Page 122 of Promises in the Dark

“Let me go!” she fought me, kicking and screaming.

But I didn’t let go.

I couldn’t.

“He’s gone!” I shouted back, trying to get through her hysteria. “Look around you! People are dying. They need you. Right fucking now!”

She kept struggling, tears streaming down her face, but the fight was draining out of her.

“No, I can save him!” she wailed, her voice breaking.

I shook her a little, just to get her to focus. “Red, he’s fucking gone! We need you here. These people need you now. He’s not coming back.”

She sagged against me, her sobs shaking both of us as I held her close.

“I’m here, okay?” I said, my voice softer now, more soothing. “I’ve got you.”

Her strength drained out, her screams turned to broken whimpers. She buried her face against my chest, the fight completely gone.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, feeling like a useless piece of shit while she crumbled in my arms.

I couldn’t understand how some asshole who’d wrecked her life still have this much of a hold on her. She should’ve been relieved, liberated, but instead, she was breaking apart, and I couldn’t fucking fix it.

I didn’t let go until I was sure she wouldn’t collapse, then I steered her gently towards another wounded soldier.

“Come on,” I said, hard but not cruel. “We’ve got work to do. Mourn later. Right now, we save who we can.”

She nodded weakly, wiping her tears with the back of her hand, and moved to help another soldier.

I stole another glance at the bastard lying lifeless on the floor. Even after all the shit he’d put her through, she was grieving like her heart had been fucking ripped out.

How could she be so blind?

I guess some people never learn. And as much as it killed me to see her like that, I knew there was nothing I could do to save her from herself.

Chapter 33

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captain’s voice droned on, the usual bullshit dirge about how fucked up everything was.

“The last mission was a disaster,” he said, as if we didn’t already fucking know that. “We lost too many lives, both military and civilian casualties were high.”

No shit, Sherlock.

My men were there. They saw the bodies, felt the heat of the explosions, and heard the fucking screams. I could barely hear his words over the pounding in my skull.

I wanted to kill.

That insatiable blood thirst. I wanted to tear apart anyone responsible for this mess limb by limb. And the captain? That bastard was right at the top of my list.

He stood there, spewing bullshit about strategy and ‘acceptable losses’ like it wasn’t him who threw us into that death trap. Like it wasn’t him who decided we were expendable, just another set of boots to be thrown into the fire for some bullshit objective that didn’t mean a damn thing.

As he rambled on, justifying the carnage with cold, detached logic, I felt a dark fury boiling inside me. I wanted him out of the equation. Wanted to take him down for every life he gambled with, every soldier he sent to die.

That bastard didn’t deserve to stand there and talk like we were just numbers on a fucking page.

I wanted him gone. Out of the equation. Erased. Because as long as he was calling the shots, we’d keep marching into the meat grinder, one mission after another. More blood, more death, more goddamn nightmares.

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