Page 52 of Assassin

Tears filled his eyes.

“I don’t blame you for wanting to hurt her, Gamble. Only, she’s still winning. You’re falling apart but still stronger than she ever was, and that’s likely what she disliked about you.”

He didn’t speak, so Poe kept going.

“You were stronger than her, and she needed someone weak to accept what she was going to do. You don’t accept it. Are you mourning her or your child, Gamble?”

He blinked.

No one had ever told him he could hate Storm. No one had told him he had every right to hate her fucking guts. Everyone sympathized with the monster.

And he couldn’t do that.

“I mourn my child. I don’t give a fuck about her anymore. She was a coward. She took an innocent person’s life when she swore to protect. She was a Fed. An FBI agent, and she promised. She lied.”

Poe let him vent.

This was the healthiest thing he’d done.

“Well, then, how about this. Going forward, we mourn your child, and we place the blame where it’s due here. Not on you, but on the selfish woman who hurt you.”

He said nothing.

“What was your child’s name?” Poe asked.

Gamble began shaking. Like ‘fell in an icy river’ shaking.

“I can’t say her name. Please.”

He understood.

“We won’t then. Let’s focus on the monster, shall we? Let’s focus on Storm St. Clair, and how she destroyed your faith and trust.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust or love again. I won’t feel safe with anyone.”

Poe kept making the eggs.

“There’s no shame in that. You don’t have to trust, have faith, or fall in love with another woman again. That’s not something that has to be a hard and fast rule. Going forward, Gamble, you set the rules for your life.”

Again, no one ever said that to him either.

“I don’t want to hate her.”

Poe rationalized for him.

“But you do. You hate her more than anything, and that’s the first internal battle that you need to overcome. I’m telling you right now that it is okay to hate Storm. It’s okay to hate what she did to you. You have permission to be angry.”

Poe spread a lot of butter on the man’s toast.

Like ‘clog some arteries’ a lot.

“It doesn’t make me a bad person?” Gamble asked, trying to sort through all of this.

“Absolutely not, Mate. Let’s call a spade a spade. You’re never going to heal from losing your child. That’s going to be something you carry forever. You will always hate that this happened. My job is to show you how to point that anger at the correct person. Not you. Her.”

Gamble listened.

It was crazy but he felt a little better.

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