Those two sentences made my organs feel like they were being ripped out of my body.
My mind was quick to add through the clues.
D: Dereck
Change of plans: The promise Silas had made.
He has to go: Death.
Silas wouldn’t though. I knew him. He would never do that to me.
I was jumping to conclusions. I had to be.
I clicked into the next, not even sure who was saying what, but somehow knowing this was a shared folder and two people were having a conversation.
Are you sure? Intel says he’s a go.
The next.
It has to happen. Too much liability.
Hand barely cooperating, I flicked into the next.
This isn’t normally the way you play.
I know, but there’s too much riding on this. The guy’s a liar. A rat. And you know what we do with those.
Trembles rocked through me as I clicked into the last.
Understood. I’ll see that it’s done.
A blade of misery stabbed through my middle, and I nearly bent in two. A sob clung like a blob of poison at the base of my throat.
How could he? How could he do this to me?
I thought…I thought…
I beat the agony back into submission.
I didn’t have time for a broken heart. Besides, I was the idiot here. He already told me he would ruin me.
Throat closing off, I tossed my head over my shoulder, almost certain I’d find a beast behind me, ready to strike and end me, too.
The way I knew from the beginning Silas would do.
When did I become so complacent? So blind? So freaking stupid?
Nothing but a doormat who’d been used again and again.
Manipulated so I’d be thrown off track.
I mean, I’d fully stopped looking for clues. Stopped listening. Stopped asking.
Because I’d fallen into a trap and trusted Silas Mercer.
Bile rolled my throat, acid clawing at the back of my tongue the way it always did a moment before I puked.
This was no time to be sick.
