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Then I went in.
I moved inside, finding nothing but a one-room space, and 'Michael' standing at the kitchen sink, facing away from me.
"You move too loudly to be an assassin," he murmured, slowly turning, eyes watching me, a spark of recognition there, but he was struggling to place me.
"Six years ago in Armenia, you killed the woman I loved."
"I've killed a lot of women," he said, shrugging, cold, callous, unapologetic.
I was no saint.
I'd killed people.
More than I liked to think about.
But I hadn't killed women.
Not that I wouldn't if my life depended on it, if she was the scum like some of the men I had needed to take out were.
But there would be nothing easy about it.
There would be no way I could talk about it - even years later - like it was no big deal.
"Yeah? Well, your streak is over," I informed him before charging.
By the time we were done, there was blood all over that cabin.
His.
Mine.
I had a broken eye-socket and a knocked-out molar. Three fingers were broken. I'd have a four-inch scar on my body for the rest of my life.
But he was dead.
I had done it.
Then I took a shower.
Rigged an oil leak.
And delighted in the sound of the explosion from my hotel room.
That night, I sat down with my picture.
And found nothing had changed.
There was no satisfaction, no relief.
I never would find that.
So long as she was dead, so was the biggest part of me.
I just had to learn to live with that brokenness.
Eventually, I did.EIGHTMackenzieHe finished speaking, placing his empty mug down on the counter, reaching behind him to fish out his wallet, reaching inside, pulling out a picture softened around the edges from use.
I knew what it was.
I mean, he had told me.
But maybe a part of me didn't want to believe him, would find it easier to handle this whole situation.
Because if what he said was true, then everything I had gone through over the past fifteen years had been for no reason. All the rage I felt, all the pain I'd suffered, all the times I had my ass handed to me, had nearly peed myself in fear, it had been for nothing.
I had been through hell, put myself through hell in the name of revenge.
It finally hit me, that old Chinese quote about when you are going out for revenge, you should dig two graves.
I had done it, without even realizing it.
And I had buried so many parts of myself along the way.
All the sweet and soft and naive.
All my trust.
All my hope.
Roan's hand slid the picture across the island to me, and my hand reached for it automatically, fingers lifting it up.
It was strange to see an old me, to see all the things that no longer existed.
Fifteen years wasn't that long, all said and done.
But it was long enough to kill so much of the person I had once been.
There she was, grinning like a fool, like there wasn't a single thing in the world weighing her down, like she had nothing to fear, nothing to lose.
How very, very wrong she was.
But also, how very, very precious.
I had never given that utter innocence to all life's ugly much thought. But there it was, staring back at me.
It had been ripped away young, but it had once been there.
I remembered that day distinctly, the insecurity, the uncertainty about this amazing, beautiful, worldly man, the wonder at feeling something growing I hadn't felt before, the very carefully contained hope that it could be something special.
And, if I was willing to look past all that followed, I had to admit that it was that.
Something special.
And it hadn't been as fake, as one-sided as I had tried to convince myself, as I believed so fully because there was simply no other option to put my faith to rest in.
If Roan was to be believed - and I thought he was, since I had been listening with enough cynicism to be able to find any small crack in the story if it existed - then the job had only been 'just a job' for a very short period of time.
He'd genuinely liked me.
He'd wanted to be with me.
He'd - if I dare even let myself believe this - loved me.
Maybe even as much as I had loved him.
And he hadn't set up the explosion.
He hadn't tried to kill me.
If those two things were true, then every ounce of bitterness, of resentment had been for nothing.
All the things I had killed within me could have lived, survived, thrived.
I could have still been the girl in the picture, happy, light.
Had I only known the truth.
My eyes fluttered closed, squeezing tight against the burn of tears forming there.
My entire adult life was built on a lie.
Everything I had turned myself into hadn't been necessary.
All the scars I had etched on my skin could have been avoided.
