Page 120 of Branded Betrayal

I look back at it. “I don’t want it anymore.”

“But this is your home.”

“No,” I say, my words sharper than I anticipated. “It’s a horrible and constant reminder of everything I need to leave behind. I’m done with it all. With the past, with you, with this place. It’s over.”

He steps closer, blocking me from the car door.

I sigh. “Please move.”

“I love you, Savannah. I meant that. I always did. It was never a lie. And I fucking hate myself for hurting you so badly, for making you believe I didn’t.”

My throat tightens like an invisible noose pulls it hard. “I know. But love isn’t enough when there’s no trust.”

I move past him and open the door before taking one last look at what I’m about to bury. The devastation on Blaze’s face, the guilt etched into Nash’s expression, the ranch I wanted to call home.

“Savvie,” Nash calls out from the porch.

I pull my eyes away. “Take care of him,” I mutter before getting into the car. I don’t know if I’m talking to Blaze or Nash or both of them. But my mind is too riddled with grief to care.

Tears pool in my eyes as I speed down the drive with Red Rock, Nash, and Blaze in my rearview. I reach for my phone and turn it off before it blows up with calls and texts I’m not ready to respond to.

By this afternoon, word will spread through town like wildfire—about the shoot-out at the warehouse, the crime syndicate operating under everyone’s noses, about Tyler, Harlon, Blaze, and Wilkerson.

Everyone will be shocked and appalled.

But I won’t be around to see or hear any of it.

It’s a four-hour drive to Denver. Four hours to put as much distance between me and Blaze as I can. Between me and every gut-wrenching lie that was told in the name of protecting me.

I wrap my fingers around the steering wheel, gazing out at the sprawling green fields and hazy purple mountains I might never see again.

For years, I learned to accept the version of truth people gave me. Now I need to learn to survive the whole of it.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Blaze

I’ve been inside the federal building in Birch Falls so much over the past three days, they might as well start charging me rent. Interviews with the DEA, FBI, and local sheriff’s office. Everyone wants a piece of me now that my lawyer has gotten me an immunity deal and I can spill everything I know. I’ve gone through almost a decade’s worth of intel about my work within Wilkerson’s organization. Names, dates, jobs, locations. Every threat he made, every manipulation of me, my family, Nash, and Savannah.

Too bad it hasn’t done a damn thing to distract me from the fact that Savvie is gone. And I couldn’t do or say anything to stop her. She looked at me like I was a monster, like she couldn’t get away fast enough. Now she’s seen the real me.

Something I’d feared since I started working for Wilkerson.

I guess I always knew this time would come.

And now, with all of my past sins exposed, I know she’s right.

I really am that monster.

But I don’t want to be. I want to be the man she needs, the one she feels safe with, the one she knows would move heaven and earth to keep her safe and happy.

She used to see me that way until all of my skeletons were hurled at her like daggers, and I’m completely powerless to stop the bleeding.

I scrub a hand down the front of my face, bleary eyed as I stare at the top of the wooden conference room table.

“You need some coffee?” Richard Abrams, the federal prosecutor sitting across from me, asks.

I shudder at the thought. Hell no. My stomach lining has been eaten away over the past few days by the acidic sludge they serve here.