But even after everything she had managed to do, there was still one lingering matter she had not touched on.
“But you left one thing out,” I reminded her, needing to know the truth.“Our baby.”
Jaden stared back at me for a moment, then slowly shook her head.“There never was a baby, Darren.Sid faked the entire thing.”
An odd sense of devastation struck my chest, shock and awe splintering through me at such a scheme.Despite the tragedy of it all, I nodded with acceptance as disappointment and the pungent scent of grief assaulted my fading senses for the child that never was.
The fact that Sid was able to simulate a pregnancy so easily was nearly unfathomable.Matt was right that he had taken the easy way out because I would have destroyed that old man much slower than the cancer would have.But now that I was bleeding out onto the floor, none of it seemed to matter anymore.What was done was done and could not be changed or helped.
The only thing that mattered now were these final fleeting moments, regardless of the painful truths.
“Shame,” I murmured honestly.“You would have made a great mother.”
She narrowed her eyes in anger.“And I will be some day,” Jaden continued, her voice strong and firm.“But you—you will never get the chance to torture your children into monsters like you.”
A broken chuckle made its way up my throat, entertained by the irony.“The same monster who refused to hurt you just now because of your apparentimaginarypregnancy?”I countered half-heartedly.“You should be so lucky.”
The reminder didn’t sit well with either of us, Jaden’s hazel eyes hardening under the realization that things likely would have gone very differently if I had actually believed she wasn’t pregnant like Jason and Matt had told me.But I refused to believe them simply because we were enemies.Jason probably shouldn’t have even told me in the first place, but I imagined he didn’t expect me to walk away alive at the time.Fucking fool.
For all I knew, they could have been lying just to fuck with me, and it wasn’t a gamble I was willing to bet on.I couldn’t risk potentially hurting Jaden and our baby on their words alone until I knew for certain.And now I did.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Jaden argued firmly.“Everything you’ve ever done, you’ve only ever done for yourself.You don’t get to suddenly claim hero status now from the safety of your deathbed.”
I couldn’t help but grin at her poetic logic.She really would have made one hell of a lawyer.
“No, that title unequivocally belongs to you, princess,” I replied sardonically, grimacing as the pain from the nerve serum became distorted now that my body was officially dying.“You finally slayed your dragon.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, seemingly unamused by my little joke.
“I didn’t just do it for me.I did it for everyone your influence has ever touched,” she stated proudly despite the numerous tears now running down her face.“You’re a cancer, Darren.I had to stop the spread.”
I smiled at her.“And if anyone was ever going to successfully kill me, Jaden, it would be you.It was always going to be you.”Looking down at the knife still lodged in my leg, I watched as my blood continued to seep out of it, the agonizing seconds ticking by as my energy depleted.“I told you how I wanted to die, and you’ve officially given me that.You’ve earned your prize.”Reaching down, I wrapped my hand around the hilt of the knife, feeling it firmly against my palm.“But I’m afraid the only one who controls my death is me,” I affirmed, and tightened my grip before it got any weaker.
“What are you doing?”Jaden gasped in question.
On a grunt, I ripped the knife from my leg, groaning from the pressure on the artery.Jaden’s eyes widened as she watched me toss it away.
I sighed as I felt my body grow heavier and looked up at her beautiful, flushed face for the last time.“You may think you’ve escaped me here, Jaden, but we both know I will always haunt you until the end of time.No matter what you do or where you go, awake or asleep, dead or alive, I will always be there.Because you will always bemine, in this plane or the next.Forever.”I felt my eyes shuttering from the looming darkness, the shadows creeping nearer as the cold fully settled in, taking hold of my wretched soul.“I’ll see you on the other side, princess…”
24
BREATHE
* * *
Anger surged through me like a bolt of lightning.
“The fuck you will,” I replied and lifted my pistol.
Four gunshots rang out into the desolate space, the sharp echoes resonating in my ears as the bullets tore into Darren’s chest and abdomen.I wanted to rip his last breath from the holes in his lungs before he could release it under the guise of his own volition.
If anything was mine eternally, it was his death.
It belonged to me.And only me.
As he said, I had earned it.
The sound of a pained whine caught my ears and just like that, the magnitude of what I had just done was swept away by the excruciating relief that Camaro was alive and right here with me.