The Tower by L. A. McGinnis

Author:L. A. McGinnis [McGinnis, L. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fools Journey Press
Published: 2020-04-29T22:00:00+00:00

32

He let her leave. Gods help him, he let Gabbie walk out of the room and didn’t do a godsdamned thing to stop her. Didn’t say a word. Just let her go. Balder wondered what in the hell he was doing. He was pissed off, but it wasn’t even that. He was…hurt, damn it. She’d lied to him and then covered up those lies under a bunch of lame-ass excuses. No, he thought, only when she’d been caught, did she confess. Only when her back was against the wall, did she break down and give him just a little… just a fucking hint of who she really was.

Fuming, he went back over that lame-ass excuse of hers.

“From the time I was born I was taught to conceal who I was. I thought keeping my past a secret kept me safe. Maybe it did. Over the years, I’ve become used to being whoever I needed to be to keep myself alive.”

What a crock.

Still, a part of him squirmed. It felt cruel to dismiss her so quickly, even though her lies pissed him off to no end. Even though he understood, to a certain extent, the why’s of it. Had she really had to live that way? Lied to survive?

He puzzled over that part of it.

An assassin, trained since birth to kill. He hated her parents for that, hated them with every fiber of his being. And that part—that part he sympathized with. But then there was the other side of it.

Paid to kill. This went against every code he had.

Sure, he’d killed. Lots.

For the right reasons, on battlefields, in combat, honorably and for the right reasons. Never for money. Never for hire.

Never as a child.

Part of him squirmed, his view adjusting to accommodate this new truth.

A child. A child. Trained to kill. To lie.

I had to keep myself alive.

Surviving was all they did these days. At least, it was what they’d done since he’d picked her up that night in Chicago, practically dragged her into the Tower. Before blowing it all to bits after facing a solid army of Grim. No, not much room for trust there. Neither had he taken the time to fully explain their world to her, only expecting her to fit in, to adjust. Monsters. Gods. War. Yes, he could kind of see the problem now.

He struggled to sit up, the stitches pulling in his abdomen, his skin groaning under the pressure, pain searing where his wounds were still trying to knit together.

When he heard the sound of an engine start, he made it to the window just in time to see the small pickup truck scream out of the drive and disappear into the white of the oncoming storm.

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