He rocks back and forth once. The chair creaks.
“I knew you were coming,” he tells us. “The moment I saw her again. That bitch didn’t come back into my life to die quietly.”
My jaw tightens despite myself.
“She looked so much like her sister,” he continues, voice going soft. Nostalgic. “It was unsettling. Like the past refusing to stay buried.”
Titan shifts his stance slightly. Enough to signal he’s listening. Carefully.
“Missy,” Scott-Evans muses, almost fondly. “She was different.”
I don’t speak. I let him talk. Because men like him love the sound of their own voices.
“She wasn’t supposed to die,” he goes on. “That day. None of them were. It was never meant to go… as far as it did.” He smiles faintly. “Best laid plans and all…”
“You hurt her,” I remind him.
He shrugs. “I regret that.”
The words land wrong. Casual. Insufficient. Insulting.
“She was my one regret,” he adds. “Everyone else was a choice. She just… existed in the wrong moment.”
Titan’s voice cuts in for the first time. Calm. Controlled. “You trying to convince us you have a conscience does nothing for your cause.”
Scott-Evans laughs. He shifts the gun slightly, adjusting it.
“Rowan,” he says suddenly. “That one was always going to come back swinging. She has her sister’s fire. Though she’s louder, messier.”
“You don’t get to say her name,” I snap.
Scott-Evans’s eyes flick to me. Curious now. Assessing. “Ah,” he murmurs. “So you’re the one who caught her eye long enough to keep her away from me.”
I don’t react.
Scott-Evans sighs. “You know what ruined everything?” he asks.“People who wouldn’t look away. People who wanted to pretend this was about morality instead of power.”
“What happened that day?” I ask.
He smiles again. “Which version do you want?”
“The truth.”
He considers that. The gun stays at his head.
“It’s all the truth,” he shrugs finally. “Depending on whose version you’re hearing.”
“Why don’t you put the gun down?” I suggest.
Scott-Evans’s eyes sharpen just slightly.
“And then what? Give you the upper hand over me?”
The rocking chair slows. Stops.
The forest goes quiet around us, like it’s holding its breath.
Titan speaks again, voice steady. “Do you know what I think?”
