Page 50 of Fractured Loyalties
His mouth twitches at that. Not a smile. Something more bitter.
“No. I expected you to be asleep.”
“You don’t get to disappear into your demons and come back expecting me to still be soft.”
“I don’t want soft.”
“Then whatdoyou want?”
That stops him.
His breath is slow. Purposeful.
He turns to me fully now, his voice a whisper dragged through gravel. “I want to be the man who waits in the hallway just to hear you breathe. The man who kills for you and never asks forgiveness. The man who doesn’t touch you until you ask, but thinks about it every second you’re near.”
I swallow.
His hand moves—not to me, but to his own chest.
“But I can’t want those things without remembering what else I’m capable of. Tonight was about remembering.”
I whisper, “Did you hurt someone?”
“No.” A beat. “But I wanted to. That’s worse.”
“Not to me.”
His head jerks slightly. “Why not?”
“Because it means youstill want control.”
And I can live with darkness. I just can’t live with chaos, but I don't say that part out loud.
He nods once. Then slowly holds out a hand.
I stare at it—the long fingers, the faint bruises across the knuckles. This is the hand that’s taken lives, shielded mine, and touched me only when hidden by silence or darkness.
I place mine in his.
He exhales, ragged.
We go inside together.
The door clicks shut behind us, muffling the ocean and leaving only the sound of our steps on the hardwood. I don't realize how tightly I’m gripping his hand until we’re in the living room and he stops, and I almost keep walking.
He doesn’t speak right away, just looks at me. Then, in a voice quieter than I expect, he says, “There’s something I want you to see.”
I nod, unsure what to expect. He leads me past the polished concrete corridor, down into the side room I once mistook for a storage space. It’s dimly lit now, not sterile—lamplight spills across a desk with two chairs, a large monitor, and a small metal box that hums softly.
He gestures for me to sit. I don’t.
Instead, I fold my arms. “What is this?”
Elias opens the drawer, takes out a sleek black flash drive, and inserts it into the monitor. With a few quiet keystrokes, the screen lights up. Folder after folder appears. Timestamps. Dates. My name in neat text.
I feel my body go still. Not in fear. In something colder. “You’ve had this the whole time?”
He doesn’t flinch. “Yes.”
