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Guilt is lethal. It slowly poisons you from the inside out. And the worst part? You don’t even know it’s happening. It becomes a default reaction.
I have replayed that night more times than I can count.
My mother and I never spoke again after that. She died of heart failure a year later. I didn’t go to the funeral.
I never forgave myself for not being there when Nate died, and I never forgave myself for abandoning my mother after his death. The only woman that mattered in my life was abandoned by the three people she loved the most—her husband, me, and Nate, by death.
In the year following that night, I thought a lot about the decisions I made after Nate died, and I came to one conclusion ...
I was meant to be nothing more than a mercenary.
And then I met Sophia.
24
Justin
Iwas jerked back to the present when Leo passed by the window behind our booth. He was on the phone, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk.
Something was wrong.
The waitress appeared in my peripheral vision. “Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?”
“No,” I said, slapping a hundred-dollar bill on the table as I stood.
Leo had pivoted and was crossing the parking lot, walking toward the line of trees that backed up to the coffee shop.
I wove my way through the crowd and pushed out the front door. A gust of wind blew past me, sending snow spiraling around me like a tornado.
The moment I rounded the corner, I heard it. A faintpopa split second before Leo’s head knocked backward in a cloud of red mist.
I lunged forward, sprinting toward him as he locked up like a plank and fell to the pavement. Drawing my gun, I quickly scanned the trees, spotting a faint silhouette in the distance, sprinting away from the scene.
I fell to my knees, gun in hand.
“Leo,” I rasped. “Come on, Leo.”
Snowflakes fell onto his face, sticking to his lashes and his dirty brown beanie. His eyes were open, his jaw slack, as if he were shocked by his own death. A line of blood oozed from the bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.
There was no question he was dead.
Frantically, I looked around. No one had seen what had happened, but it wouldn’t be long until someone took note of the man lying on the ground.
I needed to get the hell out of there.
I found his cell phone about a foot from his body. Immediately, I saw it was not the phone he’d had the day before. This one was different. Using the butt of my gun, I flipped open his coat. Sure enough, his main phone was tucked into his pocket.
After pressing the unlock button on the phone he’d just been talking on, I held it over his face until it unlocked using facial recognition.
I took one last look at my contact.
“Peace be with you—finally,” I whispered before closing his eyes.
As I jogged to my SUV, his advice played on repeat in my head:
Don’t trust anyone.
