It’s a lot to take in. It’s too much, and I feel like I’m reeling. Everything I knew to be true just a few moments ago has been turned on its head, and I feel…
I don’t know.
Gutted isn’t the right word, because knowing my dad is alive is so incredible that it has my heart leaping, but the marathon to get here has been so fucking exhausting.
My heart feels like a wrung out rag.
Dazed and exhausted and numb.
I sigh and press the heels of my hands against my eyes for a second, forgetting the fact that I’m naked from the waist up because I just need a minute to get my shit together.
When I look back up, Sloan’s face has gone softer, and he’s gazing right back at me.
“I didn’t know you were there,” he murmurs. “I didn’t know you saw that. We had to put on a show for the Jackals, to make it seem real. No one else could know but me and my father so that it wouldn’t get out. Especially with how shit has been lately. We were keeping it under wraps until things calmed down a little. That’s the truth, I swear.”
With that pronouncement, he shifts his weight and crawls off me, unpinning me. I scramble away from him, even though he’s no longer pointing the gun at my head.
I stare at him from across the bed, and I know I have to look vulnerable as hell. I want to believe him so badly, to think my dad is out there somewhere, probably stressed out and worried as fuck, but alive.
My dad is alive.
He’s alive.
I feel like breaking down into tears, but I hold myself back, breathing through it. It’s been an awful fucking few weeks, and I want to demand that Sloan take me to him or let me talk to him or something. I need to know he’s okay, and for him to know I’m all right and that we can get our lives back soon.
Everything will be okay now.
Once things calm down with the Jackals, we can go back to the way things were and hopefully stay out of gang shit for the foreseeable future. It’s probably wishful thinking, especially considering I have an uncle out there who wants him dead, apparently, but it’s nice to cling to that happy version of the future for a moment. It’s nice to have a little ray of hope and light in what has been a very dark and painful stretch of time.
I’ve spent so long being motivated by revenge and the need to get back at Sloan for what he did that having something else to focus on feels like letting go of a heavy weight I’ve been carrying around.
But then the full breadth of my situation sinks in, and my heart sinks like a stone as a single word echoes in my head.
Revenge.
I wanted revenge. Vengeance for my dead father. And I tried hard as hell to get it. Things have been completely turned upside down in the last twenty minutes or so, but the fact of what I did hasn’t changed.
Only the consequences of it are different now.
“Oh fuck.” My heart lurches in my chest, and I scramble up to grab my phone from the floor where it fell. I don’t know what I’m hoping to see when I unlock the screen, but of course the picture with the accountant’s contact information has already gone through. There’s no message back from Paul, but it’s clear he’s seen it and will probably act on it.
Shit.
I close my eyes in horror, a sour taste climbing up the back of my throat.
“What is it?” Sloan asks, and I have to look at him.
He can plainly see the guilt written all over my face, I’m sure, and his own expression goes dark once more, the tension setting back in.
“Mercy.” His voice is low and hard. “What the fuck did you do?”
22
Sloan glares at me, and I fight the urge to shrink under his heavy stare.
My mind is a whirl of information, still trying to catch up and process everything that’s happened. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but the elation from knowing my dad isn’t dead is also still there. It’s a confusing as fuck feeling, and my heart is slamming so hard against my ribs that it’s a wonder Sloan can’t hear it.
His eyes are narrowed, and he advances on me, backing me up against the wall, looming with all his height. My mouth goes dry, but not for the usual reason it does when Sloan is this close. I can admit I’m afraid of what I’ve set into motion here.