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Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo -- EXCERPT: I should have landed on him, but instead I dropped to the floor on my hands and knees like a wounded deer. An electrical sensation zapped through my middle and wrapped around me like invisible arms, holding me in place. Hundreds of needles pricked me all at once. Excruciating pain seared from head to toe. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even blink. I had been wounded many times on missions, but nothing I’d felt in ISAN compared to what had just hit me. Immobile, a foot from my monster of a brother, I’d never felt so vulnerable. My muscles simply shut down. A whimper escaped me, but it could have been only in my head. Worse, a tear slid down my cheek. I felt humiliated beyond measure. “Aw, sis. Are you crying? Does it hurt?” Gene took his hand out of his pocket and showed me a metal trinket, a circle about the size of his thumb. “I thought it was best to have it handy in case you lost control.” He came dangerously closer and lowered, his warm breath brushing the shell of my ear. “Now you know, sis. I can contain you. You might want to show me some respect if you don’t want to be on the ground, helpless and weak. I might accidentally hurt you. We don’t want that do we?” Oh, the pain. Every tiny movement—every blink—hurt so much. He ran a knuckle down my cheek to wipe away another teardrop, and then grazed his index finger slowly across my neck, savoring my weakness. “Next time it won’t be so soft,” he said. “You should get some rest. You look like hell.” I screamed in my head. Peering up under my eyelashes, I watched him walk toward the sliding door. I wanted to rip out his throat, stomp on his heart, but I couldn’t move. Even a fraction of movement felt like a knife slitting deeper into my spine. I couldn’t win. At least not this time. But I would find a way. There had to be a way. Gene’s back to me, he held up that metal circle trinket and clicked. Just as the door blended into the wall, he released me. I thumped my head on the tile floor and wept for Brooke and the rebels who had died because of my stupid mistake. Groaning, I crawled like a worm, my knees and elbows digging across to get to the rug, each movement agony. I refused to lie on the cold ground like I was nothing. I’d never felt so small. No—I had, when my foster father beat me. Where was he now? Locked up. That would be Gene’s fate, too. Just you wait, big brother. Just you wait. Karma is a bitch.
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