A dull, hard slam against my ribs snaps the reverie clean. My breath hiccups, and my eyes go wide.
Ezra.
Owen crouches low with me behind the shadowed flank of the house, and together we watch him move toward the shed. The man looks wrecked—cavernous bags under his eyes, skin paper-thin from too many sleepless nights. Fatigue clings to him like a second skin. He scans the wrong directions in a panic; his head jerks like a puppet pulled by fraying strings.
Adrenaline floods my system, but before I can lay out three clean steps in my head, Owen pushes himself up and bolts for the shed.
Fucking idiot.
I follow him, silent cursing pasted to the inside of my teeth. Owen nudges the door, and Ezra lets out a scream. The next moment erupts before I can think twice—a raw, crystalline sound echoes as the world compresses into the barrel of my rifle. I breathe out and fire, and the bullet finds the back of Owen’s head with a thump that feels like the end of something old and rotten.
He collapses, the impact rattling through my boots when his weight hits the floor. For a moment, the shed is filled with only the sound of his body folding.
Fucking finally.
“Please, don’t kill me,” Ezra stammers, sliding down onto his ass and scrambling backward, palms desperate on splintered boards. “I didn’t want this to happen.”
Blood spreads beneath Owen like ink dropped into water, a dark, ravenous bloom swallowing the pale light. A cold, steady satisfaction runs through me as I can’t look away.
“Oh God, Dante, I’m so sorry—” His voice breaks, a thin thread trying to stitch itself into something human.
I force my eyes up to him and raise the rifle until the stock bites into my shoulder. His whining becomes a serrated noise at the edge of my hearing. I scan the shed while he babbles: the rough wooden planks drink in the light and cast a honeyed glow, their fibers dry and pine-sweet with the ghost of old smoke. Moss and lichen crawl along the lower boards, softening the hard seam where timber meets stone like slow, living bruises.
“Nice place,” I comment, voice low, the rifle aimed at his face. “Care to explain this?”
His hands flutter up like a bad joke, shaky and useless. “I didn’t tell them anything!” he howls. “I swear, Dante, I lied, and I made it look believable. They don’t know anything. They won’t know!”
The words fan the coals in me. I can see the sweat beading at his temple, the tremor in a hand that wants to cover a lie and can’t.
“We trusted you,” I say through clenched teeth. “Jason considered you a friend. You fucking betrayed us.”
“I did what I had to do to survive!” he yells, voice cracking under the weight of desperation. His gaze darts to the door, sharp and panicked, and instinctively, I follow.
It’s only a matter of time before Estella and Emmett get here. And when they do, she won’t hesitate. One glance at him sprawled across the floor, and she’ll pull the trigger without blinking.
“They threatened my family!” he continues, chest heaving, voice splitting into something close to a sob. “I did what I had to, to protect them!”
I roll my eyes, a bitter snort escaping before I can stop it.
How convenient. The same old excuse—survival, family, guilt. If he’d come to us the moment The Order cornered him, we could’ve helped. Found a way out. But now, it’s far too late.
I can’t trust him.
I don’t want totrust him.
He’s a cornered rat, trying to save his skin by hiding behind his family. Even now, he lies through his teeth. I can feel it—he played both sides until the walls started closing in.
He knows what he’s done.
“Who arethey? Where are they hiding?” I demand, clinging onto a fragile hope that I can still get something out of him.
“I swear, I don’t know! I tried to find them, but I couldn’t! Dante, please,” he pleads, each word shaking. “There’s a hatchunder the floorboards that leads to the woods. I can make it to the highway, head straight to your base. We can fix this, I swear. You don’t have to do this.” His eyes meet mine, desperate and glistening. “Iknowyou. You’re not like them.”
“Doyou?” I ask quietly, my jaw tightening until it aches. “Do you really know me?”
Tears cut thin, shining lines down his dirt-streaked face. His breathing turns shallow, erratic. There’s a gun in his waistband, but he doesn’t reach for it. Maybe he’s given up. Or maybe he’s still hoping I’ll break.
“You’re a good man,” he stammers. “With a good cause. We’re on the same side. You don’t kill the innocent.”
