Shadowed (Team Zero #4) by Rina Kent

“It will be done.” He tosses his cigarette and heads to the stairs.

A small breath leaves me.

I’m only putting a bandage on an infected wound, but I need time to come to terms with admitting to my best mate that he might want me dead.

I climb down the building and start running again.





A few days later, after the usual check up in the factory, I drive Lachlan to his old battered neighbourhood.

He’s fidgeting in the passenger seat and I know he’d rather be driving, but fuck that. He’s not my chauffeur and he certainly won’t be driving my bulletproof Jaguar. This is the sweetest investment I did with the money I got from my killing contracts.

“Is Natalie coming today?” I ask as I take one turn after another in the twisty, bumpy roads of the neighbourhood.

“Maybe.” He pretends to be nonchalant. He’s a fucking liar. Two weeks ago, she didn’t come over and he pouted all day like a bloody kid.

Although he is a kid. Since he acts so responsible, I keep forgetting that.

We stop in front of the school not far from Lachlan’s parents’ home. His father used to be the school’s director but since his health fell, he had to go into early retirement.

Small children, kindergarten age mostly, burst from the front door. They cling to mine and Lachlan’s legs like we’re their Jesus. I stare at their smudged clothes and some untidy hairs and imagine myself as them. Abandoned. Lost. A fucking nobody. Rubbish Boy as they used to call me.

These kids aren’t abandoned, but they’re poorer than poor and I want to murder their parents for bringing them to this world. If they can’t take care of children, why have them?

Lachlan and I retrieve the treats and toys we bring them every week. Since I found out about Lachlan’s father, I stumbled upon this place and… I search behind the children until an old lady comes through the door. Her white hair is a pixie cut and she’s wearing a knitted sweater and a straight long skirt.

Once her gaze falls on me, she smiles and her eyes skew shut. “Angelo.”

I run to her and place my index finger on her mouth. “Don’t call me that, Nonna. People might hear. It’s Shadow, now. Just Shadow.”

She swats my finger away. “First of all, don’t go on shushing me, boy. I brought you up, not the other way around. Second of all, Shadow is boring.”

I laugh then lean in to whisper, “You couldn’t think of anything but Angelo at the time? It’s so fucking pussy.”

She smacks my shoulder, and wouldn’t you know it. Nonna’s age doesn’t measure the strength of her strike. “Language.”

Her Italian accent faded with time. It’s barely noticeable now.

I rub my shoulder as the children and another teacher help Lachlan transport the contents of the car inside.

“Come have a cuppa.” Nonna motions at me to follow her.

We go into her small office at the back of the kindergarten. She’s the new director after Lachlan’s father’s early retirement. I sit like an obedient kid on the old wooden chair and wait while she pours hot water on the tea bags. The scent of jasmine fills the office. It’s Nonna’s smell.

Memories of the time I was her Angelo try to barge into my head. I don’t even remember the name. Maybe because it’s really such a pussy name.

Angel. The fuck. How can someone like me be an angel?

However, I remember Nonna. She found me in that rubbish can and named me Angelo and worked in the foster facility I was enrolled in. She beat the hell out of anyone who called me Rubbish Boy. ‘His name is Angelo and you’re jealous you don’t have a magnificent name like his.’

No idea how these patches of memory stayed with me, even after Omega, but they did.

I forgot about her all these years. However, when I came around here for Lachlan’s father a month or so ago, she was the one who recognised me. All she had to do was say, “Angelo?” with tears in her eyes and I recognised her, too.

She’s been the reason I’m not a full-blown Omega addict again. I hated the past but never Nonna. She was the brightest thing in it.

“Here.” She places the steaming cup of tea on the table and sits across from me with her own chipped cup.

She retrieves a flannel blanket and places it over her knees.

“You look like hell, boy.” She sips her tea. “Are you eating properly?”

I grin in my most charming way. “I still look hot, though, right, Nonna?”

She swats my knee with a magazine. “That mouth of yours is still full of shit.”

“Language, Nonna!”

“I’m older I get to say whatever I damn please as long as we’re not in front of the kids.”

I laugh, and I feel genuinely carefree when I’m with her. That’s perhaps why I sneak here every week. But like Ghost, if Nonna knows that the little Angelo she raised turned into a lethal shadow, she won’t want anything to do with me.

Once again, I'll be fucking selfish and enjoy this as much as I can.

“Have you ever looked for your parents?” she asks, her tame brown eyes staring at me from behind the rim of the cup.

I take a sip of tea. “The ones who threw me in a rubbish can?”

“They’re still your parents, Angelo.” Her voice softens. “Besides, maybe they’re not the ones who threw you there.”