Page 35 of The Dirty Saint

“I thought you already knew that.”

“So why did it really end?”

The soldier turns her head around hotly. “And how is that any of your business? What, you suddenly become entitled to my love life?”

I push off the wall, walking towards her. “He hurt you. Pretty badly, I’m presuming.”

She scoffs. “Like I told your boy, we grew apart. I didn’t realize that warranted a fucking kidnapping.”

“Killing someone is a crime, Ezra. You’re smart enough to know that.”

“And what proof do you have of my supposed crime?” She spits a puddle of blood from her teeth. “Last I checked, I didn’t confess to shit.”

“Yet.”

Ezra huffs. “Your men have broken my finger, busted my lip, stabbed me, raped me, and yet, you don’t have any more insight than you did before I was taken. That makes you ass at your job—the whole fucking lot of you.”

“What happened?” I press. “He cheat on you? You catch him with another girl?”

Ezra chews on one of her fingernails, tuned out. “We trusted each other.”

“Trust can be broken.”

The Lieutenant removes her finger from her mouth. “You can try all you want, but I’m done saying anything else in regards to the topic.”

I roll my eyes, letting out a breath.

“At what point do you just give up?”

She has to be exhausted, always putting up this front. Every day, the torture gets worse and worse. Very few can survive that. The constant pain and ache.

It will take its toll.

Eventually.

“The day I give up,” Ezra says, “Is the day you stick a bullet in my body and kill me.”

9

Chapter Nine

After

EZRA

“Thank you for meeting with me, Ms. Maya, on such short notice.”

I pull at each one of my fingers.

“Of course.”

I look around the colorful classroom, taking in all the books, posters, and crafts.

“Ms. Maya, as I mentioned in the email, Noah has been struggling lately.”

“Struggling?” I snap my attention back to the young redhead. “He seems fine to me. I haven’t noticed a shift in his behavior.”

Mrs. Vera clasps her hands together and places them in front of her.

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