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"Jax?"

"Don't call me that," he spits, eyes staring straight at me.

"What are you doing here?" I ask through the glass. His eyebrows stay drawn together, his jaw tight. I'd never seen him look at me like this before. It's hurt or pain. It's anger.

"I need to know, Amora. I need to know what you see when you look at me. I need to know why the fuck you look at me the way you do." Every word slurs from his mouth as his hand tries to hold himself upright. I don't say a word, because I don't know the answer.

His fist connects hard against the glass. "Tell me," he growls. My hand hovers over the handle of the balcony door, deciding whether to risk everything and let him inside or to keep him out there. My body decides before my heart, the handle twisting as the cold air floods through the room. I can smell the whiskey as he takes a step inside.

"You're drunk, Jax, you should go," I whisper.

"That's not the answer I'm looking for."

"I don't know what you want me to say, Jax. What is the answer you're wanting to hear?" I try to keep the distance between us, eyes flicking to the door as I wait for the guard to hear him. Knowing that every second he's in this room is another second closer to a punishment neither of us will survive.

"Since that fucking warehouse, you've been in my head. Do you know that?" He begins pacing back and forth. "Every kill, you've ruined. Every second that I get to lose myself in a pleasure I can't fucking describe, you've destroyed it. Because every time I close my eyes, I see you. The way you look at me like I'm not the piece of shit they built, and I need to know why. No more bullshit, no more avoiding the question or filling it with fucking silence." He raises his voice, and the sound of boots interrupt us from the hallway. Both our eyes go to the door. My chest rises and falls quicker as my palms begin to sweat.

"Will you keep your voice down?" I hiss.

"I don't give a fuck who comes through those doors, Amora. Just answer me."

"I don't know…" I do. I see his pain, the way every decision he makes takes another part of his soul. How he hides behind this so-called pleasure just enough that the guilt won't consume him.

"You do. You have to." His voice breaks, almost like a plea than an accusation. He walks closer, my eyes widen as his fingers touch mine.

"I don't see a monster, Jax. If that's the answer you're looking for, I don't see it. I don't see the executioner you and everyone else claims you are. Whenever you're close, I don't feel scared, I don't feel terrified. Your eyes don't make me feel like you're trying to claim every inch of my skin." I lace my fingers with his. "I see you. I see the man you are. Not the man they've built."

He snatches his hand away, dragging it through his hair. "Then you really are doomed."

I frown. "Doomed?"

"How can you not see me, Amora? How can you not see who I am? You've seen the blood, you've seen what I do, you fucking know what I do!"

"What you're forced to do," I correct him.

"Did you not just hear me? I'm not fucking forced to do anything, Amora. I love it. I live for it, and you took that away from me. You ruined the only thing that was good for me, and fuck, you make me fucking care. You make me care about the girls in the cells. You make me care about the fucking lives I take." He's back to pacing, each word sliding under my skin more.

"Why come here and ask if you're going to get angry at the answer?"

"Because I needed to know if he's really broken your mind or whether it was already a little broken to begin with. Your answer confirmed what I already knew—you're crazy."

"I'm crazy? You're pissed and climbing three balconies to bang on my door, just to ask a question that you clearly don't like the answer of. So I don't know how you've got the audacity to question my mental state."

"It wasn't a problem when I was climbing three balconies to drag you from the ledge," he spits back, eyes burning into me. I match his stare. Fuck him.

"Why was I on that ledge, Jax?"

His body stills, every inch tightening under my stare. "Don't."

A tired laugh slips through my lips as I take a step closer. "Don't?" I tilt my head. "Don't what, Jax? Remind you that I'm here because you bought me here? That if you'd have just let me go in the warehouse, none of this would have happened?" I feel a surge of bravery I haven't felt since I've gotten here. He could kill me. He is their executioner, no matter how much he doesn't feel like a threat, but part of me trusts him. It might be displaced, it might be the stupidest thing I could do, but I can't stop. Every moment being here has caused my insides to rot with anger and hatred, and Jax just sparked the match to set me aflame.

I keep pushing, walking closer until our bodies burn against each other. "So tell me, Ace," I say his name with poison dripping from my tongue. "Tell me how much I've ruined your life, tell me how I've taken away the only thing that made you feel something." My hand pushes against his shoulder, and for the first time since I'd known him, he takes a step back. He doesn't fight it.

He scoffs, rubbing his neck. "You don't understand, Amora."

"You're right, I don't. I don't understand who the hell you think you are to come into my room, shouting and accusing that I—the one you forced here—have ruined your life. When I spend every day wishing it was my fucking last." Tears itch against my lids, but I blink them away. I'm tired of this, tired of being quiet, of being compliant. I'm tired of existing and not living.

"I did what I had to, Amora. For me. For Jarrod. It isn't as simple as you like to think."