Page 22 of Torment

6

Mason

Jolie stared at me blankly.“My father is dead. All those men are dead.”

Her voice was almost robotic as she spoke. I scoffed. I should’ve known she’d try to lie to protect them.

She knew she was already screwed, because I’d found her, so she had no issue admitting what she did to me and my family (probably in the hope that I would be lenient because of her honesty). But as long as all the Path of the Covenant men were still safely hidden away somewhere, she had no intention of giving them up.

Earlier, when I told her I knew what she’d done to me all those years ago, I actually half-expected her to lie and say she had nothing to do with my downfall. In fact, the tiniest fragment of my mind had even extolled her innocence, telling me from somewhere in the deepest corners that she couldn’t have betrayed me in such a way, even though the rest of me knew she did.

Now I knew for sure that I was right. She admitted it. It was a mistake, she said.

No fucking shit. A ‘mistake’ which led to my family being burned alive on crosses. A mistake which led to my car being blown apart while I was in it.

I conjured up something vile and despicable from the dark nether regions of my soul and filled my gaze with it. “Stop fucking lying.”

Jolie shrank back. “Mason…”

“Don’t you dare use my name,” I growled. “Do it again and I’ll make sure you regret it.”

She began to cry again, tears slipping down her cheeks and trickling onto her throat. Silent tears of defeat. She probably hoped I would feel sorry for her and comfort her, like I would’ve done all those years ago when I first met her, but I wasn’t that man anymore. My own parents wouldn’t even recognize what I’d become. I wasn’t their laidback, affable playboy son anymore. I was a thing, twisted and disturbed. A danger to others.

“What am I supposed to call you?” Jolie asked in a choked whisper. She was still looking right at me.

I hated to admit it, but she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I’d prepared myself by watching her for months, trying to inoculate myself against her presence, but all I had to do was look into the green depths of her eyes and listen to her sweet voice saying my name, and my long-built walls immediately threatened to crumble.

I jerked my gaze away from her face and focused it on her messy hair instead. I couldn’t let her get to me. Not when she’d done such terrible, unforgivable things. Things which created the very monster that stood before her now, covered from head to toe in scars.

Speaking of the scars, she barely even reacted to them when I finally revealed myself to her. That was quite telling. She clearly knew what was done to me (she probably sat right there in the room basking in the glow of her betrayal as her father and his minions discussed the car bombing plan all those years ago) because she didn’t react with obvious fear or horror when she saw my altered appearance.

She did look surprised, though. It flickered in her eyes like a flame, the naked shock of seeing me for the first time in eight years. She was clearly trying to mask it, but she couldn’t hide anything from me. She’d probably spent the last several years assuming the critical injuries from the bomb wound up killing me, even though it wasn’t immediate, and now she was shocked that I’d actually survived it after all.

“You can call me ‘sir’,” I said, my voice thick with disdain. “Seeing as that was the first thing you addressed me by back at New Eden. Remember that?”

She nodded weakly. “Yes… sir.”

I stepped forward, lips twisting in a cruel smile as she cowered away from me. “You didn’t think I was still alive, did you?”

She shook her head slightly. “No, I always knew.”

Hot anger flared deep inside me. “Well, good for you,” I snarled. “That actually makes this even worse. You knew I was alive this whole time and yet you didn’t make a single attempt at an apology. You didn’t make a single attempt to find me.”

“I did try,” she said, lowering her voice to a guilty whisper. “But after that… I never knew what to say. I knew you wouldn’t want to see me.”

Her face was displaying regret and despair, but I knew it was just a part of her game. She didn’t care about me. She sold me out to her father, and then she left me behind and forgot about me. Aside from those messages she left with an agent while I was still in a coma (which was probably her wanting to make sure I was going to die from my injuries) there hadn’t been a single phone call. Not a single letter. Nothing that would even hint at the slightest shred of remorse over her actions.

“If you even remotely gave a fuck about me or the things you did, you would’ve given up your father and all his cronies to the FBI years ago,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. They tried to escape, and they died. That’s the truth,” she murmured.

I cocked my head to the side. “I know that’s your version of the truth. You got to play the pretty little heroine of New Eden and have your face plastered all over the internet, while in the meantime, the men escaped.”

She shook her head. “They all died in a plane crash.”

I snorted. “I can’t believe you actually expect me to believe that. I can’t believe the fucking FBI even believes that.”

“They found the bodies floating—”

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