“She’d been on vacation in Miami when she got caught up with Dame. Her mother was the one who put out the hit after she escaped and made her way back home.”
I stared at the pictures until they blurred. All this time I’d thought he’d murdered my friend in a jealous rage. But he’d been… working.
The taste of omelet in my mouth turned sour. I looked at the photos, then up at Malachai’s calm face. The weight of the time I’d spent hating him for this specific death started to crush me. Especially when it was over someone who was helping to ruin women, I felt even less bad about what happened to his sister now.
“You let me stab you though,” I whispered, feeling so bad about it.
“I wanted you to feel better,” he said simply. “You needed someone to blame. You did it. You felt better. I lived.”
What kind of crazy, romantic, toxic shit was that?
It made something click in my head in a way I didn’t like.
Maybe he didn’t understand where he’d gone wrong with Sasha.
Not really.
Not the way a normal person would.
His mind didn’t work like that.
Everything was a system to him. Cause and effect. Action and outcome. If something didn’t break the structure, then it wasn’t a problem.
Sasha hadn’t crossed his line.
Not until she did.
And by then… it was already too late.
Maybe I was the bad one for getting mad at him.
He told me what he was from the beginning, and I tried to make him something else.
I wanted him to feel things the way I did. To understand hurt the way I understood it. To choose me the way normal men choose women.
I could have put a bullet in Sasha’s head myself and Malachai wouldn’t have blinked. That was my bad.
My throat tightened. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I couldn’t,” he said simply. “I never reveal a client while they’re alive. It could have been dangerous for you.”
He paused.
“As of about midnight though…”
He leaned back slightly.
“She isn’t alive anymore. A car bomb in Kingston took her out. I found out last night and went by the old house to grab these files but fell asleep.”
I sat there in silence.
I could hear him eating again. I wondered what it would feel like to be like him for once. Not to feel so much of everything.
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking. For three years, I had held that murder over his head like a crown of thorns. I had used it to justify a lot of screaming, fighting, and venom I’d spat at him. And he had just taken it. He’d bled for a lie because he thought it would help me heal.
I felt small. I felt sick. I’d been loud and wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. The words felt pathetic and hollow.
