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My knees go weak, and I stagger, struggling to stand. I pat myself down to check I’m not dead. Nope, not dead. Very much alive.
She stands before me. Her appearance has changed. She has blonde hair, a fuller figure, and the usual warm sparkle in her eyes has been extinguished, yet there’s no mistaking she’s my sister. I see Mum’s curled eyelashes, her freckle pattern that matches my own, and hear the voice I’ve dreamt about.
“Daisy?” I stutter, reaching for her. “Is that really you?”
Bram, equally stunned, drops Seb, who straightens his jacket.
Daisy doesn’t seem as shocked to see me. For a split second, her eyes momentarily glaze over, and then she blinks any emotion away. Her steely stare lingers on Spencer’s slumped body.
“Is he dead?” she asks.
I’d almost forgotten where we were. Right now, nothing matters but her. My entire world has stopped spinning on its axis. My little sister is alive!
“No, he’s not, but?—”
“Good,” she cuts me off. Instead of stepping into my open arms, she strides past me to check Spencer’s pulse. “You can’t hurt him, Ivy.”
“What?” I stammer. “I don’t understand.” How can she stand by the man who destroyed our lives? “I thought you were dead. I thought they killed you.”
“So, you decided you’d go on a revenge mission?” she snaps.
“I did it for you,” I explain. “After what they did to us…” My voice catches in the back of my throat as I fight back tears. “I wanted to avenge you.”
“You haven’t changed at all, have you?” she scoffs. “You’re still just as impulsive, reckless, and selfish as you always were. You only ever think about yourself, Ivy.”
Her words are like a kick to the stomach and take all the breath from my lungs. She’s acting like a different person. Her softness is gone, replaced by a hardened shell and brutal edge.
“No,” I say. “I did this for you.”
“You did this for yourself,” she says. “This isn’t something I’d have wanted, or didn’t you know me at all?”
“Who are you?” I ask. “And what have you done with my sister?”
“She’s the Lotus,” Seb supplies. “She works for the Killers Club.”
Daisy is the Lotus?
Over the years, I’d heard about the illusive assassin. She was cool, calculated, and often hired to do the toughest jobs. Our paths never crossed, despite my requests. Alaric wanted us to stay in our pods for security reasons. Our anonymity was the most important thing, and I blindly accepted his explanation without question. However, now I understand why he was so desperate to keep us apart. How many other agents knew? Had they been laughing at me for five years?
“The Lotus is what they call me,” Daisy confirms. “Amongst other things.”
A flicker of another emotion crosses her face as she lets her guard slip for a moment, and then it returns in force.
“Did you know about me?” I ask. The sentence tastes like ash in my mouth, and I’m not sure whether I’m ready to hear her answer.
“No,” she replies, meeting my gaze with a ferocity that tells me she’s being honest.
“How can you be so calm about this?” I question. “You’re acting like you’ve just run into an old school friend you haven’t seen for years. This is me, Daisy! You’re looking at me like I’m a stranger!”
“You were part of my old life.”
They’ve brainwashed her. Just like they brainwashed me. The club’s conditioning runs so deep that breaking their ties is almost impossible. It was easy for them to groom me to do their bidding and become a killer when I was already harbouring anger and resentment, but Daisy was different. She’d always been gentle, kind, and shy. To change her must have taken years of conditioning.
“The club lied to us,” I remind her. “They told me you were dead. They purposefully kept us apart.”
Bram, to my right, has paled. He looks at Daisy like she’s a resurrected zombie. When he found me at the crash scene, he told me that Daisy was dead. Judging by his reaction, I believe he was being genuine, but he must have been wrong. After he left, the Killers Club must have discovered Daisy when they cleaned up the mess.
“The club gave me a new life,” she says. “They looked after me.”
