Page 50 of Pretty Little Assassin

That’s what makes me say what I say next.

“I was tortured to be able to tune out the synthetics.”

Valentina’s face twists. A proper response, honestly. The process was entirely brutal. During rut, the increased aggression and sexual drive, that’s when the torture works best. It was also when it was most brutal. The result was effective, lasting, and worth it.

“Still think I am not scary?”

Her eyes flash up at me. Defiance. Resilience. Not sympathy. It’s the look of someone who's seen some shit themselves, too. She’s been tortured too—maybe just not physically.

She picks up her sandwich again. “Answer the other question now.” She takes a bite and moans a little. I do not remind her of my better cooking skills. I do not think about what other moans I could elicit from her. I appreciate instead her interrogation techniques and how she quietly changes the subject. “What keeps you from being the monster everyone thinks you are?”

“I never said that. You said that,” I remind her as I take another bite. Damn, this sandwich is good.

“I’m right.”

I shrug. “That assessment will cost you at the end of our partnership, when I kill you.”

That’s a lie, and I know it.

Her eyes drop. Not to my face. To my wrist, resting on the table with the inside turned up because I wasn’t thinking about it, and she has been carrying that since the car.

“My little sister.” The words hang on the edge of my tongue. Sour. Stinging. It wasn’t always that way. There were days when I would call her name, and she would come running toward me with a smile on her face.

Those days are gone.

“You mentioned during the stakeout that you have a sister,” she says.

“Had.”

She doesn’t ask.

That is the most dangerous thing anyone has done to me in eleven years.

Silence hangs between us. Thicker than the sauce I put on the sandwich.

Her eyes change. There it is again—recognition.

I wonder who she’s lost too.

She takes a careful bite of the excellent sandwich that I made her.

“I couldn’t save her. That’s all you need to know. It’s your turn. What’s the deal, the hum?”

Mr. Pickles makes a sound that mimics a hangry growl. I throw him another slice of cheese because why not? He’s fat as fuck already. It can’t hurt.

“It’s a song that my real father used to sing to me whenever I was anxious. I don’t remember all the words. I think he might have even made it up, to be honest. But the last good memory I have of him was of him humming that song to me.”

I give her story the respectful silence she gave mine.

“It was right before he died. The last thing I have of him is him humming, smiling at me, giving me courage.”

I look at the petite, beautiful butcher, imagining her father singing to her as a child.

“Soon after that, my mom decided to remarry, then drown herself in a gin bottle and punch in for a full-time membership to club rehab. My stepfather raised me after that.”

The face she made when she said “raised me” told me what she thought.

Then, before my eyes, her expression softened.