“My father was the first person I killed,” comes his hoarse voice in the dark.
Despite my upset, despite my disillusionment over him and what happened between us, my heart lurches behind my ribs. I say nothing, though. Just close my eyes and lean my forehead against the cool glass, willing myself to remain unaffected.
I listen as he continues, almost absently, as if he’s merely thinking aloud. “I enlisted in the Army as soon as I graduated. I had to get away from him, even though he wasn’t around anymore. I could feel him everywhere, everywhere I looked, everything I heard. Even in me. So I went through basic training, kept my nose clean, and stayed to myself. But it was during one of the aptitude tests that they picked up on what kind of person I really was. They could spot whatever’s wrong with me. And they used it. Ruthlessly, they used it. When they showed me the X-ray reports from one of my mother’s many trips to the hospital that I knew nothing about, they explained to me the years of abuse she’d suffered. They showed me the evidence of it. And then they told me that my father was going to be released, that his case had been overturned on a technicality. They knew how I’d react. They knew all they had to do was point me in the right direction, get me inside that prison, and I’d take him out. So that’s what they did. They made sure I turned into the exact kind of machine they needed.”
I steel myself against the rush of heartbreak for the young man that Jasper was, for all that he saw and experienced, for all the hurt that marked him so indelibly. Mercilessly, I remind myself that he was going to kill me. I can’t afford to feel for him.
“Somehow my mother knew. When I went to tell her that he was gone, she cried. But not for him. She cried for me. That’s when I knew that she couldn’t survive what I had become. She couldn’t watch me walk down the only road in front of me. Or at least that’s how I saw it at the time. So when I was recruited into the Colonel’s covert ops team, he, with all his connections and questionable associations, helped me fake my death. From that day forward, Jasper Lyons ceased to exist. I officially became Jasper King. Or Jason King. Or James King. Or whoever else I needed to be. But they were all men you never wanted to meet, guys you prayed never had reason to come to your door.”
Jasper Lyons. How fun.
Lyons.
King.
Lion, king of the jungle. It’s fitting and somehow acerbic that he’d choose the name.
Both names suit him. Lyons . . . it speaks to the man he was born into, his animal ways and instincts, his tiger eyes and bloodhound nose. But King . . . King speaks to what he has become. The cream of the killer crop, the top of the assassin list, better at what he does than anyone in his field. He wears the crown.
If that’s anything to be proud of.
It’s fitting for his personal life, too. For me, he’s the king of heartache, something I can personally attest to. Even though I’m currently in a state of denial, refusing to deal with the havoc he’s wreaked on me, I can feel the devastation, the utter destruction lurking right around the edges of my consciousness, lying in wait. It’s biding its time, holding on for the moment when I lower my guard, my anger, my determination. Then I can be crushed, smashed, gutted like a bug on the windshield.
That’s my future.
So much to look forward to, I think waspishly.
“The worst part is that I never really minded my job. I knew I was taking bad people out of the equation, wiping them out of existence and saving others from their particular brand of terrorism. Whatever that was. I never questioned it. Not once. Not until you.”
Despite my resolve to remain detached, to listen with half an ear and keep my emotions out of it, I feel my chin tremble in response to his words.
Not until you.
“I don’t know if there was any point, not from the second I met you, when I could’ve hurt you. Not like that anyway. I guess I knew all along that my attraction to you would end up hurting you one way or the other. But I couldn’t resist you. Didn’t really want to. Then again, monsters are selfish. I don’t know why I’m even surprised.”
I try to ignore the way his confession eases my soul, eases some of the pain that I’m trying so hard not to feel. I open my blurry eyes and trace a finger along the shiny wood inlay of the passenger-side door. I can’t look at Jasper. I can’t let myself see what expression he’s wearing, see his eyes.
“And my father? You think killing him wouldn’t have hurt me more than you taking my life?”
“Muse, you have to understand that I’ve never, never hesitated before. All the things you made me feel are new to me. I can’t say for sure what I would’ve done, but I can tell you right now that even if he hadn’t come through with the information I needed, I wouldn’t have taken him from you. If he’d turned out to be a traitor, I don’t know what I’d have done. I’d have hated whatever it was because he was my commander. Men like us, we live by a code. And if he’d violated that code, he’d have deserved death. But even so, I couldn’t have killed him. I couldn’t have done that to you.”