“I didn’t.”
Muffled sobs escaped her lips as she covered her mouth with her hands, looking between the body and me then back again. “They’ll hunt you for this. Torture everyone you hold close—maybe even me, did you for one second think about what this would do to me? To us?”
“There is no us.” It was harsh. I meant for it to come out softer, but I was having a hard enough time holding it together, I was barely able to breathe let alone get words out. I needed her to hate me.
I needed her to cling to her family, her sister, her friends. For once, I fucking needed Tempest to actually do what she was asked.
One time.
Please God let it be now.
She choked on a sob. “Was any of this real? I mean, was it all a game from the start or did you actually care? Did you—” her voice cracked. “Did you fall even a little bit for me?”
Her eyes were so bright, so vulnerable. I’d earned too much of her trust, I didn’t deserve any of it.
Shit!
I bit down on my lower lip to keep from screaming. We were running out of time—she was running out of time. She needed to get to safety, she needed to be guiltless in all of this.
She kept talking. “Were your eyes wide open, open from the very first drop?”
I said nothing.
“God!” She screamed. “Did you do this willingly and smile at me while doing it? All to infiltrate my family? Break me in order to break them? Use the last shred of love I have against me?”
The hardest words I would ever say. The hardest truth I would ever tell when I’d only ever been a liar. “Yes.”
“To what!” she demanded shrilly. “Say it!”
"I’m broken. And broken people break things,” my breath was heavy in my chest, my throat burned with choking flame after flame. “You were pretty so I touched you, you were easy so I took you, you were lost so I found you, you were nice so I ruined you.” I licked my lips. “It was easy you know, making you feel like you were in control, almost too easy taking it from you.” I sighed. “I let you set the rules. I told you the truth in the end, I just never told you the target.” I purposefully didn’t answer her other questions.
The truth hurt.
She was nothing but a target, right?
She was nothing.
Believe it.
Walk away, Tempest.
Walk. Away.
The final blow, I felt it, I orchestrated it for this very moment. “Tempest,” I ground out her name letting it linger on my lips as the air carried it in a dark whisper toward the skies. “Really think about it, the circumstances. Me saying yes to you so easily, us getting answers so fast, the infiltration, everything being tied up in a nice fancy little bow and then there’s you.” I sneered. It hurt to do it. A part of my heart cracked as I forced myself to keep talking. “In what world, would someone like me, ever truly love someone completely tarnished and easy like you?”
27
TEMPEST
Man is an animal who needs a master. — Immanuel Kant
My dad was dead.
My hero was gone.
And my husband’s hands dripped with his blood. I wanted to ask what my dad did to deserve it, but I knew his list of sins was long—I knew better than anyone that he wasn’t perfect. That he’d made mistakes. He hated talking to Mom about it, and once Grandpa had a bit of a heart-to-heart with Dad about me wanting to be made he shared more and more in hopes that one day I’d change my mind.
He never held back.