Chapter 41
TYLER
PULSE HAMMERING, I will myself to keep focused as the Black Hawk erases more of the miles between us. Considering, for the first time in years, shooting up a prayer of hope. That notion, along with any spark of it, obliterated as my fear is voiced over the wire.
“Command. Pan is down. Pan is down.”
Peter.
I’m too late. Too fucking late.
My chest detonates as the sum of all my fears is confirmed while a tidal wave of consequence rolls through me. A roar of outrage leaves me as the truth I’ve always suspected becomes fact—because I wanted to trust her, and gave her just enough to betray me, I just lost another brother.
By playing into even one of her lies, I failed them all.
Images of my brother at different stages in our history together immediately start to surface as I drown in regret.
The wave crashing into me repeatedly with the ingrained image of him lying in the jail cell the day we met.
The day I offered him a new life, a proposition for a better life, and now, a life that prematurely ended his.
“Nest, send me footage,” I hiss in unconcealed fury as the crash intensifies tenfold.
Peter.
Who I spent years building into a different kind of bird, soldier, and man. Purposefully keeping him from getting too close to the very type of evil he thrust himself up against today—for me.
Images of his mother, Leann, who wholeheartedly entrusted him to us, as well as his little sister, Anabelle, who has thrived due to his role as more doting father than brother.
Both taken from her now. Robbed from us all.
A dire consequence I knew I would inevitably face in some way if I dared to gamble or put an ounce of my faith in any outsider.
Especially one who had reason to draw blood.
Waves of regret continue to pummel me as my phone rumbles with evidence. Proof of the wager I made with fate. Of the gamble I lost, as the chopper blades cut through the air, erasing more space between my enemy and me.
Wrath ignites my veins as I brace myself for what awaits on-screen before smashing my finger into it.
The glaring truth plays out before my eyes as I watch her most damning omission lift his fucking gun and release a bullet into my brother.
As Peter lifelessly falls to the floor, I realize just how well she matched me step for fucking step.
Not only was she deceiving me with what passed through her lips, but also with her eyes and touch.
All of it fabricated to seek her end. Playing me exactly as I did her until the very last second.
Her desired end, and its cost—to save her brother, she sacrificed one of mine.
My burner buzzes with a call from T as Larissa appears on-screen, her eyes meeting those of Peter’s killer.
Unwilling to stomach another second of my failure, the need for retribution overtakes me as I answer and Tobias immediately begins speaking.
“I’m en route,” he clips, the wrath mounting in his own tone unmistakable.
“I’ll get there faster,” I counter, my resignation crystal clear over the line. “It’s my call, remember?” I growl, “so stand down, T, and have everyone else stay the fuck away from this. She’s mine.”
Cutting the call before he can speak another word, I allow the vengeance-filled abyss to swallow me whole.
Blink.
Black.