Page 114 of Tricked By Jack

Luckily, there’s no infection. Just new skin forming, scars that will fade but never disappear completely.

“How does it look?” she asks, voice muffled against the pillow.

“Better.” I apply the antibiotic ointment with careful fingers, tracing each mark with a reverence that belies the rage still simmering beneath my skin. “You’re healing well.”

She hums, the sound vibrating under my palm. “And my shoulder?”

“That comes last.” I finish with her back, securing fresh gauze over the wounds, then help her onto her other side to access the bullet wound. “It looks good.”

“It’s itchy and sore,” she admits, wincing as I clean around the edges. “But not as bad as yesterday.”

I work in silence, methodical in my care, my touch clinical even as my gaze devours every inch of her. When I finish, I help her into a fresh t-shirt, easing it over her injuries with practiced gentleness.

“Thank you,” she says, settling back against the pillows. There’s something in her tone—a weight, a decision reached—that makes me pause.

“For what?”

“For finding me.” Her fingers twist in the sheets, knuckles whitening. “For not letting her win.”

I sit beside her, taking her hand in mine. “I will always find you,” I promise, the words a vow carved in bone. “Always.”

She nods, swallowing hard. The room feels suddenly charged, like the air before a storm breaks. “I’m not sure I deserve it,” she says, looking away.

“Why the hell not?”

“I…” Pausing, she licks her dry lips and runs a hand through her hair, twirling a strand around her finger. “I’m not completely innocent,” she says, voice dropping to barely above a whisper.

Unless this is some poorly timed joke about not being a virgin, I have no fucking clue what she’s getting at. “Spit it out,” I order, taking her hand and squeezing it. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

“It’s about my dad.”

I go still, recognizing the importance of this moment, this offering. “I’m listening.”

“I killed him.” The words fall like stones between us, heavy with truth long carried. “Some think it was Valentine, but it wasn’t. It was me. I did it, and he helped me cover it up.”

While I wait for her to continue, I trace circles on her wrist, feeling the rapid flutter of her pulse.

“Valentine was going to kill him, and he nearly did. He attacked us in an alley. But he… well, he didn’t finish the job.”

“But you did,” I state.

She nods. “Yeah, I killed my dad. Instead of getting him help, I sliced his throat and let him bleed out in an alley. If I’d had more time or been better prepared, I would have dragged his ass into a coffin like he used to do to me.”

I don’t interrupt as she tells me about the years of abuse she suffered at her dad’s hand. When she explains the coffin of shame, I nearly lose my fucking shit. Especially when she describes in gruesome detail how he shoved her in there and locked the fucking lid.

“When that happened, I had to convince him to let me out.” She lets out a sad laugh. “Even when I was eight, he made me convince him. It was harder when I was younger and I remember this one time where it took me two days.”

My vision goes red, and my nostrils flare with barely constrained all-consuming rage. “Fuck!” I roar.

She exhales shakily, and just when I think she’s going to clam up, she carries on. My beautiful, strong wife straightens and tells me how he used her entire upbringing as teachable moments and published her failures as medical papers.

“That’s fucked up,” I growl, squeezing her hand harder. “Fuck, I wish you hadn’t killed him.”

“You do?” Her voice is small.

I nod. “Yeah. But only because I’d love to make him fucking cry for mercy. If I could, I’d bring him back to life just so we could lock him in his own coffin of shame.”

That makes her laugh, a sound that’s too rare these days. “That would be something,” she giggles. She places her hand against my cheek, cupping it. “I got the last word when I told him just how much I hated him while he bleed out in a dirty alley—”