Consumed by Truths (Truth or Lies 6)

“No, I saw Liesel die. I saw Kai die. The baby—they are all gone. Don’t torture yourself thinking they could be alive. They aren’t.”

He saw them die. They are really dead.

I step away, needing a moment.

“Don’t do this to yourself. You seem in a healthier place than I am, don’t let this change anything,” Langston says.

“I’m in the healthier place? Really?”

But when I turn and look at Langston again, I know it’s the truth. At least I’ve taken a shower and changed my clothes. I’ve eaten the occasional meal. I have a reason for existing—revenge.

Langston doesn’t even seem to care about revenge. I don’t think he’s changed his clothes from that night. He’s lost weight, so I doubt he’s eaten more than the bare necessity to survive. His eyes are bloodshot, and his skin pale. Without intervention, I don’t know how much longer he would survive.

But I see in him what only a person that has experienced a great love would see. Langston is heartbroken. Not because he thought he lost me or Kai even. But because he lost Liesel. He lost the love of his life, but unlike me, he never told her he loved her. He didn’t kiss her lips. He didn’t sink into her depths. He loved without ever saying it out loud, and now, it’s too late.

I can’t imagine the pain I would feel right now if I hadn’t told Kai I loved her. If I hadn’t gotten the limited time we had together.

It still should have been me instead. I should have been the one to die. But I know when she died, Kai knew what love felt like, and that was the greatest gift I could give her.

Langston is heartbroken in a way you can never heal from. Never come to terms with. All the therapy in the world won’t fix him. He will never recover from this. He may be alive, but my friend is gone. What is left is a shell of the man he once was.

“Join me,” I hold my hand out to him.

He stares at it and then takes my hand, gripping it tightly. “Absolutely. We going to kill Felix for this?”

I nod. “Something like that.”

“You good?” I ask Langston.

He nods. He hasn’t spoken much in the three days we’ve been reunited. He’s mostly in his own head. I basically had to shovel food into his mouth and throw him into a shower to get him fed and clean.

He’s broken.

I’m broken.

And that makes us the most dangerous men alive. Because both of us will do whatever it takes to kill Felix. To kill everyone involved in Kai and Liesel’s deaths.

“Do you understand the plan?” I ask.

He nods.

We stare at Milo and Felix’s mansion in Italy. I used to think of it as only Milo’s, but I realize now Felix was playing me the whole time pretending to be any other employee at Milo’s organization, when in reality he had the same level of power as Milo.

“Good. They burned our club down. They burned our house down. Let’s burn theirs,” I say.

Langston’s body tightens, but he doesn’t react to my words.

I’m sure Felix isn’t here. There aren’t enough men patrolling trying to protect him. I don’t care that Felix isn’t here. I want him to suffer. I want him to watch his home go up in flames like I had to. And I want to torture one of his men into giving me information about where Felix is.

Even though Felix doesn’t have a lot of his men here, we are greatly outnumbered.

There are two of us.

Probably more than a dozen of them.

It’s not my style to arm explosives and blow up my enemy without giving them a chance to hit me back. But after what Felix did, I’m more than happy to repay him the favor. He isn’t the only one in this family who knows how to use explosives. And unlike him, I don’t need the fanciest equipment or other people to do my dirty work.

I glance at Langston one last time. There was a time I would trust him with my life.