Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“I’ll be honest, I wasn’t myself back then,” I confessed to the room, pacing now in front of the double doors that led out onto the main deck. “When I didn’t get the answers I wanted, I was just as evil as those who tortured me.”
“Just as evil?” Arden made a face. “Really?”
“I was a horror,” I assured her.
“One difference,” Jing pointed out, sipping an Old Fashioned and watching Dante cook. “You were trying to find Owen, not exacting revenge in exchange for money.”
I looked at her. “I’m not a saint, you know. You can’t rewrite my history and make me the good guy. That’s not me.”
Jing made a noise that told me she disagreed. “You’re not a saint,” she said with a smile. “No argument there. You’re more like a well-intentioned sinner.”
“Oh, I like that,” Dante said as he stirred whatever he was making. “I’m going to call myself that from now on.”
I shook my head. “The things I’ve done, Jing, if you knew…it would change your whole—”
“Have you ever killed anyone for fun?” Owen asked me.
“What? No. God no.” That was horrific just to consider.
“Are you a serial killer?”
“No. You’re missing the point. I’ve killed people because my government told me to. Do you get that?”
“Greater good,” Dante threw out. “Long-term cause and effect.”
“You’re not—”
“It was a chessboard, Jared,” Dante reminded me. “Sometimes you were a pawn doing what you’re told, sometimes a knight sent into battle, sometimes a castle protecting people, sheltering them, and now and then, you were the bishop and you moved for reasons that weren’t your own. The fact of the matter is, none of us, not you, not me, not Darius, has ever purposely killed an innocent.”
“That doesn’t mean there wasn’t ever any collateral—”
“Listen,” Dante said, smiling, flipping a dishtowel over his shoulder. “You can stand there and hate yourself for what you did, self-flagellate all day, but the fact of the matter is, if we were sent, the person we were sent for was not a saint either.”
“We were supposed to kill that Polish dissident, remember?”
“Yes, I remember. Our boss secretly changed our orders after we told him something was hinky—”
“Hinky?”
“Oh, fuck you, I’m making a point.”
“Sorry,” I said, grinning at him.
“The point was, corruption can be anywhere. Our boss’s boss was lied to. Our boss was following orders, but when we told him what we thought, he trusted us instead of his intel. He said to get the guy and his family out while we clean house.”
That was engrained in my memory. There had been a shake-up at the agency over that one, making me glad, for the billionth time, that I was Army and not CIA.
“He and his family have been in Milwaukee for the last thirty years.”
“They have,” I agreed.
“Has it ever crossed your mind that if you’re such an abomination of a human being, then, by your logic, that makes me the same?”
I could only stare at him.
Dante shrugged. “Is that what you think?”
“Of course that’s not what I think,” I almost shouted, charging across the kitchen and stepping in front of him, interrupting his cooking.
“Things are going to burn,” he grumbled.
“You’re one of the best men I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. You’re honest and noble and—”
He laughed at me. In my face. And before I could hit him, he lunged at me, grabbing me tight and hugging me hard. “It’s time to let this go,” he said gruffly, the emotion messing with him as much as it was with me. “Enough with the past. Enough, Jared. You’re a hero in some stories, a villain in others. You’ve always been so concerned with who you think you should be versus who you actually are.”
That was the gospel truth there.
“Stop, Jared.”
I waited for more.
He grinned then, with an eyebrow waggle for good measure.
I stared at him. “That’s it? Your sage advice? Just stop?”
“Listen,” he said, exhaling deeply. “You need to forgive yourself for your mistakes and failures. You’ve done your best. Always. You’re accountable for what you’ve done, good and bad, but you have to live in the present. You don’t have a choice.” He gave me a gentle pat on the cheek. “Regret is useless.”
“You’re saying you have no regrets?”
He thought a moment. “No. I don’t have time. I have to be in the present. We’re old sinners, you and I, but like Jing said, the intentions were good.”
“You know what they say about intentions,” I reminded him.
He shrugged. “If hell it is and that’s how I’m judged, I’ll have really good company.”
I nodded, felt the tears welling.
“Jing, come stir this, please,” he said, and she moved fast as he took me into his arms a second time. “Be done carrying the dead,” he whispered in my ear. “It’s time.”
It had been time decades ago, but I was built loyal, and so the love and penance had to balance.