Page 73 of Assassin

Almost Noon

Thankfully, it had been a very quiet morning after they had breakfast, and no one was angsty. Normally, with a patient like Gamble, there tended to be a power struggle between him and the patient, but that wasn’t the case.

Not at all.

Gamble wasn’t fighting.

In fact, he was letting Poe do what he needed to do, as he simply existed.

That was the worrisome part.

The man had very little left in him, and Elizabeth had gotten Gamble to him just in time. A little later, and there would be no way of saving him.

It would be racing against an unforgiving clock.

After eating all of his breakfast, Gamble needed to sleep a bit, to recharge.

So, he put him in the guest room that opened up into the master suite. It was so he could check on him, or get to him if there was an issue during the night.

From his file, and the notes that were made in it, he knew the man had night terrors.

Not that there was anything odd about that, considering the circumstances.

When he put him in the bed, Gamble seemed to melt into the bedding and immediately fall asleep—almost like he was grateful to run and hide.

For now, Poe would let him. It was only day one, and there were fifty-nine more to go before he had to keep his promise of giving Gamble permission to go.

Hopefully, they would beat this together.

Glancing at his watch, it was time for the man to get up, and start the kind of therapy he needed.

While sleeping was so much easier, he simply couldn’t hide forever. That wasn’t going to solve his problems.

Heading to his room, he knocked on the door, not expecting the man to be awake. When he opened, because he didn’t answer, he found Gamble sitting in a chair with a lighter in his hand.

Oh, boy.

“Did you rest well?” he asked, moving closer only to see that the man had been burning his skin.

A tattoo.

It smelled like burnt flesh, and had to be incredibly painful.

This was worse than he believed. The man was harming himself.

“What are you doing?” he asked, horrified, as he took the lighter from his hand. “Gamble, Mate, what are you doing?”

Gamble was honest.

“I can’t look at her anymore,” he said, looking up, tears in his eyes.

Poe took his arm, and held it gently in his fingers. There, he checked out what was offending him so damn much that he’d withstand this kind of pain.

On his forearm was a tattoo of who Poe suspected to be his deceased wife.

“I need to get it off of me. I can’t look at her and see her staring back and mocking me. She won. God. She won. I’m too weak.”

Poe inspected the damage he did to his flesh. Someone was definitely further gone than he’d expected.

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