Page 12 of Marked to Be Mine (Erased #1)

Maeve

The coordinates led us into Mooca, an industrial district where S?o Paulo hid its decay behind colorful graffiti and battered storefronts.

Evening shadows stretched long across narrow streets emptied of workers hours ago.

The air hung heavy with cooking smells from unseen kitchens, mixed with the stale breath of urban decay.

“There aren’t many people around,” I muttered, checking my phone again.

Reaper didn’t answer. He’d been moving like a predator since we left the main road—eyes constantly scanning rooftops, doorways, shadows.

His body shifted with each step, always keeping himself between me and potential threat points.

Not the protection I asked for. Not the protection he’d offered.

Yet there we were, locked in this lethal dance.

I checked the coordinates on my phone again and glanced at the crumbling three-story warehouse in front of us. The address matched, but the place looked abandoned, windows boarded, paint peeling like dead skin.

“This can’t be right,” I said, shaking my head. I wanted just one thing to go right .

Reaper moved ahead, his posture reconfiguring to shield me from the street. Since we’d left the safehouse, he’d spoken fewer than twenty words, but his eyes hadn’t stopped their relentless assessment.

“Stay behind me,” he said, voice low.

“You don’t have to position yourself like my bodyguard.” I gestured between us. “We’re equals in this mission.”

Reaper turned back toward me, his expression stern. Everything about it seemed to say we were nowhere near equals in this situation.

“You’re a journalist,” he pointed out, “and a woman.”

“I...”

“I’ve been trained for this.”

Annoyance filled me, but I didn’t say another word. He was right in a way, I supposed. The two of us had different strengths.

The muscles across his shoulders tensed, coiled and ready.

The silence between us that followed felt strangely intimate—as if we’d moved beyond the need for certain words.

The building itself was unremarkable—a three-story structure with boarded windows and peeling paint.

No signs, no lights, no indication anyone had entered it in years.

“This is it?” Reaper asked.

“According to the coordinates.”

Reaper approached a weathered metal door, testing the handle. It turned.

“Wait,” I said. “Be careful. ”

He gave me a look that might almost have been amusement—if assassins allowed themselves such luxuries. “I know.”

Without hesitation, he pushed the door open and slipped inside. I counted to three, then followed. The interior was darker than it should have been, smelling of dust and abandonment. Nothing but bare walls and empty spaces, and that same stale scent that made my stomach rise.

“There’s nothing here,” I said, disappointment creeping into my voice.

Reaper moved through the space, fingers trailing along the wall. “No.”

“The message said ‘the den.’ This is just an empty building.”

He raised a hand sharply, head tilting as he focused on something I couldn’t perceive. Then he pointed to the far corner and moved toward it. I followed, our footsteps creating hollow echoes against concrete.

At the wall, his fingers traced what looked identical to every other surface. When they caught on to some invisible imperfection, a small panel slid away, revealing a keypad.

“How did you...”

“Irregular dust pattern.”

I pulled out my phone, fingers trembling slightly with anticipation. “Wallflower. The password he shared”

Reaper entered the code, each keystroke making a soft electronic confirmation. For three heartbeats, nothing happened. Then a section of wall slid back, revealing a narrow passage .

“Stay here,” he said.

“Not a chance.”

I followed as he entered, his body constantly repositioning to keep himself between me and whatever waited ahead.

The passage narrowed until we reached a small room barely larger than a closet.

He was close enough that I felt the heat radiating from his skin, and I smelled the faint metallic scent that clung to him.

The hidden room was another world entirely. Where the building outside crumbled, this space gleamed with technology. Three large monitors lined one wall. Servers hummed quietly in racks. A single chair sat before a curved desk filled with equipment I couldn’t identify.

“This setup isn’t amateur,” Reaper said, eyes sweeping over every inch of the space. “Military-grade encryption devices, satellite uplinks.”

I squeezed past him, my hip brushing against his thigh, sending a shiver of awareness that had nothing to do with fear. “Who do you think this informant is? Intelligence community?”

“Whoever they are, they have resources.”

The space forced proximity, each movement bringing us into contact.

Each time his arm touched mine, I felt that same jolt—inappropriate given our circumstances, yet impossible to ignore.

It was wrong. I knew that much. We were searching for something much greater than ourselves, and I couldn’t allow myself to get distracted with whatever … this was.

Reaper reached back without looking and pulled the hidden door closed. The small room shrank further, trapping his scent and warmth around me. The screens suddenly illuminated in sequence, lines of code scrolling across two monitors while the center screen remained black.

A voice filled the room—digitally altered to remove any identifying characteristics, neither male nor female, yet somehow familiar.

“Welcome, Ms. Durham.” I scanned the room for cameras but saw none, though they must have been there, watching us. “I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t find your way.”

Reaper shifted beside me, his hand dropping to his weapon with subtle efficiency, but he remained silent.

“Are you my informant?” I asked, stepping closer to the screens.

“In the flesh—well, figuratively speaking.”

There was an unmistakable smile in the voice despite the electronic distortion. The center screen flickered to life, displaying an animated silhouette against a static background.

“And I see you’ve brought company. Welcome, Reaper.”

Beside me, Reaper went rigid. I felt the change before I saw it—his body transforming from lethal readiness to something even more dangerous.

“How do you know who he is?” I asked.

The informant laughed, the sound twisted through filters into something not quite human. “I know of Reaper.”

“Know him how ?” I pressed, moving closer to the screens while monitoring Reaper’s increasingly predatory stillness. My hands curled into fists at my sides, bracing for whatever revelation might come .

“Intimately, you might say.” The distortion couldn’t hide the informant’s unsettling familiarity. “We’re cut from the same cloth—assassins, puppets on strings. Both owned and used by the same masters.”

Reaper’s hand tightened on his weapon, knuckles whitening. I knew he wanted answers as much as I did, yet no words left his lips, as if he was somehow…testing this persona.

The silhouette tilted, a gesture somehow both mocking and wounded. “We even worked together once. Not that either of us was supposed to remember. Memories are… inconvenient for our handlers.”

My heartbeat accelerated against my ribs. I turned to Reaper, searching his face for any flicker of recognition, but his expression remained carved from stone, even as a thin red line appeared at the edge of his nostril.

“If you’re like him—conditioned, controlled—how do you even know this? How can you remember?” I asked, eyes fixed on that drop of blood that Reaper didn’t seem to notice.

“I shouldn’t.” The modulated laugh carried a bitter edge sharp enough to cut.

“Just like our friend Reaper here, I seem to be… defective. The conditioning didn’t take properly.

Fragments started coming back—faces, names, missions.

I suspect you’re experiencing the same symptoms, Reaper—nosebleeds, headaches…

nightmares that feel too real to be dreams. And they keep getting worse, to the point where you come to wonder if one day they will become too much to handle. ”

The silhouette leaned forward, and despite the distortion, urgency radiated from the movement.

“I don’t know everything—far from it. The memories come in broken pieces, like shattered glass reflecting distorted images.

That’s why I’m helping you, Ms. Durham. We’re both searching for truth in the dark.

And to bring it to the light. That’s why I need you. ”

“What do you know about me?” Reaper cut in, his voice a blade slicing through the space between us.

The informant’s posture changed instantly—shoulders drawing inward, voice darkening to something hollow and raw.

“Not much,” he admitted. “Same for me. Not even my own name. Not even my past.”

Something wounded in those words resonated in my chest—a pain I recognized. It echoed the desperate emptiness I’d glimpsed in Reaper when his conditioning cracked. The same haunted look my brother had in the prison visiting room the last time I saw him.

Without thinking, I reached for Reaper’s hand.

His skin felt cool against mine, callused and rough.

For a heartbeat, he went completely still, as if my touch had shocked him more than any weapon could.

Then his fingers twined with mine, grip tightening almost imperceptibly—like it was the only thing keeping him steady.

The contact grounded me, too—two strangers clinging to connection in this sterile, hidden room, surrounded by secrets neither of us fully understood.

“If you know about the organization,” I said to the screen, “you’re in a better position than I am to dig into their operations. You clearly have resources.” I gestured at the technology surrounding us with my free hand. “Why involve me at all?”

The silhouette shifted, and a harsh sound—something between laughter and pain—came through the distortion.