Page 55 of Wasted Lust

“You need a rat in the Company?”

“No, Sasha. We don’t want to waste time infiltrating them. Why? Why bother doing that when we have you?”

I hear the words, but I ignore them and concentrate on Nick’s scars. What happened to him? Did he get them fighting? Was he tortured? Did they make him do these things?

Or was he in on it from the beginning? Did he lie to me?

Jax takes my hand and places something in it. I look down at the gold badge encased in leather. There’s a beaded chain and plastic credit-card type ID attached.

“For you,” Jax says.

I look at the badge for a moment. Then the ID. It’s got my picture on it. My full name—Aston, not Cherlin—and some fancy, authentic-looking symbols. “What the hell?”

“You don’t have to accept it, Sasha. Yet. But think about it. You could make a difference.”

I look up at him. My whole body is freezing now, and I start to tremble. “You want me to get Nick for you, don’t you? To get revenge because you think he killed your little brother.”

“I know he did.”

“You don’t know, Jax. Unless he tells you, you don’t know. And what the fuck happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

“Whatever happened to a man’s home is his castle? Didn’t my brother have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Nick Tate took it away. Nick Tate has killed hundreds of people—”

“So did James, Jax. So when I’m done with Nick, do you want me to go after James? Is Harper on your hit list as well? Merc? Did you really bring me here to try to talk me into selling out the people who almost died for me?”

“As far as I know, they are all retired.”

“And you have no personal grudge against them, right?”

“True,” he admits. “But they got out of the business, Sasha. You got out. Nick didn’t.”

“We’re all ex-Company, Jax.”

“No,” he seethes. “You’re not. Because Nick never left them, Sasha. He’s still in.”

“He’s part of a Honduran gang, not the Company.”

“They are the Company. Nick knew that going in. They are the Company, Sasha. You think you got them all?”

“I never said that. We knew we only got some of them. But that guy, that Matias guy who took Nick—”

“They didn’t take him, Sasha. He left with them. It was a setup.”

“By whom?”

“By Nick.”

“Where the fuck do you get your information?”

“From Nick.” And then Jax walks over to a desk and pulls out a stack of letters. “Nick sent me these every year on the anniversary of Michael’s death. He justified it, Sasha. He said he’d do it again if he had to. He admitted it, he took credit for it, and he believed in it.”

“Why would he want to kill a little boy?”

“Why would people want to kill you, Sasha? Or should I say, twelve-year-old you?” He waits for it to sink in.

I turn away. “What the fuck?”

“Michael was someone’s Zero, Sasha.”