Page 81 of Lesson In Forgiveness

Wrapping the Velcro cuffs around her wrists, Grit set her hands by her sides and tugged the duvet up to her chin. He frowned at the IV beside the bed, wondering if Jasper would bother to replace it again.

The woman was vehemently opposed to having anything foreign in her body—IVs, catheters… hell, she’d even pitched a fit about the painkillers controlling her discomfort. She was systematically suspicious of anything unknown, wary about offering trust and accepting it.

Seeing her like this, Grit made a choice. Once she was better and fit to travel, he was taking them back to Denver. Jasper loved his sister, but her past and current history was too widely known in the area, especially with many of the merc teams reading her file in case she slipped through security and went on a murderous rampage.

In Denver, she relaxed more. The afternoon with Evander, Elias, and Callie had been a success. He wanted to replicate that on a daily basis, and he figured a secluded wood cabin might encourage her to rouse those softer, dormant emotions he knew she kept buried.

Skimming his fingertips over the greenish-yellow bruises still marring her cheek and eye socket, he sighed heavily. Violence was a considerable part of both of their lives; for Tabitha, it was ingrained in her blood, all but written in her DNA because Dominic had been a psychotic megalomaniac who played with things he shouldn’t.

“I think it’s time we talk about what’s coming next,” Grit told her, though she couldn’t hear him. “There are going to be rules, little tiger. Abiding by your own isn’t enough anymore; this relation needs to be a partnership at the core, regardless of the rest of the dynamic.” His thumb brushed over her bottom lip. “Maybe knowing what was done to you—the paper version, at least—will help us. Perhaps it’ll be a hindrance. I don’t know. All I do know is that you need me, and fuck my life, I need you as equally as I want you. All of you, Tabitha. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the sheer force of all you are.”

There, that took some of the building pressure off his chest. It wasn’t an outright declaration of I love you, but vocalizing the burgeoning connection seemed to clarify the depth of it in his own mind.

In all likelihood, he would never be able to deprogram what the Fairfax monsters had coded into her brain. He wasn’t an idiot; he wasn’t a psychologist or a therapist, and he had no right to poke around in complex gray matter.

That meant he needed to be sure he could support Tabitha on her personal mission—to remove pedophiles from society, one by one, until the scourge was eradicated. It was a lifetime commitment, one she’d never see completed because she was only one woman against a consistently expanding horde of perverts.

So, being with her called for a hard examination of his morals and limits. As a mercenary, he was used to killing on a superior’s command and by using his own judgement in difficult situations. He tried not to spill blood unless absolutely necessary because it all came back eventually.

Karma was beautiful, but she could be cruel.

Before he read Rita’s notes, he’d probably have tried to coax Tabitha into taking a more… legal road to taking down her prey. Encourage her to find and cultivate contacts in different police departments, utilizing the law to bring down the sick and twisted seeds burrowing through the civilized world.

Now, however… Disgust and fury rotted his composure.

Rita’s detailed accounts of Tabitha’s decades-long torture really opened his eyes into how those perverted minds ticked. Not just the acts themselves, but how the pain and suffering of others gouged chasms of selfish pleasure in the perpetrators.

The Fairfax bitch hadn’t raped her project in a traditional sense. She’d left that dubious honor to her husband until he’d taken everything he wanted, then pounced on what was left of her project’s sexual innocence for the benefit of ‘science’.

Grit didn’t have any written account of Dominic’s thought processes, but then, did he really need one? The man had been a sadist, a sociopath, a narcissist. He’d raped his own flesh and blood, stolen countless childhoods, murdered untold numbers of children and teenagers as though they were faulty goods plucked off a conveyer belt.

Rita… that cunt was something else entirely.

The true monster, in one sense.

She’d been a voyeur in the early stages of her notes, aside from the scientific shit. But once Tabitha had been stripped down to nothing but a husk, programmed to fuck whenever she was commanded, Rita showed how fucked up she was at her core.

The thing with monsters was, they kept crawling from the woodwork. Tabby did the world a favor by killing the Fairfax fuckers, yet there were more like them all over the globe. Hiding in plain sight, camouflaged by the thin veil of politics and celebrity adoration. Surviving and thriving in small, rural areas where the locals never expected one of their own to be capable of such sins.

They perched their asses in church pews on Sundays. Ate breakfast with their spouses and children, went to work six days a week, laughed and drank beer with their friends on hot summer nights. They projected normality while the dark sickness inside them writhed in shadows, waiting for the opportunity for their kiddie porn fantasies to become real.

Grit cupped Tabitha’s lax face in his hands. “I’m standing with you, little tiger. I doubt anyone’s ever made any kind of commitment to you, so this is mine. If you want to hunt down vermin, I’m with you. I’ve got your back, I’ll be your partner in crime. I’ll wash the blood out of your hair if things go wrong.”

God, had he lost his mind?

Choosing a life of murder and mayhem, attempting to merge it in with a legitimate job and building some kind of family at the same time?

No, he thought, pressing a kiss to Tabitha’s forehead before taking his seat beside her bed. His mind was exactly where it should be. But his heart?

Oh yeah, that sucker was all Tabitha’s now.

*

Tabitha

“This is unacceptable, Rory McCabe!”

“Is it?” Laughing, the asshole ascended the steps into the Heisler private jet. He paused in the doorway. “Would you like to wave goodbye to your brother?”

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