Page 92 of Hunted to Be Mine

I nodded toward the stacks. “The files. Did you find anything?”

“First things first.” She pressed a protein bar into my hand. “Eat. Then we’ll talk.”

I didn’t argue with her doctor voice. The food cleared some of the fog. She watched me like she was tracking symptoms.

She studied my face. “No more headache? No nausea?”

“Residual pain. Bearable.” I crumpled the wrapper. “Now tell me what you found.”

She sat beside me on the bed, close enough that I caught her shampoo. “Not as much as I’d hoped. I’ve been going through everything you brought back. Most of it’s bureaucratic paperwork—operational reports, conditioning protocols.”

“And about me? About… Wolfe?”

Her expression eased at my tone. “The photograph, that partial report, that’s all we have. Honestly, I was hoping for more.”

I leaned back against the wall, the disappointment settling hard. “So we’re not any closer.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” She nodded toward the stacks. “I learned more about their conditioning techniques, and that chemical they referenced might be our best lead. I sent the compound info to Mattie already. If they can develop a counteragent…”

I rubbed my temple. “What about trigger words? Anything on those?”

She shook her head. “Nothing specific to you or any operative. That info must be stored elsewhere.”

“Could my name be one? When you said it…”

Her answer was gentle but sure. “No. What happened last night wasn’t a trigger response. That was your real self colliding with the persona Oblivion implanted. Different mechanism.”

“So if someone used actual trigger words on me…”

“They’d still work. We just don’t know how far it can go.”

The headache faded to a dull throb behind my brow. I pressed my palms to my thighs, focusing on the rough denim. The room felt off-kilter, like it might tip if I moved too fast.

Selina shifted off the bed to sit cross-legged on the floor. “We should talk about what happened.”

I slid down to the carpet too. Our shoulders almost touched as we leaned against the couch.

She hesitated, twisting her fingers. “How much do you remember from your seizure?”

I held her gaze. “Enough.”

Teeth set, I let the fragments come. “I was a contract killer. Professional. Expensive.” I watched her, looking for disgust. Or fear. “The best at what I did. That’s why they wanted me.”

She didn’t look away. A small nod. Go on.

My voice flattened. “There was blood.” My spine straightened on its own. Hands went still on my knees. “I remember the satisfaction of a clean job. No witnesses, no evidence. Target removed exactly as specified. How well I tortured them. How I made them bleed out.”

Cold method. Calculated violence that fit too easily in my hands.

I looked past her. I didn’t want to see her face while I said it.

“And even Oblivion. Before Prague, before the orphanage…” My voice went blank. “I eliminated targets in Budapest. Paris. Berlin. Countless…”

I turned away from her fully. “I see their faces now. People I killed as Wolfe and as Specter. A businessman in Tokyo. A politician in Madrid. A woman in Stockholm who begged for her children.”

My teeth pressed together between sentences. My fingers curled, then I smoothed them flat on my thighs. Every word pushed us farther apart.

The admission scraped my throat. “I wasn’t forced to become this. I chose it. Long before Oblivion found me. I was already an assassin.”