Page 269

The deputies have been checking on me every fifteen minutes since they brought me in a couple of days ago, as though they’re afraid I might find a way to disappear through the concrete walls.

“Visitor, Morgan.”

I turn my head toward the bars.

In her trademark leather jacket, Sienna stands on the other side of the cell, her arms folded across her chest, her face giving nothing away.

“You can go now,” she orders coldly when the deputy makes no move to leave.

“Fifteen minutes. That’s all you get, Heartless,” the deputy barks, earning himself a middle finger from Sienna.

He curses under his breath, then turns on his heel and disappears through the door at the far end of the corridor, leaving us alone.

For a while, neither of us speaks.

I eventually push myself into a sitting position, letting my bare feet touch the cold floor. The cot creaks beneath me as I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

“Come to check up on me?” I ask.

Sienna doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, she studies me through the bars, her gaze traveling over my face as though she’s searching for something she hasn’t quite found yet.

“Did it feel good?”

I frown. “What?”

“Getting even.” Her jaw tightens. “After everything they did to you, after all those years of carrying around the horrors of that night, did it feel good to finally make them pay?” She pauses. “I bet it did.”

I lower my gaze to my hands.

What am I supposed to say to that?

That for a brief, terrible moment, it had felt good? That watching the people who destroyed my life finally face the consequences of their actions had given me a satisfaction I hadn’t thought myself capable of feeling?

Because it had.

God help me, it had.

But that feeling is long gone now, buried beneath something so much heavier that I can barely breathe around it.

Sienna waits for an answer, but when I don’t give her one, she lets out a quiet sigh and steps away from the bars.

“I’ll let you rest.”

She’s almost reached the end of the corridor when I finally find my voice.

“Whatever pleasure I took from getting even, it’s all gone now.”

She stops.

“All I feel is guilt and sadness.”

Sienna slowly turns around. “But not regret.”

I lift my head to lock eyes with her.

“You’ve always been a stickler for words, Max. If you left that one out, it must mean something.”

“All it means is that I lost my way. Truly and irrevocably,” I reply. “Somewhere along the way, I stopped being the person I thought I was. I lost myself, Sienna. Lost my own sanity in the process.”