The Killer Collective (John Rain, #10; Ben Treven, #4; Livia Lone, #3)

by Barry Eisler

over time it had become more a matter of manner and sophistication, which could be managed, than of raw beauty, which was an elemental force.

She had slept with the enemy—literally, and repeatedly, and she had done it well. And her reward was suspicion and distaste, a sense among the men who ran the organization that she was dirty, and tainted, and fundamentally a whore. A necessary evil to be used for the greater good, and then disposed of at some unspoken expiration date.

And then I smiled, thinking of mono no aware, the sadness of being human, aware of the irony of having traveled all the way to Paris to feel something so quintessentially Japanese.