Rio’s lips tightened. “That’s the thing. I’m not convinced that there isn’t more than one faction after you. I saw the video surveillance when you went to your parents’ house. Shea saw it too. She went there looking for you with Nathan. I promised her then that I’d bring you home.”
Grace closed her eyes and leaned her head onto her upturned palm for support. “How are we supposed to live when every moment of our lives someone is after us, wants to destroy us for their own purposes.”
When she reopened her eyes, to Rio’s dismay, they were glossy with tears. Oh hell. If she started crying, he was so f**ked.
“What happened after you went to your parents’ house, Grace?” he asked, hoping to distract her. “Were you taken then? Did you manage to escape?”
She sighed. “Shea was right. It was probably stupid of me to try to look for answers. I was just so frustrated with our lives. Or lack of one. We’d been running for an entire year. Never seeing each other. Always scared out of our minds that whoever killed our parents would catch up to us. Jumping at my own shadow. Never trusting anyone. Someone smiled at me, I was immediately suspicious and couldn’t get away fast enough. Someone says hello, I freeze up. Someone looks at me too long and I’m convinced that they’re following me. It was no way to live. I missed my sister. I wanted a normal life for both of us. So I went looking for answers. I found my mother’s journal, or rather who I always thought was my mother,” she said bitterly.
“She was just a scientist who created me and Shea in a lab and then felt sorry for us and took us away to raise as her own.”
“Shea told us,” Rio said quietly. “She found the journal you dropped in the escape tunnel.”
Grace’s mouth drooped. “So she knows the truth now.”
He nodded. “What happened when you left? Did you manage to escape?”
“I did, that time. But they were close and I was panicked and stupid. I didn’t cover my trail as well as I should have and they picked me off a few weeks later. I can’t even tell you where I was. I was drugged for most of the time. Until they started bringing in their test subjects for me to heal. Then they wanted me alert and able to do their bidding.”
Rio felt sick. He could only imagine what she’d been forced to do and experience. The toll it had taken on her was something she may never fully recover from. The stupid bastards didn’t even realize the precious gift they had. They were too busy trying to destroy her without even knowing what they were doing.
She frowned. “You said there could be more than one group after me.”
Rio nodded. “I don’t know for sure, but it’s possible from what I know.”
“The day I escaped, the facility I was being held at was bombed. I remember hearing gunshots. It was chaos. The cell I was in collapsed and I was able to crawl out and escape, but many of the researchers were dead and I don’t think it was from the explosions I heard. There was blood everywhere, like they’d been slaughtered.”
She broke off and put a hand to her head, closing her eyes as she swayed back and forth. Alarmed, he reached forward to touch her arm but she pulled back.
“Just give me a minute. I had something for a moment. It was a brief memory of that day. I picked up something from a man close by. I remember how cold I felt and how fee afrightened he made me feel. I could sense his determination to find me and to destroy those who had any knowledge of me.” She glanced back up at Rio. “What does that mean? Why would he do that?”
Rio blew out his breath. “Titan.”
“Titan?”
This was the part he hated the most. He didn’t want to frighten her. He didn’t want to appall her. But he wouldn’t be anything but honest with her because deception would only cause more problems down the road. The very last thing he needed was for her to bolt unexpectedly because it looked like he was trying to deceive her.
No longer able to sit still, he pushed off the bed and paced back and forth at the end.
“Titan is a highly classified specialized military black ops group. Doesn’t officially exist. These are the last-resort guys. The guys you call in to clean up messes, the guys you call in because you have no other options.”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “Then how do you know so much about them?”
“Because I used to be one of them.”
For a moment she was completely still, as if she hadn’t really processed what he’d said. Then alarm flared in her eyes and she shrank back against her pillow. But to her credit, she didn’t freak out.
“You said used to be,” she said in a steady voice. “Why aren’t you any longer?”
He stopped his pacing and looked at her. She was asking, not judging. His admiration grew for her by the hour. She was rock solid. Someone who didn’t crack under pressure or fold in a crisis. He didn’t think he’d ever met a woman quite like her and he’d met all the Kelly women. They were certainly remarkable women. Survivors. Fighters. More courageous than most men.
But there was something about Grace that made him stop and take notice.
He eased down on the edge of the bed. “I decided that unwavering, unquestioning loyalty wasn’t for me.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Some would say those aren’t bad traits.”
“Blind faith is never a good thing. Being a unit of automatons trained to do as ordered without conscience, without question…I couldn’t do it anymore. I lost a lot of my soul during my time with Titan. I’m hoping I haven’t lost all of it.”