“I work for people you don't want to know about. I do things you don't want to hear about. And the less you know, the safer you are.”
“That's a cop-out and you know it.”
“It's the truth.”
“It's an excuse.” I grabbed his shirt. Pulled him closer. “You don't get to decide what I can handle. You don't get to make that call for me.”
“I'm making it anyway.”
“Like hell you are.” The anger was burning through me now. “I raised you. I know you better than you think I do. And I know when you're lying to protect yourself instead of me.”
Troy laughed. “You think you know me? You don't know shit about who I am anymore, Declan. You haven't known me in years.”
“Then tell me. Stop hiding behind this protective bullshit and just fucking tell me.”
“Why? So you can what? Fix it? Save me? Play the hero like you always do?” He shoved at my chest with both hands. “I don't need you to save me. I never did.”
“You needed someone when you were fifteen and your mother died. You needed someone when you had nowhere else to go. Don't rewrite history because it's convenient.”
“I'm not rewriting anything. I'm just telling you how it is now. I'm not that kid anymore. I'm not your responsibility. And I'm sure as hell not your son.”
“I never said you were.”
“But that's how you see me, isn't it? That's the role you keep trying to force me into. The kid you have to protect. The burden you have to carry. The responsibility you can't shake.”
“That's not what this is.”
“Then what is it?” He was in my face now. Close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him. Close enough that I could smell blood and sweat and the anger radiating from both of us. “Tell me, Declan. What am I to you if I'm not yourresponsibility? What am I if I'm not the kid you feel guilty about?”
I couldn't answer.
“That's what I thought.” Troy's voice dropped. Got quieter and more dangerous. “You don't know what I am to you. And that's your problem. Not mine.”
We were too close. Both of us breathing hard, both of us bleeding, both of us wound so tight that the air between us felt combustible.
“Tell me what you do,” I said, my voice rough and desperate to get off this topic, to get away from the question hanging between us. “Tell me what's so terrible that you think I can't handle it. Tell me why people are trying to kill you.”
Troy's jaw tightened. His eyes searched mine for a long moment, and I saw the exact second he realized what I was doing. Saw the flash of hurt before it turned back into anger.
Then the anger won.
“You want to know what I do?” Troy's voice was flat now. Cold and emotionless. “I kill people, Declan. That's my job. That's what the Sentinels pay me for. I hunt down men who hurt others and I put bullets in their heads or knives in their ribs or whatever else Adrian tells me to do. I make people disappear. I make the world a little bit safer by doing the ugly shit nobody else wants on their conscience.”
I let go of his arm and stepped back.
My stepson. The boy I'd raised was a killer.
“How long?” I managed. Voice barely there.
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it fucking matters.”
Troy laughed. “Since I left Chicago the first time. Since Luka looked at me and saw a weapon instead of a person and decided I was useful.” He wiped more blood from his face. “That answer your question?”
“How did it come to that? How did you go from angry kid to professional killer?”
“I got good at surviving,” he said. “Got good at fighting. Got good at reading threats and eliminating them before they could touch me. And then I met people who saw that and thought it was useful. Who gave me targets and told me I was doing good work. Making the world safer. Protecting people who couldn't protect themselves.” He sat back down slowly, like his legs couldn't hold him anymore. “Somewhere along the way, violence became the only thing I knew how to do well. The only thing that felt real. And people like Adrian, like Luka, like everyone in that world, they made it easy to believe that what I was doing mattered. That I mattered.”
