The Annihilator (Dark Verse #5)(8)

She stared at it for a long minute, a gaping hole in her chest. Someone else could have stolen it and asked for help. She couldn’t. She didn’t have anyone she could call. And calling the police was out of the question. With the kind of people she knew were involved in these operations, she would either end up dead by an organizational assassination or dead by a police encounter. There was nowhere for her to go, not until she got what she needed from the one man who refused to give her answers.
Turning away from the phone, she looked at herself in the mirror. A short, petite frame with ripe breasts, as her handler had told her. Hair so red and wavy, falling to her waist, surrounding a circular face with softness, light freckles on her nose, naturally arched red brows over bright green eyes that looked almost blue in some lights. She was beautiful; she had been told many times. But when she looked at the mirror, it wasn’t her beauty she saw. She saw her only tie to her past, and she saw questions. Did her genetics come from her parents or grandparents? Were they alive or dead? Did they have eyes like hers or another color?
As she continued to dry her hair with the towel, she imagined all the scenarios, and none of them brought her any comfort at all. But her mind rarely, if ever, did bring her comfort.
The sound of the door opening had her throwing the towel to the side as she sat down on the bed, doing her best to appear meek, her hands folded in her lap, her head bent as she watched from under her eyelashes.
Two security guys came in, armed to the teeth, and looked at the dead body before eyeing her.
“What the fuck happened?”
What always happened.
He’d told her to tell them, but these guards were new and she didn’t want to risk their extra attention. So, she said what she always said. “I don’t know. I was in the bathroom.”
They believed her, not that they had any reason not to.
One of the guys, a dark-haired man who looked scary in his seriousness, nodded at her. “Grab your stuff. We have to get you back.”
Taking the bag the clothes had come in, she went to the bathroom to grab the rose and the small bottles of free toiletries. She always took those. The small bottles were pretty and, more often than not, they smelled amazing.
Roving an eye around the bedroom to see if anything else was worth taking, she followed the guys out within minutes. They took her down the elevator straight into the parking lot, and then straight into the unmarked sedan. Within minutes, she was locked in and they pulled out into the city.
“So,” the driver began. “What exactly happened up there?”
His skeptic tone wasn’t lost on her. But she didn’t know him, and there was no way she was talking. She’d learned early on that talking to outsiders got her punishment and nothing more.
“Exactly what I said.”
The guy stayed silent for a second. Something was off about him. She didn’t know what it was. She didn’t say anything else, just looked out the window and watched the city pass as they headed to the outskirts.
It was sad that she didn’t even know what the city was called or where the complex was. They never told any of the girls where they were moved. She could have been moved within the same city all her life or hopped a handful, she didn’t know. She wondered sometimes where she would live if she were ever free. She knew there were mountains and seas in the world, but she'd never seen either. She would like mountains. They would make her feel secure, like tall guards standing all around her, keeping her safe from outside invasion. Yeah, she'd like to see mountains one day.
And she most likely never would.
Blinking the stinging feeling in her eyes, she kept her face neutral.
“I’ve heard guys who bid on you die. That true?” the burly man from the passenger side asked.
She didn't respond. There was nothing for her to respond. The rumor mill was working as it always did. And it didn't do shit for her.
Before he could say another word, the familiar fences of the complex came into view, the large gates opening to let them in, imprisoning her once again.

Chapter fourLyla


The complex was large, a gated piece of land in the middle of nowhere with four buildings. One building housed security personnel and the handlers on site, the remaining three housed girls of all ages. Building A had dormitories and training areas for girls under ten, Building B had the same for all girls aged ten to eighteen, and Building C—the one where she lived—had slightly larger dormitories and one medical room. Though it was a normal room, it had been dubbed so by the girls because that’s where they were sent if one of them came back too injured. It was the nicest room she had ever slept in, with a proper bed instead of the bunk beds they were given, and a soft mattress and two pillows. Her mattress was hard and her single pillow harder. Although it didn’t matter because usually when someone went to the medical room, they were in too much pain to notice any of the nice things.
She had been there once since she’d come to the complex—the night she’d met him.
She swallowed, shaking herself out of the painful memory, one that had sent her to the room for weeks to heal, one that had almost convinced her she was going to die.
Getting out of the car as the security people closed the gates, she made her way toward her housing and watched her handler, Three, come down the stairs from Building C. The girls didn’t know the handlers' real names. Most of them didn’t even know their own real names. They were all given names, and that’s who they became. Three had been her handler since she came to the complex at sixteen, for eight years. The woman was usually not as bad as handlers One and Two were. She was fair to the girls, wanted them fed and rested and looking good, and had simple rules for her dorms. As long as one toed the line, she was decent. But Lyla wasn’t fooled by the charade. She knew how quickly the switch flipped, how little time it took for calm to become cruel.