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I sat and Sadie rose, making her way over to the bar where she poured two glasses half-full with whiskey.
“So, good news?” I tried for a smile that felt weak even to me and opted instead for a big sip of top shelf Irish whiskey.
“I think so, yes,” she said stiffly, almost formally. She leaned against the desk, leaving no distance, no barrier between us.
“But you’re different Emmett and I know this news won’t be easy to hear.”
I swallowed a knot in my throat that tasted like charcoal and nodded. “Okay.”
“The man who attacked Vanessa was a prospect for my current fucking headache known as Black Jacks.” The alcohol threatened to return at that one word. Was.
“Why did he attack her, do we know?” The question delayed the inevitable, we both knew that. Just as we both knew I wasn’t ready to hear the news I already knew was coming.
“Jasper suspects this is Brendan Rhymer’s doing, and I’m inclined to agree.” Sadie let out an exhausted sigh and finished off her whiskey. Then she gave me the news I’d been dreading.
“He didn’t make it Emmett; he died early this morning from his injuries. Internal bleeding, brain swelling, all of it. He’s dead.”
Dead. That word echoed in my brain on a loop for a full minute. The kid couldn’t have been more than twenty-two and his life was over. My hands had done that.
“Fuck,” I said because I couldn’t say anything else. I couldn’t tell Sadie about the visions haunting me since the beat down in the parking lot. The reason the asshole was in a morgue and not just walking around with a beefsteak on his black eyes.
I’d been having flashbacks since that day. Not just to the guy with his hands all over Vanessa. That was enough to drive me out of my mind. But when I pulled her away from his clutches and started wailing on him, I didn’t see just the punkass kid.
Everything came back. My mother. The guys I left in the desert, all that blood and gore, but mainly Fiona.
How do you wipe something like that out of your mind? What those monsters did to her. It had been eating at me since I watched the video of her murder on Jasper’s phone that night. The fear that the same thing could happen to Vanessa had brought me to my knees. It’s why I’d been showing up to give her a ride home every night, why I’d appointed myself her personal body guard. Why I’d given my brother the beating of his life. Or almost. Luckily, Kat stopped me from doing real damage to Terry.
My goddamn PTSD.
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you before dinner, Emmett. Don’t turn this into some indictment on who you are because that’s bullshit and you know it.”
I heard her words and nodded, but my gaze was drawn to my hands, still bruised and healing from the fatal damage I’d inflicted. How could I tell her about the rage I felt? That it stopped being about protecting Vanessa at some point? That my violent streak took over, and I spun out of control.
“Do I know it, Sadie? I swore I was done with killing when I left the Army, but yet, here we are, upping my body count.”
The news was devastating, and I felt my body temperature drop at least five degrees as I struggled to take a deep breath.
The door opened and closed behind me, and I didn’t need to look up to know it was Jasper. His hand fell on my shoulder and when I finally faced him, his eyes held sympathy for me.
“Em, we all know you’re not a killer. Whether you want to hear it or not, you did exactly what needed to be done.”
I shook my head against his words. “It wasn’t my place. I should have left it up to Mace or Hulu or Provo. That’s their job.”
“Fuck that,” Jasper insisted firmly. “They didn’t get there on time. They were close, yeah, but were you going to let them kill her just because,” he hung air quotes to make sure I understood, “it wasn’t your job?” He leaned into me as if I couldn’t hear him.
“And what would they have done after they’d had their way with her? Fuck no. Vanessa needed you to be that man in that moment, and you were. Hell, the family needed you, too, and no matter what you think, you are a part of this family.”
“He’s right,” Sadie added softly. “ You are family. And the message the family needed to send has been conveyed. Thank you.”
I nodded absently, that sickening feeling that I had in the Army returning. It was fucked up to be thanked and rewarded, to receive medals for killing people. For taking lives. Even if it had to be done, it should never be rewarded. Not fucking ever.
