She was lost and so was he.
Who knew that two broken hearts can connect to one.
Arabella's world has been rigged since the day she was born. Her fate had been decided for her much longer before she even had been conceived in the womb. So it came as...
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"Demetri." I give a shaky smile, and he gives me a once-over, his brows furrowed in confusion.
"What's wrong? What happened? Why did you have me come here so urgently?" His sudden burst of questions doesn't surprise me, and I sigh in response.
"I need you to check me. Make sure I don't have any chocolate chips on me."
I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before. Alexei was always listening. Always watching. He somehow knew what I was doing, when I was doing it, and who I was with. He had everything. Every detail. And I needed to know how.
During my assassin days—when I was sent on some extreme missions—things didn't always go according to plan. I wasn't always the best. Not at first. I got hurt a lot.
My targets weren't poor nobodies, either. They were rich bastards. Many were mafia men with access to top-tier tech. Demetri had warned me of the risks. Even a tiny cut was enough for someone to slip in a tracker. And over the years, those trackers got smaller. Easier to hide.
Luckily, finding them wasn't impossible—at least not with Demetri's help. After every mission, even if I only had a scratch, he scanned me. He always made jokes about it, calling it a check for "chocolate chips." That one stuck. It became our code for checking for trackers.
He pulls the scanning stick from his bag, first running it over the tracker he always carries to make sure it's working.
It rings.
He passes it over my phone—it stays silent. I already knew it wasn't my phone. I'd checked it a million times using the equipment I did have. I could check objects. But I couldn't scan my own body.
Demetri could.
He lowers the scanner to my feet and slowly brings it up my body. The second it nears my neck, it lets out a small beep. He pulls the device away, then brings it back to the same spot. The same sound. Again, it rings.
He doesn't say a word.
He grabs a smaller machine—his mini X-ray device—designed for detecting tiny chips. He places it against my neck and studies the screen, frowning.
"Get it out. Please." I mumble. He nods quietly and gently pushes me to sit on the vanity stool. He sanitizes a small knife, places the machine near my neck to pinpoint the exact location, then cuts. A light prick.
Flashback
Her hands slide to my neck, and I feel a sharp sting. Something cuts my skin—just a small prick, but enough to make me flinch. I wriggle in her hold, trying to free myself, but then I hear a click above my head. I lower my head, and I see she's cuffed me.
That girl. Alexei's guard.
Her memory tenses every part of me.
She was with us for two weeks. Silent during interrogation. She only spoke the night before she died. Just her and me. Her final words stuck with me. She said she'd rather die in our hands than give Alexei more power.
