Fuck him for having a heart. Fuck him for putting others above himself. Fuck him for not being the awful son of a bitch I want him to be.
“What is it?” Marine says.
“It’s…” My words end in a choke.
“Are you involved in this?”
All I can do is nod. Nod, and swallow mutely while I fight to breathe, to control the tears flowing down my cheeks, to not feel like I want to die because my heart is coming to life with such unspeakable pain.
A second passes where that Marine just watches me, his eyes taking me in, sizing up my story in a way that makes me feel more bare than if I were naked. Then, he reaches out and puts a gentle, calloused hand on my forearm. I sigh. Breathing clear for once.
“Is someone important to you caught in this gang war?”
I nod again.
“Wars have casualties. They’ll steal people from you in ways that will break your heart for the rest of your life… But if someone important to you is caught up in this…. Do you need help?”
I meet his eyes through the veil of my own tears and nod. The motion sends a few teardrops flopping from my nose to the bar. I sob at the sight — my weakness, my pain, scattered as evidence across polished wood.
“You’re not alone,” he says. “If someone you care about is in danger, I’ll help you.”
My tears pause. My eyes raise. I can swallow. I can speak. Something — a memory of a flame — burns inside me. It might be hope. It might be something more desperate. But whatever it is, I cling to it. I need it.
“You will?”
“Is the person you care about the same one that helped that old lady? The one they shot and took prisoner?”
“He is.”
“Then let’s get him back.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Reaper
The room we’re in smells like a mix of ammonia, urine, and week-old fish. My eyes water. My lungs burn. My body aches, screams, bleeds from the barely patched hole in my shoulder. Tank shifts, the muscles in his shoulders straining as he tries to find a more comfortable position, which isn’t the easiest thing to do when your hands are cuffed behind your back, and those cuffs are linked by chain to an overhead bar that keeps you hanging just a bit above the ground, putting all the weight on parts of your body that sure as fuck aren’t meant to take that weight for long. He plants a toe, lifts himself up, and releases a small sigh of relief. That he’d let out such a clear admission of pain — or the absence of pain — sends a shock of worry through my gut.
“This isn’t how I imagined I’d be spending my last day.”
“Me neither.”
I don’t shift. But I’m not hanging, just chained to the floor like a disobedient dog. My wound throbs, hot. It’s infected, or soon will be. The pain burns my shoulders, my spine, my neck, but I let it; I’ve felt plenty worse — done much worse to myself — and I want this pain. Deserve this pain. Relish this pain. Because I earned it. And at least while I’m alive for however long it is, I can live knowing that at least I helped save one person from my mistakes, and that somewhere out there, Adriana is still alive.
I’ll be dead, but she’s alive. She’ll have a chance for a full life; to build a family, to catch criminals, to find peace, whatever it is her heart desires. I want that for her.
That thought makes me smile.
“Bianca ain’t going to be too happy with me for dying,” he says.
“I imagine she won’t.”
“Was planning on taking her on vacation.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. She doesn’t know about it yet. It was going to be a surprise.”
“That’s nice. Where are you taking her?”
