Harry Styles, a secret service agent working for British intelligence is tasked with finding the killer after a series of brutal but calculated murders across Europe. His mind is sharp, he's smart, arrogant and works with a precision that leaves no...
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Winter
The air was cold. That sharp kind of cold that had the tips of my fingers stinging, my lips felt like they were cracking slowly. The wind tugged through the pine trees, fluttering though the needles, brushing through my unkept hair until it knotted even further. I hadn't brushed it in days.
To my left, the water looked like a sheet of glass, disturbed by the occasional ripple of wind. It caught the faintest little bit of light that broke though the thick blanket of clouds. The clouds were low, dark, ready to spill. Rain always made the air smell clean, like the world was trying to wash away its own sins. Petrichor—that scent of wet earth, pine sap, and stone. Out here, surrounded by miles and miles of forest, it was the only thing that ever smelled nice. The only smell besides blood and tears.
Roman and I sat on the terrace that jutted out from the back of the stone mansion. From here, the world seemed still. The mansion loomed behind me like a shadow, like it had a presence, it was alive and watching me. I could feel the pulse of it even out here, the ghosts of the girls inside. The ones he'd built. His little birds, he called them. Machines, I called them. Like they were creatures to be stripped of softness, reshaped and rewired. Trained to kill without hesitation, without feeling, before they could ever learn what it meant to be alive.
I was here again, where I was made.
"They're getting better." Roman commented from beside me, he was a man admiring his work.
Our eyes were fixed on the girls in the garden below. They'd been put into pairs to fight. Each was sharp, brutal, ruthless as always. Every movement rehearsed to perfection. One of them landed a blow so hard that the other staggered back, falling to her knees. From where I sat, I could see the splatter of red leave her mouth before she fell. Roman didn't flinch. Neither did I.
"Quicker, too," he added, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees. Then, after a beat, he said. "But not like you."
I stretched my legs out, my feet scraped against the stone. "Nobody's like me,"
He smiled, but it wasn't the kind of smile that reached his eyes. It was thin and sharp. It was satisfaction disguised as some sick kind of affection. He was pleased that I'd said it. Because I was the girl who had once escaped him, who people had tried to save, had come crawling back to the man who built her.
"That's why you're here." He leaned back, relaxed, content. The wind blew through his thinning grey hair. "Where you belong. You always come back."
I didn't need to say anything. Because whether I really wanted to be here wasn't a question.
The new blood on my hands said more than I could. The faint smell of death that still clung to me, even now. I could feel it in the cracks of my skin, beneath my nails, and no matter how many times I scrubbed my hands clean, there would always be blood on them. When I closed my eyes, all I saw was the face of the people I'd killed, the life flickering from their eyes, their bodies eventually going still.
