Chapter 33
CONNOR
Iwas broken.
Not the way most people understood broken. Not visible. Not dramatic. Not the kind of damage you could point to and say there, that's where it hurts.
But from the inside out. Like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the foundation of everything I thought I knew and left me standing on rubble, trying to pretend I could still support weight.
I'd always carried the grief of losing my parents. Had learned to live with it the way you learned to live with a scar—present but manageable, tender only when you pressed on it directly. Part of the landscape of who I'd become.
But now?
Now all I could see was Merrick at the funeral.
Standing there in his black suit that probably cost more than my parents made in a month, face appropriately somber, offering his fucking condolences like he gave a shit.
Like he hadn't poured the gasoline himself.
Like he hadn't lit the match and watched.
Like he hadn't stood across the street listening to my mother scream while the building came down.
And I'd believed him.
Had shaken his hand with my own still trembling from crying.
Had nodded when he said he was sorry for my loss, his voice so perfectly calibrated to sound genuine.
Had let him stand among the other mourners—real mourners, people who'd actually known and loved my parents—like he had any right to be there.
Like he was human.
The rage should have been white-hot. Should have been consuming. Should have burned through everything else until there was nothing left but fury and the need for revenge.
But it wasn't.
I felt ... nothing.
Hollow. Empty. Like someone had scooped everything out of me with a dull spoon and left just the shell, still standing but functionally dead inside.
I was glad Merrick was dead. Glad I'd put the rounds in him. Glad I'd watched his face disappear under the impacts, obliterated, erased from existence the way he deserved.
But I didn't care.
And that was worse somehow. The not caring. The flat, dead space where emotion should have been. The knowledge that I'd killed a man—multiple men, actually—and felt nothing about it except a vague sense of completion.
Like checking items off a list.
Target neutralized. Threat eliminated. Mission accomplished.
I'd washed my hands three times since getting back to The Sanctuary.
Scrubbed until the skin was raw and angry-looking.
But I could still feel the recoil of the pistol bucking against my palm.
Could still see the blood pooling dark on concrete, spreading in irregular patterns that my brain kept trying to map like terrain.
Could still hear his laugh.
Pretty sure that was your mommy screaming.
The words played on loop. Over and over. A recording I couldn't shut off.
I'd tried sitting. Then standing. Then pacing. Nothing helped. Nothing touched the emptiness or filled the hole that kept getting wider.
The knock came.
Measured. Deliberate. Not hesitant.
Ellsworth.
I crossed to the door and opened it, my movements mechanical. Automatic.
And there she was.
Mila.
Standing in the hallway like light breaking through storm clouds, parting the darkness that had settled over everything like fog.
For a moment I just stared at her, unable to process that she was real. That she'd come. That someone like her—someone clean and whole and good—would choose to step into this mess with me instead of running the other direction like any sane person would.
"Mila," I said, and her name felt like the only solid thing left in my world. The only word that still meant something.
She didn't hesitate.
Didn't ask permission or wait for invitation.
She crossed to me and wrapped her arms around me, her face pressing into my chest, and the contact—
God, the contact.
It was like touching ground after free-falling through space. Like air after drowning. Like proof that gravity still worked and the world hadn't completely inverted.
My arms crushed around her before I could think about it. Not gentle. Not careful. Desperate.
Like she was the only thing keeping me from disappearing entirely. From dissolving into the emptiness that wanted to swallow me whole.
I felt my breath shudder against her hair. Felt my hands grip her back like I needed proof she was real. That she was solid. That I hadn't lost everything that mattered.
"I'm here," she whispered, and the words hit me like absolution I didn't deserve. "I'm here. I'm here."
The repetition mattered. Each time she said it, something in me loosened fractionally. Like she was talking me back from an edge I hadn't realized I was standing on.
We stood like that for what felt like hours. Maybe it was. I'd lost track of time somewhere between pulling the trigger and washing blood off my hands that wasn't actually there.
She pulled back just enough to look at my face, her hands coming up to cup my jaw with a gentleness I didn't know how to accept. Forcing me to meet her eyes when all I wanted to do was look away.
"You don't have to tell me yet," she said softly. "You just have to let me be here."
Something in my chest cracked open.
A sound escaped me—raw and broken and completely beyond my control. Not quite a sob. Not quite a gasp. Something in between that I'd never made before and hoped I'd never make again.
I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to hers, my hands sliding down to grip her wrists like I needed to feel her pulse. Her warmth. Proof of life beating steady and sure.
She let me.
Didn't pull away. Didn't flinch. Didn't treat me like I was fragile or dangerous or something that needed to be handled carefully.
Just held space for whatever I was becoming in this moment.
Time passed. I didn't know how much. Could have been minutes. Could have been an hour.
Eventually she guided me to the bed, sitting beside me, her hand never leaving mine. Her thumb traced slow circles on my palm—grounding, rhythmic, anchoring me to the present when my mind kept trying to drag me back to concrete floors and blood and laughter that shouldn't have existed.
Her presence soothed something in me. Not fixing it. Not making it better or wiping it away like it never happened.
But... anchoring me. Keeping me from drifting too far into the void that wanted to swallow me whole. Reminding me that I was still here. Still breathing. Still capable of feeling something, even if that something was just her hand in mine.
Finally, I spoke.
"It was Merrick."
The words came out raw. Ruined. Like they'd been dragged over broken glass on their way from my chest to my mouth.
"He ... he killed them. My parents. The fire wasn't an accident. He did it. Poured the gasoline. Lit the match. Stood there and watched them burn."
Mila's hand tightened on mine but she didn't interrupt. Didn't gasp or cry out or demand details I couldn't give yet.
She just listened.
"He was there," I continued, and now that I'd started I couldn't stop.
The words kept coming like they'd been dammed up too long and the barrier had finally broken.
"At the funeral. Wearing a suit. Shaking my hand.
Telling me he was sorry for my loss. Looking me in the eye and lying to my fucking face. "
My vision blurred. I tried to blink it away but couldn't. Tears—actual tears—burned at the corners of my eyes for the first time since I was seventeen years old.
"And the whole time—the whole fucking time—he knew. Because he'd done it. He'd murdered them and then showed up to watch me grieve. Like it was entertainment. Like my pain was something he could consume."
The tears spilled over. I couldn't stop them. Didn't try.
"It's my fault," I said, the confession tearing out of me like something with claws. "If I hadn't gone to St. Paul's. If I hadn't gotten involved with them. If I'd just been a normal fucking kid who played baseball and went to public school and didn't attract their attention—"
"No," Mila said firmly, her voice cutting through my spiral like a blade. "No. It was their fault. And Merrick's. Not yours. You were a child, Connor. You didn't choose any of this."
I looked at her then. Really looked at her.
And I told her the truth.
"I killed him," I said, each word deliberate. Clear. "Merrick. I ... I emptied the magazine into his face until there was nothing left."
I waited for her to cringe. To pull away. To look at me with horror or disgust or fear. To see me for what I really was—a killer, a weapon, someone too damaged and violent to deserve the kind of love she was offering.
Someone who belonged in the darkness, not the light.
But she didn't.
Instead, she cradled my face in both hands and kissed me. Soft. Certain. Like she was choosing me all over again despite—or maybe because of—what I'd just told her.
"It's going to be okay," she whispered against my mouth. "You're a good man, Connor. A good man."
And that—
That cut through the darkness completely.
This woman. This amazing, beautiful, impossibly brave woman saw me. All of me. The violence and the grief and the broken pieces and the parts I'd tried to bury so deep no one would ever find them.
And she was still here.
Still choosing me.
Still holding my face like I was something precious instead of something ruined.
I knew in that moment—with a certainty that felt like gravity—that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I wouldn't do for her.
No distance I wouldn't cross. No danger I wouldn't face. No sacrifice I wouldn't make.
She had become the center of everything that mattered.
"Everything's going to be okay," I repeated, testing the words in my mouth. Trying to believe them the way she seemed to. "You really think so?"
"I know so," she said.
She pulled me into her arms again, and this time I let myself collapse into her completely. Let myself be held without trying to hold myself together. Let myself feel the full weight of everything I'd been carrying.
The grief. The rage. The guilt. The shame. The bone-deep exhaustion of being a weapon instead of a person.
All of it.
And she didn't buckle under it. Didn't break or bend or tell me it was too much.
She just held me.
And I held her back, my face buried in her neck, breathing in the scent of her—something clean and warm that had nothing to do with violence or death or the smell of cordite and blood that I couldn't seem to wash away.
Despite the pain—despite the horror of what I'd learned, what I'd done, what I'd become—I realized there was nowhere else I would rather be than right here.
In this room. In her arms. Wrapped in this sanctuary she'd built around us with nothing but her presence and her willingness to see me and choose me, anyway.
It was a refuge spun from love and trust and the kind of bravery most people never had to access.
A place where broken things could exist without needing to be fixed immediately.
Where a man could fall apart and know he'd be held together by something stronger than himself.
And for the first time since pulling that trigger, I felt something other than emptiness.
I felt held.
I felt seen.
I felt loved.