Beautiful Vengeance

by Kaylea Cross

  “They’ve already been transported to different facilities around London. Initial questioning resulted in nothing.”

  “Did they have tats like the other ones?”

  “Not the same kind. It’s almost like Jane was trying out a bunch of different designs. Anyway, the interrogations started an hour ago.” Keeping the tats wasn’t the best idea if Jane had planned to start a new version of the Program, but what did she know?

  It was scary as hell to think that Jane had not only been behind the Valkyrie Program, but may have implemented a new one. “Any idea how many more might be out there?”

  “No, but finding out’s one of our top priorities.” He pulled his phone from his pocket, still buzzing. “I gotta take this.” He ran his gaze over her face again. “I’m going to start trying to crack Jane as soon as she wakes up. I’ll call you with the location later, and you can meet me there if you’re up to it.”

  “I’ll be up to it.” There was no way she was missing her chance to interrogate the bitch responsible for all of this shit they’d been through.

  She followed Rycroft down the hall, heading for the waiting room where the others were all gathering. Briar and Georgia had stayed there with their men while the rest of them visited Kiyomi.

  Everyone looked up when she entered, but her gaze slid right to Brody and stayed there. He’d flown across the ocean to be here for her, had voluntarily put himself in harm’s way to help and protect her. Today he’d done all that and more. He was more her hero today than he’d ever been.

  Before anything else happened, she had something to get off her chest as soon as they were alone.

  She filled the group in on what Rycroft had said. Amber had Lady Ada open on her lap. So much of this next part of the investigation hinged on what Amber and Rycroft’s analysts were able to uncover. “What do you need us to do?” Trinity asked her.

  “Find any new intel you can and send it to me,” she answered, busily typing away, jaw tight. “I’m going to crack that bitch open if it kills me.”

  “Who’s taking first watch here?” Megan asked. “Ty and I can do it.”

  “You sure?” Trinity asked.

  “Yep. Just text us when you’ve got a location to meet Rycroft. I need to be there.”

  “Of course.” She paused, looking around the room. These strong, capable women and their partners were closer to completing their mission than ever before. All they needed were a few more breaks. “Any questions?”

  “Nope,” Chloe answered, taking a pull from a can of energy drink. “I just wanna get moving and do something.”

  Trinity nodded, then addressed the group. “Dismissed.”

  Everyone got up and filed out of the room. Brody came last. She stopped him, waited until the door shut, leaving them alone in the room.

  “You okay?” he asked, his brown eyes searching her face in concern.

  “I’m fine.”

  But Trinity’s heart felt bruised, and not just because of her injuries.

  She’d withheld part of herself from this incredible man out of fear and insecurity, all of which she now saw as baseless and stupid. She’d been stupid. She’d almost died today, and she’d been cowardly guarding her heart from the one person who meant the most to her in this world.

  But no longer. However things shook out with Jane Allen and this mission, Trinity was finally clear on what she wanted. She was done with holding back. She had a life to live, and the man standing in front of her to live it with.

  She set her hands on his chest, wincing as the motion pulled at her sore ribs. His heart beat slow and steady beneath her palms, those warm brown eyes delving into hers. “I’ve been holding back from you, and I’m sorry.”

  His lips twitched. “Let’s talk about this later, when you’re feeling better.”

  “No. Now.”

  “All right. Apology accepted. Though I kinda knew what I was in for when I fell in love with you.”

  She couldn’t help but smile a little at his dry assessment. He’d seen her at her worst and best. The crazy along with the good. And he still wanted to make a life with her. “From here on out, things are gonna be different.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Different how?”

  Her sore heart throbbed faster, a mix of relief and gratitude washing over her. She’d almost lost the chance to say this to him. Somehow that made the moment even more perfect. “I want to marry you when we get home.”

  His eyes widened, his whole face lighting up. “For real?”

  “For real. And sometime in the not too distant future, I want to start looking into the adoption process.” She wanted to be a mother, and Brody would be the most incredible dad.

  He laughed, that gorgeous smile warming her inside as he carefully slid his arms around her waist, avoiding her ribs. “I want to squish you so bad right now. When are we gonna get hitched?”

  A hard knot of resolve tied with the joy in her gut, sending a wave of goosebumps rippling across her skin. “Right after we deal with the bitch who did all this to us.”

  ****

  Amber finished reading the report on her screen for the second time and leaned back to rub at her tired, burning eyes. It was too much.

  Jesse’s arms wrapped around her from behind, his chin resting on her shoulder. “Need a break?” he murmured.

  “For just a minute,” she relented.

  He spun her chair around, scooped her up before she could protest, and carried her over to the hotel bed. Cradling her to his chest, he dropped kisses along the side of her face, his arms tight around her.

  She sighed and leaned into him, closing her eyes. Long hours didn’t faze her. She was a workaholic and comfortable with it. But today had taken an emotional, mental and physical toll on her and now she was exhausted.

  From the moment they’d walked into this hotel room hours earlier, she’d been busy remotely capturing and wiping everything from dear Aunt Jane’s electronics. Hard as it was to believe, every new thing she found out about her aunt was worse than the last. Jane had indeed been an actual architect. The evil, twisted kind.

  It was so ironic. All of it. From the court documents detailing why Jane gave them up. She’d made an excuse about not being able to care for them because of her job, because it would impede her lifestyle, and that she wasn’t cut out to be a parent.

  That last bit was the only truthful thing Amber had been able to uncover about her so far, and she didn’t hold out much hope that she would find more. But the captured bodyguards weren’t nearly as loyal as the Architect seemed to think.

  They were talking.

  Having seen the way she was prepared to sacrifice them to get what she wanted, that they meant nothing to her beyond being useful pawns in her scheme, they were both talking to Rycroft and the other interrogators.

  Jesse rubbed a soothing hand up and down her back. “Want to talk about it?”

  Not really, but the only other person she could tell this to right now was Megan. She needed to vent before she imploded. “She didn’t give us up because she didn’t want to raise us. She turned us into guinea pigs so she could funnel us into phase two of the Valkyrie Program—which she was the prototype for.”

  Their aunt had literally been the original Valkyrie. The Program had been her idea, and she’d done everything in her power to make it happen.

  He made a low sound that told her he was listening, so she kept going. It was all just so horrific. But what she’d just learned was the hardest to take. “Kiyomi told us she was supposedly Jane’s blueprint. We didn’t understand what that meant. But I do now.”

  She shifted on his lap, a hard, heavy sadness sitting in the center of her chest as she looked into his warm brown eyes. “She wanted Kiyomi because she considered her to be the most perfect of us all.”

  He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “She’s a psychopath.”

  “You have no idea.” She cuddled into him and laid her head on his shoulder, letting his embrace soothe her
frayed edges. “Between what Rycroft sent earlier about the interrogations of her bodyguards and what I just read, it’s way worse than I ever imagined. I want to tell you and Megan so bad, but I feel like I need to tell Kiyomi before anyone else, and not while she’s in the hospital fresh out of surgery.”

  “Maybe tell Marcus, and he can break the news when he feels she’s ready for it.”

  She sighed. This was what Jesse excelled at. Cool, calm intellect in the face of any challenge. She was usually good at compartmentalizing and removing emotion from the equation, but not with this. It was way too personal. “Maybe.” She thought about it a moment. “Yeah, all right. Good idea.”

  She slid off his lap and called Marcus on her cell. “Hey, is this a good time?” she said when he answered.

  “Aye. Kiyomi’s sleeping. Nurse came in and put more pain meds in her line. She’ll be out for another few hours.” He paused. “Everything all right?”

  A hot ball of tension formed in the pit of her stomach. She exhaled and started pacing the length of the room, unable to sit still. If Megan were here, all her fingers would be a bloody mess.

  She could feel Jesse watching her from where he sat on the end of the bed she couldn’t wait to crawl into with him eventually. “I just found some things that I wanted to inform Kiyomi of before anyone else. I thought I could tell you, and then you can pass them on when you think the timing is right.”

  A creak sounded in the background, as if he’d just sat down. That saved her the trouble of suggesting he do just that. “Aye, all right. Go on then.”

  She rubbed at her forehead. There was no easy way to say this. “Rycroft’s team has been interrogating the surviving bodyguards. Trinity is there observing. They all have stylized tats on their hips, like the ones we ran into in Virginia did, but different designs.”

  “So she did have her own private fighting force.”

  “Yes. But there’s more.” She glanced up at Jesse, decided to hell with trying to be tactful. “I’ve been digging into her personal files through her phone, and a laptop recovered from one of the bodyguards. She’s good. Maybe even better than me with tech stuff, but I was able to find a back door into her server. Everything was encrypted. And do you wanna take a guess what her password was?”

  “Kiyomi,” he said in a taut voice.

  “Yeah.” Which brought her to the worst part. “There’s a reason she told Kiyomi she was the blueprint. It wasn’t just figurative, it was literal.”

  “Literal how?” he asked, his tone growing darker.

  “Jane was the original Valkyrie. She was a specialist in most of our fields, rather than only being an expert in one or two, and she chose to stay with the CIA. At some point after my parents were killed, she decided we might have the aptitude to be operatives as well. Even back then she was obsessed with genetics to the point where she was willing to shuttle us into the Program to see what became of us.”

  She drew a breath before continuing, pushing past the pain. “She considered Kiyomi the pinnacle of the Program’s achievements. The most beautiful and also the deadliest. When the Program was exposed and subsequently shut down, she refused to accept it. Decided to start a different program on her own, funded by private donations and money she’d funneled away from various ops, just like we have.”

  “How much money are we talking?”

  “Hundreds of millions. She did it the same way I did, taking it from targets and other criminal organizations, then funneling it into various companies and offshore bank accounts as tax havens. She even paid for a private facility to be built for her new project, owned by one of her shell companies.”

  “You’re saying she set this entire thing up, right from the time Megan came to me? All to get Kiyomi.”

  “Yes. Because she intended to use Kiyomi to make a whole generation of the best female assassins the world has ever known.”

  “Use her how?” he said in a taut voice.

  “By…” Jesus, this was hard to say. It was sick. Next level, compared to what had been done to them in the past. “By harvesting her DNA and eggs—”

  “Jesus Christ—”

  “And then doing in vitro fertilization using various surrogates she deemed worthy to carry the babies.” Yup. Aunt Jane had planned to make Kiyomi a human lab rat to harvest all the necessary genetic material she needed.

  “She meant to use Kiyomi as a science experiment to make her own force of assassins out of what would have been Kiyomi’s children,” he finished angrily.

  That about summed it up, and it revolted Amber. “Yes.” She stopped in front of Jesse, consciously relaxed her stomach muscles when he settled his hands on her hips and drew her closer. “I apologize. I know how hard that was to hear. Did I make the right call in telling you?”

  “I’m… Aye.” He paused again. “You’re certain?”

  “I wish I wasn’t, believe me. But yes. Do you want me to tell Kiyomi once she’s up to it?”

  “No. I’ll do it. I think it’ll be easier for her if it comes from me.”

  Jesse was so smart. “If you change your mind, just let me know and I’ll do it.”

  “I won’t, but thank you. I appreciate you calling me, Amber. I know it had to have been hard. Does Megan know?”

  “She’s my next call, then Trinity.”

  He grunted in acknowledgment. “I suppose she’s going to be extradited?”

  The Architect. Amber couldn’t bring herself to think of her as Aunt Jane anymore. She was an inhuman monster. A stain on humanity. “Looks that way.”

  He sighed. “Alright. You’ll call if anything else comes up?”

  “Of course. Keep us posted on Kiyomi.”

  “I will. She’ll want to be involved with the investigation as soon as they let her out. When are the rest of you meeting Trinity at the facility?”

  “Tomorrow sometime.” And it couldn’t come soon enough for Amber. The death penalty was too easy for this monster. For a narcissistic freak show like the Architect, a lifetime sentence in a max security facility spent in solitary isolation seemed a more fitting sentence.

  That bitch had stolen everything from them, and Amber was going to ensure everything was taken from her in turn.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Janelle leaned back in the plastic chair to await her next visitor. They wanted her to be uncomfortable, but if it weren’t for the pain in her newly repaired shoulder, she was as comfortable here in this interrogation room as she would have been in her own living room.

  The bright lights, cuffs and chains didn’t bother her in the slightest, and there was no way the people holding her would allow any kind of torture. It was laughable, really, all of them standing behind the two-way mirror right now, watching her in her orange jumpsuit as they tried to figure out how to break her.

  All five agents they’d sent in so far had gotten nothing from her, including Alex Rycroft, someone she had a modicum of respect for.

  It didn’t matter who they sent in. No one would get anything out of her that she didn’t want to give.

  They could interrogate her all they wanted. She wouldn’t be here that much longer anyhow. She still had a few soldiers coming for her. They were loyal to her not only because she paid them disgusting amounts of money, but because they were afraid not to be. They’d seen how she neutralized traitors and threats on the periphery, like Glenn Bennett.

  The single door to the room opened. She didn’t move, didn’t show any hint of reaction at all as Trinity and her two nieces came in. But inside, she smiled.

  Finally. Someone interesting and worthy to challenge me.

  Except just the sight of them stirred the rage and resentment she’d fought her entire life to control. They looked too much like her sainted dead sister. The golden child Janelle had never been able to live up to in their parents’ eyes.

  Trinity stood in front of the two-way mirror and folded her arms, her stiff posture due to more than anger. She was injured, though Janelle couldn’t tell
where.

  Janelle switched her focus to her nieces as Amber and Megan approached the table. They sat in the chairs opposite her, their expressions as blank as hers. Except she knew the truth.

  No matter how well they hid it, they were angry and confused. That didn’t bother her. If things had gone according to plan this morning, they would both be dead right now instead of about to attempt interrogating her.

  Amber sat back and folded her arms, the defensive posture screaming her uneasiness, those green eyes so like her own as hard as glass. “I’m not even gonna ask you about what your plans were, because I already know.”

  Janelle didn’t react. Even if they did know about her plans, it didn’t matter. This wasn’t over. Not nearly. And with Kiyomi wounded, she was at her most vulnerable. Easy pickings as soon as Janelle found her.

  “What I do want to know is, how you can stomach looking at yourself in the mirror.”

  Beneath her cool exterior, Janelle’s temper flared. Twenty-five years ago, she had been a near spitting image of Amber. Not as classically beautiful as Kiyomi, but pretty enough to make men lose their heads—literally. She’d aged well. Far better than most women her age, helped along by a skilled plastic surgeon in Miami.

  “You’re too old to do the work anymore, so you wanted to control others to do it for you. And now you’ve been defeated,” Megan added, her hazel eyes cold as ice. “By the very people you used and discarded. That must hurt like a fucking bitch for someone with an ego as big as yours.”

  Janelle stared into those frigid eyes, refusing to allow the taunt to bother her. She was the original Valkyrie. The Program had been her idea, and she’d volunteered to be the first test subject. Experience had shown her that women made the best operatives—because men continually underestimated them.

  Except Megan’s taunt did hit home. Somehow the words pierced all the armor, finding the one weak spot she hid away from the rest of the world. Janelle tightened her jaw.