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PROLOGUE

First Blood

“Do you have the target?”

The voice on the other end of the phone was too familiar. I’d come to hate it—almost as much as I hated myself. I didn’t believe in the cause anymore; there were too many people who would bear the brutal force of the effect.

Throat dry, I tried to keep my voice even, unfeeling, though my heart slammed uncomfortably hard against my ribs. I told myself it wasn’t regret. I lied to myself and even toyed with the idea that it was a pulled muscle or out of place rib—but I knew the reason, even my body was physically repelled by my actions.

They were wrong to do it this way. “Target secure.”

I hesitated. Let my thumb brush the blade—once. Twice. It was cold.

It wouldn’t stay that way for long. She had no idea what I was capable of, what I was supposed to do.

“Make it quick.” The voice already sounded irritated with me.

I rolled my shoulders, trying to loosen the weight in my chest. “It’s my blood to spill. Mine to take.”

Not his.

“Then stop talking and do it already, you’ve been given enough chances, plus, it will earn her trust, something you need if you’re going to pull it off.”

The knife felt heavier now. Too real. I knew it would.

“The killing’s already been done,” I murmured staring at her again, allowing myself to take in her innocent smile, knowing that sharp words always followed past those lips. “Finished,” I whispered, to myself, to him. “In more ways than one.”

A laugh cracked from my throat—cold, bitter, joyless. What the hell had I become? What had I let them do to me?

Why…did it have to be her?

He joined in briefly, his laughter sinister, mine in disbelief, his voice rasped through the speaker with finality. “Make it as pretty and dramatic as her, asshole.”

I walked toward her at the same time the sacrificial lamb came up behind her. The price of his life was a million. Not much by my standards—but it would take care of his wife and two kids.

He’d been useless his entire life and now by giving it, he believed he’d be saving theirs.

He had no clue, that his son probably preferred a dad to a dollar bill, that his wife would probably blame herself and have trouble going to the grocery store or getting in the car without having a panic attack.

All because of his life.

All because he thought money meant more than love.

Money was a liar.

It said it could save.

It said it could change lives.

It said it would make everything better.

Money was a drug, one that always somehow required more of whoever possessed it.

A bead of sweat ran down his neck before he lunged for her. The precision of my knife landed directly in his carotid artery. He’d bleed out in seconds. He collapsed.

I wondered if in those seconds he wished he had said no.

I wondered if he saw his wife’s face.