Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

surprised if several people living in or around Sea Haven have some degree of psychic power.”
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    “I suppose you’re right. All of us felt the pull of this place, and I’ve never been happier,” Rikki admitted.
    “We didn’t live anywhere near powerful energy, but my father had undeniable gifts and at the time, there was turmoil in the government, conspiracies and many individuals fighting for their own agendas. My father backed the wrong party and they came one night as a huge force, very frightening.”
    “I huddled there with my brothers, so scared. The soldiers burst into our apartment.” He could feel her thighs tremble beneath his head, but her hand was anchored firmly in his hair, as if holding him to her, and her arm went around his shoulders. She was very empathetic, and although he was viewing his childhood from a distance, she was feeling what he should have been.
    “They executed my father first and then my mother. I was separated from my brothers, and each of us was taken and sent to training facilities.
    With our particular genetics, they believed we could better serve our government if we were indoctrinated at a young age and held no loyalty to one another or to a family. Later, of course, I realized, as I’m sure my other brothers did, that they feared us, just as they feared our father.
    Unfortunately, we were so young that their indoctrination and isolation techniques worked.”
    She began stroking small caresses through his hair. “What did they do to you?”
    “They kept me from my brothers and put me in a facility where they trained and educated me. I speak multiple languages and had to perfect each accent. I learned weapons, hand-to-hand combat and sexual technique. I had to learn absolute control and discipline. Fun was defeating one’s enemy, and everyone there was an enemy. We were trained to work alone. We were trained to endure torture and not break. My forte was the ability to shed one identity for another. I can blend in anywhere, become anyone, and it has served me and my government well. Since they took me from my parents, I don’t recall one time when I was not in training. Duty and discipline were my childhood.”
    There was no pity in his voice or in his mind. He accepted his life, and he accepted that he couldn’t change what had happened to him.
    “It must have been a frightening childhood.”
    “It shaped who I am, what I am. I killed for them, Rikki. Hundreds, maybe thousands in my lifetime. I lived in the shadows and hunted for them.
    I don’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. It just was. I still have no idea why I was on that yacht, but I have images in my head of events leading 189

    to my boarding the yacht. I think the man I was after was involved in human trafficking. There were women ...” He shrugged. “I had to make difficult decisions that affected other lives.”
    Lev fell into silence—touching her mind, he showed her images of women being brutally tortured, of violent death, sudden and horrific, of the cold-blooded kills that stained his soul and over time had chipped most of it away. He waited for the full implications of what he’d told and shown her to sink in. Rikki might not believe him. There were many children taken for political reasons and raised to be assets for the government or the secret police, or even to be special assassins. He and his brothers were feared for their gifts, yet they were also seven of the most useful tools his country had.
    They were also the most dangerous.
    “Have you ever seen your brothers?” Rikki asked, her voice soft, almost a caress.
    He closed his eyes and savored the touch of her fingers on his scalp. He should have known she would focus on the loss of his family instead of the assassinations. “I’ve seen three of them. Our paths crossed on jobs.” He didn‘t—couldn’t—elaborate. They had all worried that if it was known that they had spoken, one of them would be chosen as an example to all of them and would be eliminated. They wouldn’t risk further contact unless it was an emergency.
    Rikki was silent for a long time, turning his revelations over and over in her mind. He had never had a chance at life. He was so alone and lost, just as she had been. He was afraid to reach for something better. She knew how difficult it was to let go of the familiar. No matter how bad it was, one knew the rules in their own world.
    She stroked his hair and leaned her head back against the