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I smile wryly at the way the hoodie hangs off Annika like a blanket, or a hilarious poncho. She looks tired, her face drawn, her eyes heavy with exhaustion.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asks softly.
I shake my head, pulling the robe tighter around me. “Not really.”
Annika steps into the room, closing the door quietly behind her. She moves toward the bed, sitting on the edge of it with a sigh. “I keep thinking about the other night. The shooting, all of it.”
“Hey, we’ve dealt with worse when it was just us against the world on the streets, right?”
She smirks, lifting her face to eye me. “Is this the start of another trademark Freya pep talk?”
“The grass is, uh…always greener?”
She snickers.
“You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?”
She giggles, eyeing me again. “Thank you.”
“Any time,” I grin back. “Hey, if I can’t help with actual advice, I can at least make you laugh enough to forget what’s bothering you, right?”
She smiles wryly at me, but her face is still worried.
And I know why.
I wish she felt she could talk to me about it.
In hindsight, it’s amazing that Anni and I evensurvivedthose years on the streets. We were two young girls, alone, and the world is full of monsters who like to prey on those. I know Annika had her own brushes with horror and danger, same as me.
And then we met a different kind of monster. One with patience and nice words. One with presents and shiny trinkets to lure us deeper.
His name was Valon Leka, head of The Brotherhood, an Armenian crime syndicate. Annika and I first crossed his path when he hired us to do a job. At the time, it had been our biggestheist yet, and after we did what we’d been tasked with doing, Valon let us keephalfof what we’d stolen.
After that, he owned us.
The next job, again, he gave us half the take instead of the ten percent he’d promised us. The next one we basically kept everything. He heaped us with praise, gifts, cars, fancy clothes, jewelry…you name it.
I was taken in by his charm and his favors.
Annika gotconsumedby them.
Looking back, I realize that what my friend went through is called grooming now. Anni was twenty-two and literally homeless, with no family or safety net aside from me, who wasalsohomeless and without family or safety net.
Valon, meanwhile, was forty-five, charming, rich, powerful, and fairly handsome.
Annika never stood a chance.
We were part of Valon’s orbit for three years. I will never,everlose the guilt I have for letting my best friend in the world remain in that prison for so long.
He didn’t keep Annika locked in a cage or tied to a wall or anything, of course. Her prison was one made from glittery gifts and lavish vacations. Built on fancy apartments and luxury cars. He kept us both happy and distracted enough to use her for three fucking years, until one day, we thankfully woke up.
We left, and we never looked back. And that would have been the final page of that chapter. Except that a few months ago, we kinda fucked up.
Part of Kir bringing us into his world was that we now worked forhim. He appreciated our talents for theft, but he had bigger, grander plans for those skills. Instead of ripping off rich assholes, skimming credit cards, and boosting cars, Anni and I started using our talents for bigger-picture stuff.
Rather than hacking into checking accounts, I was digging up dirt to use against Kir’s enemies. Annika pivoted from social engineering her way into situations to crushing people in the boardroom. She’s now the bad-ass bitch who walks into a meeting with serious big dick energy and makes sure Kir gets what he came for.
Honestly, it’swaymore fun than stealing credit cards.
