I checked.”
“Zero means nothing.”
“You’re wrong. Zero is the number that when added multiplies everything by ten. Add two, and you multiply by a hundred. Three, a thousand.”
“I get it, but it’s bullshit.”
“It’s not, Sasha. It’s the one thing they’ve tried that actually works.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sleepers. The girls. The child killers. You were one of them. Your father didn’t follow protocol and that’s why you’re still alive, I think. But none of the others survived, aside from Harper Tate, and she barely counts, since the Admiral never seriously had her in the sleeper program to begin with. It was all for show. To make everything equal. You know, an example. None of the other Company girls had protection like the two of you did. But Nick, on the other hand, he was properly indoctrinated. He’s made quite a name for himself down there in Miami.”
“Miami?” Shit. I have no clue. I’m so out of my element here. I used to be the girl who knew everything but lately I feel like the last to know anything.
She waves a hand at me and takes a sip of her tea before setting her china cup down on its pretty matching saucer. “Never mind Nick for now. I can handle him. But the girls I’ve found, they are another matter. They are wild. Have you met any of them?”
“No,” I lie. “Just Harper.”
“Hmmm,” she says. Not quite calling me out. So maybe she doesn’t know about Sydney, Merc’s girlfriend. She was a Company girl. And she was a sleeper assassin too. As dangerous a girl as they come. Maybe even more dangerous than me under normal circumstances. But her mind was fucked so hard, she might never be normal.
No, I’m the one who kept her head. I’m the one who made it out intact.
“At any rate, you’re angry at me for not saving you. But now that I’m offering you a chance to save other girls, other Company girls, you want to run away from the offer.”
“You never offered me shit.”
“I’m offering now, Sasha. Help me reach them. Help me undo the years of training and abuse. Help me steal them back, if necessary.”
“You want me to steal baby girls.” This bitch is nuts.
“And retrain the older ones.”
I really might throw up. Just what the hell is she asking? “You can’t just steal children.”
“Why not? The Company does. They stole you. They stole your mother.”
“And yet you managed to escape.”
“Your grandfather—my father—went to extreme lengths to save me.”
“But not my mother?”
“She was a full-blood Company girl. He had no chance. But tomorrow there will be a very important meeting here. A meeting that will change the tide for these girls. And I need you to be there. I need your support. Because my associates have it in their heads that you are the only one capable of this job and I have it in my head that I am the only one with enough knowledge to see it through. I need your help to secure that position.”
“That makes no sense. Who would follow you? Not me!” I laugh. “And I’m just a grad student in anthropology. I have not seen action in a decade.”
“But Julian’s attack proved that you still have skills.”
“So that was planned.