SICK HEART by Huss, JA (non fiction books to read .TXT) 📕

I really do like this place, but when the kids are here, my thoughts are consumed with fighting. With skill levels. With the stress of who will be the next to die. And when I’m alone, I just slip into some quiet, somber life with the birds, and the moon, and the sea.

I’ve never spent time with a girl like this. For a moment I wonder if this is what dating is like.

Anya sighs with contentment when we lay our mats on the platform. Then she makes the sign for ‘moon,’ pointing at it, the way I taught her last night. But she uses three fingers and that’s not right.

I grab her hand out of the air and she looks over at me, startled. Then I position her fingers into four. We are on day four. She looks at her fingers, then the moon, and huffs a laugh, getting it.

The moon keeps time for us out here. That’s how we measure the month.

She stares up at it, fully aware that I am watching her. But she ignores me for nearly a minute before she turns her head and meets my gaze. Then she reaches for my hand and, using her pointer finger, she writes ‘thank you’ on my palm, one letter at a time.

She goes to pull away, but I grab her hand back, then use my finger to write on her palm. Why?

She watches me spell out this word. But I know, before she looks up at me and shakes her head, what her answer will be.

Not even this day filled with food, and games, and smiles, and laughter, and a perfect night under a waxing moon can make her answer that question. And for a moment, I’m conflicted. Do I even want to know?

It’s not gonna be good. It’s gonna be evil. People don’t stop talking after amazing things happen. They stop talking because they have lost all control over everything else in their life and this one act of defiance is all they have left.

But Udulf and Lazar. There is something there. Something that feels like a threat. To her, for sure, but to me as well. Maybe even Maart, and Rainer, and Evard.

And if it were just me in danger, then fuck it. I’d fight my way through it. But when I asked Udulf for the chance to fight for Maart, and Rainer, and Evard, I tipped my hand. And now he knows what I find dear.

I will walk away from the rest of them, but not those three.

So I need to know what I’m up against. I can’t afford to let Anya Bokori wrap her secrets in silence. Not if knowing them will keep me and the only family I have left safe.

But I know how to play people. I know how to get what I want when I want it. I know how to lie, and cheat, and steal with the best of them.

More importantly, I have the sick heart. I can turn that shit on and off at will.

I can stop caring. Easily slip in the skin of a cold-blooded killer. A very patient, very slow, very deliberate cold-blooded killer. And I do that now when I reach for her and pull her close, when I kiss her head and wrap my arms around her like a warm blanket.

I lie to her with these actions. Because they tell her she is safe. And she is not.

Not from Udulf.

Not from Lazar.

And certainly not from me.

I love three people in this world. And everything I do, I do for them.

But her guard is down. I didn’t plan this day for that reason, but it is the final outcome. And of the many ruthless things I’ve learned over my twenty-seven years of life, the one at the top of the list is, Give people what they expect.

If I had tried this yesterday, she would’ve been suspicious. But after a long, soft, slow day she expects a long, soft, slow night.

So that’s exactly what I give her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - ANYA

His arms wrap around me like a warm cloak, his chest rising and falling against my back in a slow, easy, predictable rhythm. I can feel his lips on the back of my neck, not kissing me, just… there.

My body stiffens as I hold my breath. And he feels this. He is in tune with me. Because his arms tighten a little, offering me comfort. It’s OK, his arms say. We’re safe, his slow breathing proclaims. And even though I know better, I exhale and decide to believe him.

I am safe, at least from outsiders.

But from him? I’m not so sure.

Today was good. I did faint from hunger and bang my head, but I got two meals today and my wound is clean and cared for. He didn’t make me train. In fact, our day was pretty fun. The puzzle was a nice surprise, because my home base was there in that picture. And the memory of it was always sweet. It was always nice to go to that place in Paris. It would wipe away everything that had just happened. All the awful weeks that led up to Paris would be swept away and I would be rewarded with shopping, and bathtubs, and an older, careful woman who only spoke Hungarian. And even that was nice. As much as I hate to admit it, the Hungarian, like Paris, felt like home.

I don’t have a lot of sweet, soft memories so what are the odds that, on this sweet, soft day with the killer called Sick Heart, I would find my home base in a puzzle on an abandoned oil rig?

I couldn’t even begin to calculate those odds, but surely they are one in a billion. One in a trillion.

But the point is, this slow, sweet night isn’t entirely out of place. One thing leads to another. That’s how we got here.

So why am I so suspicious