“Don’t mistake what I did for goodness. I stop monsters by becoming one.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice is thin, still raw from the trauma to her throat.
I drag a hand through my hair, searching for the least damaging version of truth that’s going to break us anyway.
“I take care of evil men the world overlooks… men the law lets slip through its fingers.”
Her breath stutters just once,but I catch it.
She’s hearing the truth underneath.
And it scares her.
Good. It should.
“You hurt bad people?”
I fight the instinct to look away. “We can’t have this conversation, Laurette. Once we do, there’s no coming back.”
Her chin lifts a fraction, bruised and trembling, but unyielding. “I can’t move forward with you unless I know who you are and what you do.”
Of course she wants the truth.
And of course the truth is the one thing that will tear us apart.
“If I tell you, I have to run. You took an oath to put away men like me. And I won’t wait around for you to decide I’m next.”
Pain flickers across her face, but her eyes remain locked on me. “Do you break the law, Bastien?”
I should lie, shake my head, vanish into the night before this gets worse. But she’s staring at me with those blue eyes I’ve fallen so hard for.
“You can’t handle what I do.”
But the truth is simpler. Darker.
I can’t handle watching her hear it.
“You and I want the same thing—justice for victims. But I don’t rely on courts or juries to give it.”
Her brows pull together, the faintest shake of her head. “How then?”
There’s no clean way to do this, no gentle version of the truth. So I give her the sharpest one.
“Allen Hoffman. Abram Gray. Jacob Buford. Silas Rourke. Julian Lemaire.”
The list goes on and on.
Her breath stutters. Those names mean something to her. They’re men who vanished or turned up dead, all tied to acts of violence no courtroom ever managed to reach.
Her world tilts. I see it happen.
She studies my face, searching for any sign she’s misunderstood.
“You killed all of them?”
I hold her gaze, unblinking. “I made sure they can’t harm anyone ever again.”
I’m deliberate with every word—enough truth for her to understand but not enough to confess.
