Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Hayden
The forest is silent. I needed to go somewhere I could be alone. No Olivia clouding my mind, not close to my brothers who are all giving me their own advice. Cain well he’s being Cain and is waiting for me to figure out what the fuck I’m doing.
I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing, so I’ve come to the only place I know I might get some peace from everyone including myself.
My cheek is pressed into the earth, eye to the scope of my rifle.
I’ve been lying in this same spot for the last two hours, motionless but alert.
Watching. Breathing slowly. Thinking slower.
The camouflage netting is draped over me, my body swallowed up by dirt and shadows.
Nothing moves in these woods except for the wind, and me when the time is right.
Once the job is done no one will know I was ever here.
The target’s where he always is about four hundred yards away, behind the curve of a glass balcony and a neat little set of manicured hedges.
His shadow keeps passing the window. Pacing.
He’s on the phone again. Third time in ten minutes, while his side piece is in bed naked, ready for him to fuck her again.
My finger hovers over the trigger.
But all I can think about… is the cell.
Prison, One Month In
I’ve never felt cold like this before.
My ribs throb with every breath. One side of my face is already swollen, my eye barely opens, and I can taste iron every time I swallow.
The worst part is that I’ve stopped asking “why.” Because I already know.
They want the rapist kid to remember. To bleed. To pay.
Even though I never touched her. Never touched Olivia like that.
They don’t care. They only know what they heard, and they make sure I don’t forget it.
Today was worse than usual. I’m still on the ground when one of them pins my legs and another guy lifts a shiv.
I see the flash of the blade. I brace myself for the pain. I’ve already been stabbed three times in this hell, and I've only been here a month. A fucking month, and every day I wonder will I get out of here alive.
I wait for the blade to hit me again, ready for the impact, my sight moves to the two men walking into the room, fucking great I’m fighting more of them. I don’t have the energy for this.
One of them grabs the guy with the blade and slams him into the bars, the other throws the other two off me like they’re nothing.
The cell turns red for a second, fists flying, skin splitting, shouting. Then silence.
I don’t even get a chance to move before one of them kneels beside me, offering his hand.
“Mr. Cain said you’ll be out soon,” he tells me, voice low and steady. “Until then, no one touches you.”
He helps me to my feet, and something in his stare makes me believe him.
Even though I can barely stand.
Even though I stopped believing in help a long time ago. I know Cain, I know he wouldn’t have just sent someone in here with a fake promise. I trust that man with my life, and I would never question it.
PRESENT
I shake my head, clearing the memory. I’m here to do a job, and that’s what I’ll do.
The target steps out onto the balcony. He’s laughing, drink in hand.
I exhale once. Line up the shot. My finger squeezes.
The sound is soft, like a breath. The glass shatters. The man crumples to the floor before the woman realizes what’s happened.
One shot.
One kill.
Clean.
Effortless.
I pack the rifle slowly, efficiently, tucking it into the case with all the care of a surgeon closing up a body. Making sure there's nothing left behind. The leaves crunch softly under my boots as I disappear into the woods.
I walk into Cain’s office and close the door behind me.
He doesn’t look up yet and says hello to me without even looking to see who it is.
He sits there at his desk, pen in hand, a stack of files in front of him like it’s any other fucking day.
For him it is, this is his life, this club is his, and the only place away from the pit he feels normal.
“It’s done,” I say, voice flat. Cold, the way I’m feeling on the inside at the moment.
Cain leans back in his chair and finally meets my eyes. There’s no surprise in them. Just that calm, calculating look he always wears. Like he already knew the second I pulled the trigger.
“Good.” He nods once, then gestures to the chair across from him. “Sit down.”
I hesitate, because nothing good can come from him asking me to sit down, but I do as I’m asked. My legs feel heavier than they should while waiting for him to say something.
For a long while, it’s just the two of us in silence, broken only by the faint hum of the lights and the sound of his pen tapping once against the edge of the desk.
Then Cain speaks. “Do you want to read the file?”
My eyes flick down to the brown envelope sitting untouched beside his hand. Olivia’s name is printed in the corner in black marker. It’s just a file. Just paper. But it looks like it could burn me alive. And it could if I wanted it to. She’s already burned me once; she could do it all over again.
I stare at it. My throat tightens.
“I can’t.” There’s a pause. I feel his gaze on me. “Have you read it?” I ask.
“Skimmed through it.” His voice is low, unreadable. “Enough to know there’s more to it than what you’ve told yourself.”
My jaw clenches, I know he could tell me, but I also know he is a man who will only tell me if I want to know. Cain is a big believer in, you know when you are ready, even if he knows what’s in the file will help me, he won’t say anything.
“What do you want to do about Olivia?” he asks next.
I sit back in the chair, hands clasped together and shake my head slowly. “I don’t know.”
That’s the truth. I don’t. Every part of me is at war, like there's a fire in my chest and ice in my veins. I'm stuck between the boy who once loved her so deeply I would’ve given her the world, and the man who had that world ripped out from under him.
Cain watches me for a second longer before setting the pen down and leaning forward. “That girl... she’s still got her claws in you.”
I laugh under my breath, bitter and short. “She never let go.”
“Then tell me,” Cain says, folding his hands in front of him. “Do you love her?”
I open my mouth, but it doesn’t come easy. The word feels too small for what she still does to me.
“I do.” My voice cracks slightly. I hate that it does.
“Even after everything. Even after she tore me to pieces and left me there to rot in a fucking cell, Cain. I still fucking love her.” There’s silence again.
I lean forward, press my elbows into my knees, and run my hands through my hair.
“She sent me to prison. I was beaten to shit almost every night. Stabbed. Starved. Humiliated. All for something I didn’t do, and she knew I didn’t fucking do it.
How do you forget something like that, Cain? How do you even begin to let that go?”
Cain’s quiet for a while, then he speaks, voice calm but firm.
“You don’t forget it. But you figure out what matters more, what she did or what you still feel.
” I look up at him, and he meets my stare like he’s challenging me.
“I’m not saying it’s right,” he continues.
“What happened to you, none of it should’ve happened.
And if I ever find out that girl did it with full intent, I’ll handle it myself.
But if there’s more to the story… and I’m telling you there is, then you’ve got a choice to make. ”
I stare back at the file.
“I don’t want to read it,” I say quietly.
“You might want to.”
“I don’t,” I repeat, sharper this time. “If there’s a reason, if there’s something behind what she did, then I want her to be the one to say it. I want to hear it from her. She owes me that.”
Cain leans back in his chair again. Nods once. “Fair enough.”
He doesn’t push; that’s the thing with Cain. He knows how to push you without ever making you feel it. He knows when to hold his ground and when to give you room to fall apart.
“I’ll keep the file,” he says, sliding it into a drawer. “When you want it, it’s here.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do if she lies to me again,” I say, quietly. “If she stands in front of me and makes me believe something that’s not true…”
“Then don’t let her lie,” Cain replies. “Look her in the eye. Ask the question. Let her answer. But be ready for the truth.”
I nod once. “You ever been in love, Cain?”
He smirks, almost fondly. “You know the answer to that.”
I lean in closer to the desk and look into his eyes. “Thanks for always having my back, even when you couldn’t.”
“I just wish I got you out earlier, I was late to protect you—”
“If it wasn’t for you I think I would have died in there.” I stop talking when Cain smiles, because that smile only means one thing. “What?”
Cain leans back in his chair, voice calm.
“Every person who hurt you, you’ve been killing, one way or the other.
All your targets, every name I handed you, they were connected.
They were linked to the men who made your life hell in prison.
Some were brothers. Fathers. Uncles. Bankrollers.
Facilitators. I never told you, but now they’ve all paid for it. ”
At first, I just blink, his words don’t quite register. They echo, ringing in my ears.
I sit up straighter. “What… what the fuck did you just say?”
Cain doesn’t blink. “You heard me.”
My stomach twists, not from guilt, but from this unfamiliar weight of something hot and cold all at once crawling through my chest. I can’t believe this is what he has done for me.
“You’re telling me, every target, everyone I’ve taken out since I got out, they were connected to them? To the ones who—” I don’t finish. I can’t. The air in the room shifts whenever I think of that place, I feel sick.
“Yes.” Cain nods. “Every last one of them.”
“You’re fucking serious?” I ask my voice quite still shocked with what he’s saying. “You orchestrated it?”
“I mapped them out after the first week you were inside,” he says evenly. “While you were bleeding. While they were hurting you and no one lifted a finger. I started tracing lines. Who was protecting them. Who was helping them. Who was celebrating what they did.”
I grip the edge of the desk, knuckles white, breath ragged, the man has more information about my time inside than I do. I’m not even surprised he looked it all up, I just didn’t think he'd do anything with the information.
I remember the punches. The boots. The stabbings. The guards who walked away like I was trash bleeding out in the corner of a cell. I remember the laughter. I remember waking up in the infirmary with broken ribs and bile in my throat, wondering why the fuck no one came for me.
But someone did.
Cain did.
“You handed me a fucking hit list,” I whisper, eyes burning. “And I didn’t even know it.”
“You didn’t need to know,” he says. “You needed focus. You needed purpose. But you deserved justice, Hayden. Even if it came with blood.”
“I killed them,” I mutter, like the weight of it just settled. “I killed them. Without even knowing they were linked to what happened to me.”
Cain’s voice drops to a gravel tone. “You gave them what they gave you. But cleaner. Smarter. And permanent.”
And then something happens inside me, something I didn’t expect. I laugh.
It’s not light. It’s not warm. It’s sharp, cracked at the edges, like it’s been buried for years. My hand comes to my mouth, almost in disbelief.
“Holy shit,” I whisper. “You really did it.”
“I told you,” Cain says, standing now, walking around the desk. “They all paid.”
I lean back, still stunned, still trying to absorb the fucked-up poetry of it all.
These men, the ones who watched me get torn apart had no idea their time would come. That I’d walk out, and one by one, take everything from them.
I should feel guilt.
But I don’t.
I feel right. I feel like the pain I carried in silence didn’t go unheard. I feel like someone finally chose me.
“You’re a sick bastard,” I say, grinning, wiping a hand down my face. “And I fucking love you for it.”
Cain smirks. “Took you long enough to say it.”
I shake my head, sitting in silence for a while, my heart still racing with that electric blend of vengeance and disbelief.
I sit there in silence not sure what to say to him, I have no words. Even now Cain is looking out for me, and I can’t say thank you enough to him. But I also know not to say thank you for it, because that will piss him off.
I stand up to leave but stop when Cain calls my name. “I’ll always have your back no matter what. But remember, Hayden, even soldiers need something to live for.” Not saying anything, I give him a nod and leave his office and call it a night.