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Peacemaker:“We need to find something comforting. What about Mitri?”

I flashback to his angry face as he hauled me to the table, and my imagination takes over as he ties me to the chair and picks up a scalpel.

Peacemaker:“No. We wouldn’t do that. Not to you.”

“It isn’t working,” a voice growls from my right.

I look up and meet yellow eyes again. I’m not as numb as before, and I have a question.

“Did you do it willingly?”

Silence falls around me, and I realize that while I’ve been focused on the gun, other things have been happening in the background.

The phantom hands stroke down my cheeks in a barely there caress.

“No,” King answers calmly.

“Was GV being controlled?”

“No,” he replies, and his head tilts as those fingers sink beneath the flesh, touching on memories I want to hide from, digging things up from where I’ve managed to rebury them.

He wants to pry? Fine, let him have it all.

King’s eyes widen as the color washes out of his face, leaving him an unnatural shade of gray. He chokes and turns his face away to take a deep breath. “The instruments are for me. To question me.”

“Are you lying?”

“No!” he gasps and struggles to get away from me. From my memories.

“They were going to torture you?”

“They were going to letyoutorture me,” he protests.

That makes me hesitate, brows drawing down in confusion. “Why would I do that?”

His eyes catch mine again, and I recognize the surprise on his face. I can see his whole face now, his lips parted in shock. “I tried to rip your heart out.”

“You sucked at it,” I feel my shoulders shrug, and I’m so close to sliding into the driver’s seat now that I’m beginning to feel the ache in my arm as it rolls up and down.

“What?” King asks in disbelief. “I was trying to fight the compulsion.”

“Sure you were. It hurts worse when you punch through the ribs. You pussed out by digging under.”

“Bees!” Ben’s irate voice sounds a lot closer than before. I’m almost there.

I glance down at the gun as it pulls my hand across the table to aim at King. I rub my thumb over the hammer, feeling the rough texture. I’m surprised it hasn’t been worn down by time and use.

Peacemaker:“Please, darling. I keep myself fit. Just pull the trigger.”

I feel my lips twitch. He sounds as pissed off as Vendetta was.

I’m facing King with a smirk, back in my pain-filled body. He stares back at me, confused and eyeing me like I’m an entirely different animal than what he was expecting.

“So she was the mastermind?”

He gapes at me before he blinks and straightens slowly. “Beatrice?”

“I don’t get it. If you could whammy me, how did she get control of you? Wouldn’t you be stronger than her? Nobody said anything about her being a psychic.” Scilla is going to be pissed that her dossier isn’t accurate.