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“It’s over, baby. He’s dead. It’s over.” He buried his head into her hair.
Shane
It was over. Emanuele was dead. Shane made sure of it, unloading his weapon into him.
Shane needed a shower.
He needed to get the blood off.
He kissed the top of Frankie’s head and told her as much before heading up the stairs to his room. He made it as far as to the doorway before he stopped. He wasn’t as strong as he thought. He hadn’t been back to the house since the day it had happened. The clothing he had worn on the airplane from California to Washington was still strewn across his bed, and the towel was on the floor. It had only been two weeks, but it felt like a lifetime.
In the time it took to change his clothes, his entire life had changed.
They were gone.
He thought he would feel better after killing Emanuele.
He didn’t.
Killing him hadn’t brought them back.
It hadn’t made him feel better.
It didn’t ease the pain, not one bit.
Taking a life wasn’t easy. It didn’t matter whose life it was. Taking lives, even those of evil men, knowing you were protecting innocent people from being hurt from them, still took its toll.
He squared his shoulders and walked into the bedroom. The mission had gone exactly the way he had planned, Plan A all the way—shoot to kill. They’d surrounded and surprised them, just as they wanted, and had the upper hand. They hadn’t seen them coming.
Emanuele had cried like a little bitch, just as he knew he would. Begged for his life. Bartered. Made excuses. Apologized.
It didn’t matter. He had needed to die.
Shane had wanted to drag it out, to make him suffer, as some of his family had. Those who didn’t die from smoke inhalation had been shot trying to escape, trampled, or killed by falling building beams.
He’d wanted to make him suffer.
In the end, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t turn himself into the monster Emanuele was. He emptied his magazine into him. The first bullet was a kill shot, but the rest were emotional overkill. Emanuele hadn’t suffered, not as he deserved.
Now, he was in hell, where he belonged.
Shane liked to think he was suffering now and for all of eternity.
The water was hot but not hot enough, but it couldn’t get any hotter.
He wanted to burn the memory of today from his skin. He scrubbed his body, turning his skin red and raw. Washed his hands over and over and then washed them again.
The water turned cold before he stepped out.
He was surprised to see Frankie sitting on his bed when he came out of the bathroom. Tears were running down her face, and she was hugging one of his pillows to her chest.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“Being here, I realized how much I ache for home, for my home.”
“It has to be incredibly hard to know your home is gone. I sent people to search the rubble. When you’re up for it, we can go through what they found.”
“You did? You did that for me?”
