Page 153 of Promises in the Dark

I hesitated, knowing I was treading on dangerous ground. “Do you miss him?” I asked, cautious.

The question felt like it had weight, something heavy I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with, but I had to know.

She shifted slightly, turning her head to look at me. “Miss who?”

“Your ex.” The word tasted bitter on my tongue.

She tensed in my arms, and for a moment, I thought I’d fucked up royally. But then she let out a bitter laugh.

“Why the hell would I miss him?” she asked, a sharp edge to her voice. “He was a violent bastard.”

I frowned, not quite buying it. I did know that. But I also knew what I’d seen. “I saw how you reacted when he died. You seemed... I dunno, affected.”

She pulled away, propping herself up on an elbow to look at me. Her eyes were hard, but not angry.

“I wasn’t mourning him, I was mourning the fact that I couldn’t save a life. That’s what I do, Rogue. That’s what I’m trained for. It wasn’t about him—it was about the fact that a life was lost, even if it was a shitty one.”

I pulled her back against me, letting her warmth soak into me again. Yeah, that made sense, I guess. But something else had been eating at me, nagging ever since we dealt with that Dr. Cucklord bullshit.

“Fair enough,” I muttered. "But... can I ask you something else?"

She sighed, her breath warm against my chest. “You’re full of questions tonight, aren’t you?”

“Humor me,” I said, running my hand along her spine. “What did he say to you? You know, before he... before he died?”

She looked confused, like she didn’t know where I was going with this. But then it clicked, and her face shifted. “He told me to get the hell out of the base as fast as I could.”

My heart rate picked up. “Did he say why?”

She let out a huff of laughter, but there was no humor in it. “No, Rogue, I didn’t ask him to elaborate. I was a bit preoccupied trying to save his life at the time.”

I grunted, but my mind was racing, spinning through fragments of missions, moments that hadn’t seemed to mean shit at the time but now felt like jagged puzzle pieces trying to fit together. That mission... it had been led by Pyro. And now that I thought about it, how many times had that bastard come back from ops almost unscathed while the rest of us were battered to shit? It wasn’t just luck; no one had that kind of golden streak in this line of work. Not unless they knew something the rest of us didn’t.

The more I thought about it, the worse it looked. Pyro always managed to be just out of the worst crossfire, his timing too perfect, too calculated. And then there was that insurgent. The one we had, ready to spill his guts—Pyro had put a bullet in his head before I could squeeze a word out of him. At the time, I shrugged it off as Pyro being a trigger-happy dick, too impatient to let me do my job. But now?

Holy shit.

My chest tightened as the pieces started clicking into place, one ugly fragment at a time. We’d all been side-eyeing Viper—the guy who was conveniently absent whenever the shit hit the fan. But what if we had it all wrong? What if the real problem wasn’t the guy who wasn’t there, but the one who always was? The one who walked away without a scratch while the rest of us bled for it?

I didn’t like where my mind was dragging me, but I couldn’t fucking ignore the pattern.

I sat up, pulling Red with me. “When Viper was in med bay, did Pyro come to visit him?” I asked, low and urgent.

Her brows knitted, her lips pressing together as she thought. “Yeah, right after Viper’s condition got worse. Why?”

My gut twisted. The pieces weren’t just falling into place anymore; they were fucking slamming together like a hammer on glass.

“Any chance Pyro swapped out the meds we gave Viper? Messed with his shit?”

She bit her lip, thinking. “It’s possible... but he’d have to know exactly which substances to swap. That’s not something just anyone could do.”

I snorted, shaking my head. “Maybe he wasn’t flying solo,” I said, my voice dropping. “Maybe Dr. Cocksucker was in on it, following Cap’s orders. It’d explain a hell of a lot.”

Her face paled, and she looked at me with genuine concern. “Why would they do that? What could they possibly have to gain?”

Frustration burned in my chest, raw and heavy, and I had to grit my teeth to keep from letting it explode.

“I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s big. Big enough to kill for. Hell, they’ve already got blood on their hands. I need to figure this shit out before we’re all six feet under.”

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