Summer might've been the one good thing in my life, but I know better than to stay where I'm not wanted. I refuse to keep making a fool of myself for her.
I'm not going to beg her to love me.
Instead, I turn up the music and floor it. I'm not going to waste time fighting for someone who doesn't want me, and I'm certainly not going to stay there and wait for them to kill me.
As I drive away, I can't shake the little voice in the back of my mind telling me I'm going to regret this.
What part I'm going to regret, I don't know, but I don't have time to think about that.
Summer might think she's setting me free and giving me time to heal and disappear. She might think she's doing something that will make up for the way she betrayed me. The way everyone in my life has betrayed me.
It doesn't.
It never will.
If anything, what she's done now has only added more fuel to the fire.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
NOAH
Flames climb higher,the building burning, people screaming inside. They bang against the windows, fists leaving prints as smoke chokes the air, pouring through any cracks left in the boarded-up doors.
They shouldn't have crossed me if they didn't want to burn for their sins.
Their screams start to die, replaced by the low groans of the house crumbling in on itself, the world around the house shuddering as the structure starts collapsing.
Their children will be safe. They don't have to worry about that. I've found placements for them outside the life. Placements with families who are going to love them and give them a good life. Families who are going to want them to stay as far away from their past as possible.
However, their parents will be nothing but charred bones by the morning.
I glance at Hector. "You sure that's the last of them?"
He nods. "Last traitors. There are others who might've been whispering with Robert, but for all the tracking I've done, I can't find any actual connections to them."
"Keep digging. I want to make sure anyone who took part in the attack on the pier is punished fairly for it."
It's been a week, and Aiden has yet to come after me.
Summer hasn't been speaking with me either. I've seen her twice, once when she was going to school and another time when she was leaving it.
She didn't see me, though. I didn't want her to.
Right now, I need to get my shit in order, and then I can think about dealing with her after all she's done to me.
What I do to her has to be special. It needs to be worthy of all that she's done. Worthy of her shooting me in the leg and leaving me for dead, even if she claims her plan was to set me free.
Not that I believe that for a second.
She used me. She let me keep her, she let me think that she was beginning to feel the same way for me that I was feeling for her, and then she turned around and fucked me over.
Hector walks with me through the trees and to the waiting cars, the headlights illuminating the fog in front of them. "What do you want to do about the ones who turned against you but weren't at the attack?"
"See to it that they are dealt with. Make it known that you got wind that I'm looking for traitors, and then make them believe they stand a chance at getting away." I tuck my hand into my pocket, pulling out the keys. "And then I want you to kill them."
Hector chuckles and makes his way to his own car. "You know this is only going to cause more problems with the people who didn't turn against you."
I stare at him over the top of my car. "Let it. I'm tired of giving a fuck. I don't need them."
