Soo-Jin.
My blade.
My weapon.
My most loyal soldier.
My guilt, given a passport and combat training.
Also—somehow—the person I felt worst about, which was impressive considering my current inventory of emotional entanglements and ethically questionable life choices could qualify as a minor war crime.
A few months ago, when I first met her in Miami, she'd been barely functional. A survivor in the strictest sense of the word—alive, breathing, and profoundly hollow.
The trafficking network had taken her apart piece by piece until there was nothing left but reflexes and the thousand-yard stare of someone who'd learned that feeling things was optional but dangerous.
She'd been a shell. A ghost with a pulse. Someone who kept moving because stopping meant remembering—and remembering meant shattering.
Now?
Now she was something else.
