Struggling to keep it together, I narrowed my eyes and calmed down my heaving chest. It took everything I had to maintain my fucking composure as my brain fought the goddamn truth that stared me in the eyes.

Sarkonov’s proxy is my fucking SISTER?

Talon had to know.

That stupid fucking bastard had sent me all the way out here to kill my own goddamn sister.

“Hunter,” the woman I had changed my entire life to save called out to me. “I should be surprised that you found us but, for some reason, I’m really not.”

“And why is that?” I asked loudly, trying to keep her attention on me. She wasn’t making any moves to hurt or threaten Sarah, so I maintained my cautious approach. Quietly, I hoped that engaging her in dialogue would keep my men from firing while I tried to get answers.

“Because you’re a resourceful bastard. Admiration entered Hannah’s voice. “That’s why I needed to get you involved in this. I needed your help getting this container back…”

“All in a day’s work,” I replied with more than a little sarcasm in my voice. “Now tell me what the fuck is going on.”

I was close enough to read Sarah’s face in the moonlight… a few more good strides, and I could try to figure out how to remove her from the storage container.

The problem was, naturally, getting that close without Sarah losing her head in the process. I liked to think my sister wouldn’t shoot her, but she was apparently just full of surprises…

“The letter,” I suddenly acknowledged. “You sent the letter after all, didn’t you?”

Hannah merely smiled.

“So smart you are,” she replied condescendingly. “It was an easy way to slide back into your life… I knew that you’d be preoccupied with trying to figure that shit out out, and it would keep you from asking questions when I needed to get close…

“A lot of things were me, Hunter,” my sister chuckled menacingly. “All seemingly random, scattered pieces that distracted and occupied you, helping me drive Sarah towards chasing the case… I needed you in California. I couldn’t have done this without you, brother…”

“Hannah,” I growled. “You could have asked me for your help and I’d have given it. I need to know why you pulled all of this bullshit.”

“Why?” She laughed. The sound sent goosebumps trailing across my skin. “You want to know why? I’ll tell you why…

“It was because of you.”

I didn’t – couldn’t – understand the logic.

“Hannah… what happened to you?” I pleaded, desperate to find out what happened to my beloved older sister. “I signed my life into servitude to save you… I broke into another country and assaulted a sex-trafficking cartel to pull you out of Hell… why the fuck are you doing this?”

The eyes that fixated on my gaze belonged to my sister, but the burning hatred behind them spoke of something else… something darker inside her, uncoiling near the surface.

“I never asked to be saved, Hunter.”

I was dumbfounded. “You can’t be serious.”

Her lips curled into a smile that inspired a level of fear I hadn’t felt in ages. “I am serious, little brother,” she cooed mockingly. “You think you know everything… But you don’t even know what you fucking did to me.”

The tension in my body released. I wondered how long I had been holding my breath.

“When I was kidnapped by those Mexican fucks, they wasted no time in sedating me. I spent most of my time barely functioning, handcuffed to a bed in a filthy fucking house with only a bedpan for company. They used me for their own pleasure. They did things to me that you could never imagine…”

“I remember,” I agreed, closing my eyes to relive that painful memory – something I never allowed to focus on. “That’s how we found you.”

“Right,” she continued, “but you weren’t supposed to find me. Did it even occur to you that I might be right where I wanted to be, Hunter?”

“What?”

“They had a very special guest coming… someone who could supply them with the weaponry needed to expand their operations. They were funneling all their money from the sex trade into this single deal…”

“…Soroka Sarkonov,” I realized aloud.

“No, Hunter. A competitor. A dangerous man who desperately needed to die… Someone who stood on the wrong side of Soroka Sarkonov.”

“You were there to fucking kill someone? We found you half drugged out of your damn mind Hannah. They were going to sell you to the highest bidder!” I shouted angrily.

“Exactly. And the special guest was the highest bidder. I was going to be inside the deepest reaches of his organization, picking him apart piece by fucking piece… This was my one chance to get close to the asshole, and I gave up my fucking dignity to do it! I gave up everything!

“You can guess what happened next.”

“…We came in and wrecked the place,” I answered. “I rode down there and saved your ass.”

“You kidnapped me from my future, Hunter. You let my biggest competitor live, and focused all your attention on a piss-ant little cartel. Do you have any fucking idea how many people died because of what you did? Friends, associates, business relationships scattered to the wind… The man I was going to kill has done terrible things that I could have stopped! It took me years to get back what you’d taken from me. Years to strike back at my enemies…”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” I asked, my mind swimming.

“I’m talking about death and destruction, Hunter. I’m talking about the men I’ve so carefully destroyed in the years since your little rescue effort. I’m talking about the men who fear me… the ones who respect me… I’m talking about the men who shake in their fucking boots when someone speaks my name,” Hannah replied viciously.

“No,” I whispered. “No, it… it can’t be…”

“In your misguided fucking generosity, you destroyed my life once, but I won’t let you make the same mistake twice, Hunter…”

Hannah stepped forward from the deepest shadows, but it wasn’t my sister standing here. Yes, it was her face, her features, her voice… But the girl I thought I knew was nowhere inside this woman.

How long had she been hiding her true identity?

How long had my sister been keeping this from me?

The low light made her silhouette into a shifting creature. A clutching fear grasped at my heart as I sensed nothing but malice in her predatory approach…

Hannah stepped forward again, sending chills down my spine. The woman who I had known as Hannah Hargreaves, my entire life, but who had been living an ominous double-life stretching back more than a decade…

“Thank you for helping to find my box, dearest brother,” came the wicked voice of Soroka Sarkonov. “Now, get out of my fucking way.”