Page 22 of Fallen Empire

It wasn’t just about Savannah. It wasn’t even about me.

It was about this pull in my chest every time he looked at me like I wasn’t broken.

And I didn’t want to be this version of me anymore.

Cold, unreachable, buried behind armor made of old pain.

I leaned forward, resting my forehead against the tile.

It didn’t fix anything.

But it was a start.

Chapter 6

Jaxson

The hospital room was quiet except for the steady rhythm of the machines tracking her heartbeat. The machines that I was so exhausted of hearing and would have thrown them out the damn window already, if they weren’t the only thing keeping her here with me.

I still hadn’t moved from the leather chair beside her bed. The same one I’d been in since they admitted her, aside from when I was forced to leave. My elbows rested on my knees, hands clasped like I was praying. But there hadn’t been any prayers.

Just silence. Guilt. Rage. The kind that lives in your throat like broken glass.

And without the liquor, it all hit harder. Sharper. More violent.

I was coming down off a four-day bender—shaking, starving, haunted—and for the first time in days, I was sober enough to feel every inch of it. The hurt. The loss. The bone-deep terror that she might never open her eyes again.

Every emotion hit harder.

I was pissed at myself. Pissed at her for taking a bullet meant for me. Devastated because she might not come back. Hopeful that she would.

Because the alternative?

I wouldn’t survive it.

Thinking about it is why I took that first sip in the first place. And the worst part? Millie let me. When she stopped bringing the alcohol, Ben stepped in. Neither of them said a word—because deep down, I think they both knew if it were them, they’d be doing the same thing.

But I didn’t just drown in the liquor.

I fought.

The second her body hit the ground, something in me snapped. And when rage is all you have left, it demands a purpose.

I’d gotten kicked out of this very hospital for being too drunk to stand. And maybe for the gaping hole in the wall behind me. They didn’t have to drag me out—I left before security could get involved. But the shame? That stayed. The look in Millie’s eyes. The way Ben wouldn’t meet my gaze.

They thought I was just spiraling. That I was falling apart.

They had no idea I was already burning it all down. The damage started with a single phone call. One of Bruce’s old holding sites. A rural one, off-grid. Nic got a ping. A van left the grounds. Another transport. Another round of bodies that wouldn’t be found.

I’d made the call. Demanded action.

They told me it was too late.

That’s when I put the hole in the wall.

Everyone thought it was a drunken reaction to something one of the nurses said.

But the truth was that I knew what that van meant. I’d seen what went on in places like that. I’d watched a man rip a child from her mother’s arms and get off from her screams. Or maybe it was from the feel of what he was doing to an innocent soul. And I’d stood there—pretending to enjoy it—because if I broke character, that little boy would’ve died right then.