Chapter 8

The Long Game.

Sage

*Morning, girlfriend!” Naomi chirped as she slid a steaming cup of coffee toward me across the cracked countertop. She was far too chipper for how little sleep we’d gotten.

“Morning. I mumbled, fingers curling around the mug like it might anchor me. I didn’t bother with pleasantries. “I’ve got a job out of

town.

“Damn.” She leaned back against the sink, brow quirking. “How long are you gone for?”

She didn’t ask where. Or who, Smart. She knew better. We might wear the same scars and answer to the same man, but we still had our lines, our rules. Job details weren’t shared unless they needed to be. Unless you didn’t think you were coming back. We were friends and we were something messier. Trauma- tied. Blood-bound. The kind of bond you forge in places where childhood is traded for survival and screams echo down stone corridors. Naomi was twelve when she arrived. Practically an elder compared to most of the kids Yakov funneled through his little boot camp of horrors. Her parents sold her to clear a debt, filthy bastards couldn’t pay their way out of a poker game and figured their daughter was fair currency. She never talks about the night they handed her over, but I know the story. Everyone does. First day in, she stabbed Yakov through the hand with a fucking letter opener and made it all the way to the compound gate before they dragged her back. Screaming, kicking, bleeding. She earned her place after that. Most girls would’ve been dead by morning. But Yakov? He liked fighters. He kept her. Trained her. Broke her just enough to bend. And me? I don’t even remember where I came from. No name, no past. Just bruises and blurred faces. Just orders and pain. I think I was five the first time they told me to kill. They brought in a man with a bag on his head, shoved a knife in my hand and said “kill, or be killed.” I cried the first time I did. I know I stopped crying after that…and when Nai finally came in, she gave me a name. Sage, like the colour of my eyes. Yakov never bothered, he was happy with me just being another number, another finally tuned weapon. All I ever knew was this: I was his property. And property didn’t ask questions. Property didn’t hesitate. You did what Yakov said, when he said it, or you died. Easy math.