312 Discovery 4

"You're an assassin."

Damien's words rang in Katherine's mind, taunting and haunting her like she was a scum of the earth. Assassin — the word that was both foreign and familiar to her was something she never thought she would associate herself with. And yet here comes Damien, calling her one without any second thoughts.

She didn't know which was more painful – that she acknowledged herself as one, or that he did? The first one hurt her. The other killed her.

What was she supposed to say to that?

Damien watched her expression grow from being ashamed to looking remorseful. It was such a painful sight to see and he wanted to hold her and tell her he didn't care. That it didn't matter to him. That he still saw her as Katherine. His Katherine.

But while his heart and his brain were battling, his body grew tensed and he was unable to move. He could only look at her, so he balled his hands into fists as he tried to clear his head and move the conversation forward or he might break.

"This… organization—Shadow… were they the ones who put the bugs on us yesterday?" he asked.

Nodding, she was thankful that he continued the conversation and didn't linger on that dreadful truth. "Styles checked on it and he confirmed that it was Shadow."

Damien nodded. At least he now had an identity of this group who was also after him. He didn't care if they were after him as it's not the first time that he had to deal with threats and had his life put in danger. But he cared that they were on to Katherine too. "Tell me how you ended up with them. What happened that night after I left you?"

Katherine didn't have to ask him which night he was talking about. She already knew he was referring to that one tragic evening when Shadow and the Parks came to assassinate her family.

Until now, there were some pieces that she couldn't put together about that night. It seemed as though she was deeply traumatized by what happened that she couldn't remember everything so clearly after the explosion. 

Her hand flew to her chest wanting to clutch on the onyx ring that she kept close to her heart only to realize that it wasn't there. Damien saw the panic that struck her face and he realized what she was looking for. He took something from his coat pocket and handed her a white gold chain with the onyx ring that he gave her a while back. "Looking for this?"

When he saw her surprised look, he explained briefly, "The chain broke and it fell off when we arrived here."

Katherine hesitantly retrieved it from him and instead of wearing it back on her, she just held it in her hand, embarrassed that Damien found out about the ring that she still kept on her. While she gave him back the engagement ring, the onyx ring stayed with her. Apart from her feelings, it was the one thing that she couldn't let go of.

"Why would you think that?"

"I don't know. I was twelve. It was dark. I didn't know anything. He told me he was going to bring me somewhere safe but I didn't want to leave. You said you were coming back for me but you didn't…" 

The reminder made Damien clench his jaw. He was still regretful that he couldn't go back to her faster.

Katherine breathed a heavy sigh and continued, "So I ran back to the house. I wanted to see my parents… I wanted to save them. But before I could get back inside the house, Chris grabbed me, forcing me back to the woods. It was just a few seconds later that the house exploded. What happened after that, isn't so clear to me anymore. I just know that he got me out of there and brought me to an orphanage."

It made more sense for Damien now. He had thought that he actually saw Katherine from the window while he was still trying to find her parents. She ran back towards the house and a few seconds later the explosion happened. He was still inside the house and was lucky enough to get out of there alive. And that's why he thought she was dead.

"Why the orphanage? What about your grandfather?" he questioned.

"I don't know… it's hazy for me but Chris said something about it not being safe. It's why we wanted to capture him last Saturday. But he got away."

Damien rubbed his temple, a throbbing headache was starting to creep. "How did you end up with Shadow?"

Katherine didn't like having to recall the bad decisions she made as a teen. So she sped it up, grazing some parts to avoid the bitter part of her past to start haunting her again. 

"Chris took me out of the orphanage after I was there for three years. He brought me to Shadow where I started to train. I was fifteen when I entered and six years later, I became one of the top agents in the organization. He promised to help me find the people responsible for my parents' deaths. He gave me a false lead at first, in an attempt to make me believe that he was helping me to look for the suspects and made me promise that if it turned out to be a dead end, I would stop looking.

"But when I didn't see any results, I started my own investigations. I was already in, way too deep to stop. It was the day after you saw me last when I found out some startling truths about them. Shadow wasn't there to save my family… they were hired to assassinate us."

Damien's heartbeat was loud and almost frantic. This wasn't what he was expecting at all. Just like Katherine, he had thought that the other group was there to save the Youngs and then it resulted in a war.

Katherine continued to tell Damien how she found out about the truth, sparing him the part about  her and Chris, and just told him she overheard about Operation Scorpion which led her to find out about the other things… like killing innocent people and she didn't even know.

"What did you do? Why are they after you?" he asked.

His voice had been very calm since they started talking that she didn't know what was going on in his head. But she had already started this. There's no going back now.

"I…" She swallowed, trying to force herself to admit another thing that her young self did so rashly. She looked away, unable to look Damien in the eye. What she was about to say wasn't something a normal woman would do. It's not even something a normal person would do. After learning she had killed innocent lives, she went on and killed more — only those people she targeted weren't innocent. But even then, she still took lives. 

"Katherine," he called, his voice was firm yet gentle at the same time. "I need to know. You have to tell me what you did so I can understand everything."

Katherine briefly met his gaze and she wanted to look away but for some reason, she held it. She looked at him straight in the eye and owned up to the monstrous thing she did. 

Already hating herself, her jaw tensed and she swallowed for god knows how many times already before she finally admitted, "I bombed Shadow's base."

Silence.

He only looked at her and it scared her that she couldn't read his expression.