Chapter 78
Seth
Three months pass like minutes.
The fake deaths stuck.
That’s the thing about the system. It doesn’t dig very deep when the bodies are burned, the dental records line up, and no one important keeps pushing.
If you stage it correctly, mix in DNA, and let the fire erase what is left, people accept the version of events placed in front of them.
It's easier to believe in a tragic accident than to entertain the idea of something calculated.
Brooke and I, the Stratford Slashers, finally met our end in a fiery crash on a mountain road.
We used a wrecked SUV in the mountains. One male, one female, unclaimed morgue bodies, close enough in height and build.
I set the fire myself. Brooke slid her old bracelet onto the female corpse’s wrist. I left my knife and one of my rings in the ash.
That was enough. A few weeks later the manhunt officially ended.
Kincaid and Sinclair, presumed dead. No longer active threats.
Elise and Ryan were never officially found. A few missing kid flyers went up to make it look thorough, but no one hunts very hard for two teenagers without a recognizable last name or political value. The world forgets quickly when the narrative loses traction.
Now we are ghosts living under new names.
On paper, under the names Devin and Veronica Rhodes, Brooke and I are legally married. The records say we signed the documents in a quiet county office months ago. The paperwork makes us ordinary. It makes us legitimate. It makes us harder to find.
I chose the last name.
Rhodes was Natalie’s last name. She always felt like an older sister to me, the only person I could trust as a kid. Using her last name makes it feel like she is still here in some small way. It makes it feel like I carried something of her forward instead of letting everything she was disappear.
I still intend to give Brooke the ring. I still intend to stand in front of people who know our real names and promise her something that isn’t built on forged documents and contingency plans. I still intend to give her a wedding that doesn’t require aliases.
For now, the paperwork will do.
We have a new house. Two stories tucked deep in the forest, fog rolling across the ground most mornings. We're still in Washington where the roads narrow and strangers rarely pass through.
The kids have new identities too. Travis built them from scratch. Immunization records, transcripts, a paper trail that stretches back years. He enrolled them in a private school that doesn’t ask many questions and doesn’t keep staff who enjoy digging through families’ histories.
Travis is back on his feet as well. He moves without the limp now. He spends most nights hunched over his laptop, breaking through encrypted networks and siphoning money.
The Collective database ended up being more useful than they ever intended.
Travis drained millions out of the Grant family accounts. Elliot’s money, Grant’s money, the family trusts, the shell corporations that funded their operations. He pulled it out piece by piece and routed it through offshore accounts before anyone realized what was happening.
Combined with what I took from Victor Voss’s account, we had enough to keep all of us afloat for a very long time.
Poetic, in a twisted way.
The same system they used to control people is the system that ended up paying for our freedom.
We’re comfortable now, safe and bored sometimes. But that’s what survival is. It’s not exciting. It’s not some high-adrenaline chase. It’s quiet. It’s homework and dinner before bed and grocery runs in sunglasses. Burner phones, quiet alarms and daily routines.
Brooke has been going to therapy every week. She says it helps. I believe her. She laughs more now. The nightmares still come, but the weight that used to sit on her chest all the time is finally starting to loosen.
And now I’ve started therapy.
Brooke said I should try it. She said if I don’t at least try, I’m never going to know if it could truly help with the bullshit that lives inside me.
So now here I am. Sitting in our home office, camera off, mic on. Laptop balanced on the edge of my desk. The therapist's voice playing in my ears.
The name on her screen says Dr. Morales.
“Good afternoon, Devin,” she greets. “How has this week been?”
“Quiet.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Good.”
I lean back in my chair.
“So where we left off at the end of the last session,” she begins. “You described yourself as someone who survived a lot of fucked up shit. I want to understand the parts of you that don’t feel much. The parts you have called wrong.”
I shift slightly in the chair and watch the black square where my camera would be.
“My childhood wasn’t complicated,” I shift my attention from the floor to her face on the screen. “It was violent.”
She waits.
“My father believed abuse was the same thing as discipline. If something went wrong in the house, he decided someone needed to bleed for it.”
Her pen starts moving.
“He kept everything quiet. No screaming. No neighbors calling the police. Just rules. You followed them or you didn’t.”
“And if you didn’t?”
“He liked turning things into games. He would take my brother and me down to the basement and tell us to fight. Said it would toughen us up.”
Her pen pauses.
“What happened during those fights?”
“We fought until one of us couldn’t get up anymore.”
“And then?”
“Then he chained the loser down there.”
She sits very still.
“He would leave us there for twenty four hours. Sometimes longer. Said it built character.”
The room on her screen stays quiet while she listens.
“He made us watch him do fucked up things,” my jaw tightens at the memory. “Sometimes he made us do them too.”
She looks up from her notes.
“I was raised in cruelty, it stopped shocking me,” I add. “I started seeing it as part of how the world works.”
I lean back slightly in the chair.
“And once your brain learns to see the world that way, it doesn’t turn off.”
She nods once.
“So you learned to stay alert.”
“I learned how to read a room before anything happened. The way someone walks. The tone in their voice. If you pay attention long enough, you can see violence before it starts.”
“And that helped you survive.”
“I stopped assuming people are safe,” I answer. “I assume they’re dangerous until proven otherwise.”
Her pen moves again.
“I want to ask how you experience empathy,” she replies evenly.
“I understand it,” I say. “I just don’t always feel it.”
“Give me an example.”
“If someone dies and they aren’t mine, I don’t care.”
That is the cleanest way to put it.
“And if they are your loved ones?”
My jaw tightens.
“Then it’s different.”
Different means I would burn the world down without hesitation. Different means I wouldn’t sleep until every fucker that hurt Brooke was gone.
“I don’t usually care when people die.”
“Most people don’t,” she replies. “The difference is intensity. When you do care, how far does it go?”
“It doesn’t have a limit.”
“Is that devotion or control?”
“You think those are different?”
“Yes,” she answers calmly. “Devotion protects. Control eliminates uncertainty. Which one drives you?”
Devotion and control are one in the same for me.
“Devotion.”
She lets that sit.
“Have you ever enjoyed hurting someone?” she asks.
“Yes.”
I don’t pull punches.
“For what reason?”
“Because it worked.”
“Worked how?”
“It stopped the people that hurt me or tried to. It silenced the noise in my head. It made fear disappear.”
The first time I felt it was when I bashed my father’s skull in. It made me feel untouchable for a moment. It made the chaos easier to deal with.
“So violence regulates you.”
“It used to.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t need it as much.”
That's true. It’s also not the whole truth.
“That’s not the same as not wanting it.”
“I don’t wake up looking for it. And that's new.”
“What changed?”
“Responsibility.”
“Explain.”
“I have two teenagers who depend on me. I have a wife who believes I can be more than what I was built for. I can’t afford to be reckless.”
If I lose control now, it doesn’t just cost me. It costs them.
“So you restrain yourself for them.”
“Yes.”
“Is that morality, or strategy?”
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “I don’t want them to see that part of me.”
Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Once you understand how easy it is to hurt someone, something in you shifts.
“Because you're ashamed?”
“Because I don’t want them to learn it.”
“Devin,” she murmurs, “do you believe you are fundamentally broken?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because normal people don't think the way I think.”
“Explain what you mean.”
I lean back in the chair and stare at the dark screen while the silence stretches between us.
“I don’t wonder whether someone deserves to live.
” My thumb drags over my knuckle. “I decide whether their actions justify it. I look for leverage before I look for emotion. When someone threatens the people I care about, my first thought is how easily their body would break. I don’t feel disturbed by that. I feel focused.”
“Do you experience remorse or regrets?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
“My mother.”
I look down at the desk in front of me. The framed picture of me and Samantha sits beside my laptop. I stare at it for a moment.
“I didn’t talk to her before she died.”
Dr. Morales doesn't interrupt.
“I thought she abandoned me,” I continue. “I thought she chose to leave and start a new life without me. I believed that for most of my life.”
My eyes stay on the picture.
“But that wasn’t the truth.”
The silence stretches between us.
“She tried to find me,” I sigh. “Someone lied to her and made sure she never could.”
My fingers rest lightly against the frame.
“By the time I understood what really happened, it was too late.”
Dr. Morales speaks carefully.
“And that is where the remorse comes from.”
“Yes.”
I keep looking at the picture of a woman who looks relieved just to be holding her son.