JACK
She stopped tapping her fingers while I talked, and it made me wonder if some small part of her could hear what I said.
I hoped so. She deserved to hear it.
If I hadn’t been so selfish before, she could have known the truth back when it actually mattered.
I hoped that some small part of her knew why I’d aimed my gun on her. I would have done it … only for her. She’d never forgive me if she knew I’d left her like this … the empty shell of a human.
I’d promised her.
See, that was the problem.
Too many broken promises … to keep her safe … to keep her alive … to kill her. And no matter what I did now, she was gone.
The reality of it twisted my insides like a meat churner; pieces of who I was—the person I could be when Sage was alive, the brother I was to Beckett, my responsibilities to destroy the code—had pulverized into a giant, spoiled heap right in the pit of me. I felt like spewing the scraps across the shiny marble bathroom floor.
But it didn’t matter what my insides felt like because it didn’t change a thing.
Sage was gone.
And my father would pay.