Page 70 of Hide From Me

“He needs to understand. She doesn’t belong in this world, and this” he gestures to the monitor “is the consequence of dragging her into it.”

He turns to me fully now, expression unreadable except for the flicker in his eyes. It’s the grief I always forget he carries. For Dad. For Mom.

Now for me.

“I should have taught you better. This is my fault,” he murmurs. “But now you’ll finish what you started. Clean up your mess. You wanted him gone?”

He gestures toward the monitor with a nod.

“Go,” he says, taking a breath that sounds physically painful. “Dale’s in the cell block. You put him there. Now clean it up.”

He turns away, hands on his hips. Cordelia’s gaze flicks between us, her face pale.

“Moe, you're going through something. We can get you help—” she tries to speak, but Caspian cuts her off without looking back.

“He’s going to be a demon that haunts you.”

“No,” I say quietly. “I’m going to feed him to the sharks and move on.”

His hands drop to the desk and his head drops between his shoulders, the pain in his stance mirroring my own. He’s all I’ve known since our parents died… sincehisparents died. Now it feels as if we hardly know each other at all, and it’s my fault.

Cordelia steps behind him, hesitantly placing a hand on his back as she glances at me. I can’t meet her gaze, so I turn away, determined to finish what I started, even though I’m almost certain this whole ordeal will be the thing that finishesme.

The hallway is silent.

The deeper I go, the colder it gets—concrete walls narrowing, light flickering. Every step echoes like a countdown. Dale is being held in one of the side cells near the interrogation room. Temporary holding. That was the deal; the cover. Now, I’m rewriting the ending.

I punch in the override code, and the lock clicks, letting the door hiss open.

Dale looks up from the bench where he’s slouched, his eye swollen, lip split from whatever Caspian and Sam’s warm welcome was. His wrists are chainedto the wall, yet he still has the nerve to smile as though this is just another bar game.

“I figured it was you coming back for your scraps,” he mutters.

The light flickers behind me as I step in, reminiscent of the way it did in the warehouse where I first learned what violence could do when it’s personal.

“Do you remember the sound she made when you touched her? Because I do,” I breathe, crouching in front of him. “I hear it when I try to sleep.”

“Is that what this is over? That girl?” He laughs, spitting blood, leaning forward to get nose to nose with me, as if he’s mocking me even though he’s the one who’s locked up, busted and bruised.

“She really screamed that night—”

He doesn’t even have time to finish the thought. I swing hard, the first punch splitting his brow open. The next blow cracks a tooth free. Then I hit him again. And again. Until the chains rattle from the force of his body slamming into them. Until blood starts to pool around the edges of his boots.

Until he finally goes silent.

I grab him by the shirt collar, yanking his head up so I can see his face, swollen and nearly unrecognizable now.

“She doesn’t scream anymore,” I whisper. “Not unless I ask her to.”

My blade slides free from my waistband with a whisper, and slices cleanly across his neck without hesitation.

He twitches once. Twice. Then goes still.

I drop the blade beside his body and stand over him, chest heaving, blood soaking the front of my shirt, darting my tongue to wet my lip. It tastes like copper, vengeance, and rot.

I turn back toward the exit, but I don’t feel lighter. If anything, I feel heavier because even though Dale’s gone, his ghost still lingers and now I have to carry that weight… alone.

Because the moment I chose her, I lost all of them.