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"Good," Rhys said with a wink "You girls hungry? I just finished getting everything ready about a minute before you walked in"

"Yes!" Kira and I said in unison, and helped hiood" I placed a hand on roaned "I can’t remember the last time I ate that reed

"Very true" I looked over at Rhys and nudged him "Did you cook while you were undercover? Or were you just still good at it when you cahed and shook his head once "Definitely didn’t cook while there I’one for that long"

"Poor guy," Kira said with an apologetic look "You only ate takeout for four years, and then you co, so we force you to havelike that There was an older woman at the house I was in She did all the laundry and cooked every meal except breakfast"

"Huh," I huffed "Well, that’s nice, I guess"

"No!" Rhys disagreed with a laugh "Definitely not nice either The way she did laundry, everything still ca more than a paper towel, and would yell at us if we tried to And her cooking? It was okay I mean, it wasn’t horrible, but she only made three different etable, or cabbage Then there would be fried chicken, enchiladas, or pasta with this red sauce that you had to choke down And then there would bewas seasoned beyond the point of being edible, and if you’d already eaten before you got to the house, she’d still ave you So after four years of that, takeout was the , and I asked, "Well, why didn’t they just get someone else to cook and clean?"

"She was the leader’s ative about her, the cooking, or the houseit was over for you"

"Oh my God, are you serious?" Kira asked ide eyes

"Very" Rhys sighed "You didn’t uy’s mo about your time undercover? We’ve heard stories from Dad and Uncle Mason But we obviously heard the stories years after anything happened"

"Uh," Rhys began, and his dark eyes got a faraway look "We dealt,Well, we didn’t We were the suppliers"

"Did you have to use?" I asked

"Did your dad?" he shot back

Kira and I nodded, and Rhys raised his eyebrows in confir in" He trailed off "Getting in, there was a lot I had to do that I hated--including a lot of using But once I was in, it was easy to just act like I’d been using, andit over to the department There would only be a handful of times a year when they’d wait and watch you use But there was always other stuff there was no way out of, as I’ your dad’s stories"

"Yeah," Kira breathed "He said he and Mason were obsessive about getting tested because of what they had to do"

Rhys agreed, "Yep I was lucky; but none of the test results ever stoppedterrified Just never knehat could happen before the next test"

I studied Rhys’s distant eyes for a few moments and cleared my throat "Sorry, it wasn’t really fair of me to ask you to tell us all this That’s probably hard for you to talk about, especially so soon You don’t have to tell us anything else I guess we’re just so used to hearing about the horrors of working undercover that it never see to us But we didn’t have to go through it So like I said, I’m sorry"