Chapter 24 #2
Jason studies our faces, probably calculating his options. But there aren't many options when you're tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse with four armed men who want you dead.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything. His plans, his resources, his next targets."
"He's coming for her. For Alastríona."
"When?"
"Soon. He's going to take her, use her to break Henry's spirit before he kills everyone."
"How's he planning to get to her?"
"He hasn't figured that out yet. He's waiting for you to break the security around her."
"That's it?" I ask. That's nothing. That information is useless to us. We're not letting up the fucking security.
"That's all I know. Trace was careful, paranoid. He didn't trust anyone completely."
"Including you."
"Including me. But he trusted me enough to tell me about his plans for Alastríona."
Every muscle in my body goes tense. "What plans?"
"He's going to torture her, rape her, all while Henry watches. Then he's going to kill her."
That's never going to happen. He won’t touch her.
"Where's he planning to take her?"
"I don't know. He never told me that part."
Maverick's knife finds Jason's hand, sliding between his fingers until it reaches the webbing between index and middle finger. Jason screams as the blade bites deep, cutting through skin and muscle.
"Try again."
"I swear, I don't know! He said something about a house in the countryside. But no specifics, no locations."
"What else? What other details did he share?"
Blood drips from Jason's hand onto the concrete floor, each drop echoing in the empty warehouse.
"He... he knows about your relationship with her. With Alastríona. He knows how much you love her, that you'd do anything to protect her."
"How does he know that?"
"Because I told him. Because watching you with her, seeing how you look at her... it's obvious."
The admission hits like a punch to the gut. Jason's been watching us, reporting on our personal lives, cataloging our emotional vulnerabilities for Trace to exploit.
"You've been spying on us. On me."
"I've been doing my job."
"Your job was with us. With family."
"My family is dead. Murdered because of choices you made."
I study his face, looking for any trace of the man I once called brother. But all I see is hatred, grief twisted into something ugly and destructive.
"You know what the fucked up thing is?" I say finally.
"What?"
"If you'd told me about you and Ava, I'd have helped you get out of the country together."
Jason looks genuinely surprised. "What?"
"I didn't love her. Not really. She was someone who was a friend, someone I cared about, someone I considered like family. She was available. But you? You were my friend. My brother. If you'd asked for help..."
"I couldn't risk it. I couldn't trust that you'd choose friendship over whatever you felt for her."
"So instead you chose betrayal over trust."
"I chose survival over sentiment."
"And look how that worked out for you."
Jason's quiet for a long moment, processing what I've told him. When he speaks, his voice is smaller, uncertain.
"You really would have helped?"
"Yeah. I would have."
"Even knowing it meant losing her?"
"Even knowing that. Because that's what family does. We help each other, even when it costs us something we want."
Tears mix with the blood on Jason's face. "Christ, Freddie. What have I done?"
"You've gotten good men killed. You've betrayed everything we stand for. You've chosen money over family."
"I chose love over loyalty."
"No," Maverick says, moving closer with the knife.
"You chose revenge over reason. Ava's dead because her husband was a psychopath, not because we killed his father. Trace would have snapped eventually, with or without our help. Hell, the fucker faked his own death. Even his father thought he was dead. He’s a fucking psychopath. "
"You don't know that."
"I know the man's been hospitalized three times for psychiatric episodes. I know he's completely disconnected from reality. And I know you've been enabling his delusions instead of seeing them for what they are."
Jason's face crumbles. "She was pregnant with my child."
"And Trace killed them both. Not us. Him."
"But if we hadn't—"
"If, if, if. You can play that game forever. The fact is, Trace Harrington is a madman who murdered his pregnant wife. And you've been helping him plan the deaths of innocent people."
"They're not innocent."
"Henry's granddaughter is. She never did anything to you, she never hurt anyone you cared about. But you were willing to hand her over to be tortured and killed."
"I was following orders."
"Bullshit. You were choosing revenge over everything that ever mattered to you."
"Jer's dead because you gave Trace real-time intelligence about our meeting location," Maverick hisses.
Each accusation hits Jason like a physical blow. He's crying now, ugly sobs that echo off the warehouse walls.
"I never meant for Jer to die."
"But he did. Because of choices you made."
"I was trying to make them pay for what they did to Ava."
"What we did was nothing. What Trace did was murder his pregnant wife because he's a paranoid psychopath who can't tell reality from delusion."
The fight goes out of Jason then. His shoulders slump, and for the first time since we found him, he looks like what he is—a broken man who made the wrong choices for understandable reasons.
"So what happens now?"
"Now you die."
"I figured."
I draw my gun and check the chamber. One bullet, clean and quick. It’s more mercy than he deserves, but I'm not a monster. And despite everything, despite the betrayal and the deaths and the months of lies, Jason was my friend once. That has to count for something.
"Any last words?"
"Tell Alastríona I'm sorry. Tell her I never wanted her to get hurt."
"She'll never hear your name again."
I pull the trigger. The shot echoes through the warehouse, and Jason slumps forward, dead before he hits the floor.
"Feel better?" Maverick asks.
"No. But it's done."
Henry emerges from the shadows, studying Jason's body with cold eyes. "Pity. He was a good man once."
"Good men don't betray their families."
"No. They don't."
We leave Jason where he fell. Someone else will clean up the mess, dispose of the body, erase the evidence. That's how our world works; violence followed by cleanup, death followed by forgetting.
But I won't forget. I will always remember that someone I trusted, someone I called brother, was willing to sacrifice everyone I care about for revenge against imagined wrongs.
Time to prepare. Time to gather our forces and protect what matters most.
Time to end this war permanently.
But first, I need to get back to Tríona. I need to hold her, reassure myself that she's safe, that Jason's betrayal hasn't already cost me the most important thing in my life.
Soon, Trace will make his move.
Tonight, I make sure I'm ready for him.