My voice sounded too light, too careful. I didn't know how else to respond. The Donati family had connections, obviously, but enough to extract someone from a military prison?
He gave a low, humorless laugh that vibrated through his chest.
"Mafia families like to recruit from the inside. Guys already doing time. But the Donatis... they look for men with a code. Not cold-blooded killers. Just ones who've already lost everything, but for the right reasons."
His hand tightened over mine.
"I owe them everything. If it weren't for them… well, I had nothing left. Nothing to come back to, I'd lost my team, my new family. I was ready to join them."
The weight of those words settled over us. I understood now. His unwavering loyalty, his willingness to work for them. It wasn't just a job. It was a life debt.
They'd pulled him from a dark place, one he'd not been able to get himself out of.
I swallowed hard, my throat tight. "I'm sorry you lost your team. I'm sorry for all of it, Jackson."
It felt inadequate. A pebble thrown into an ocean of grief. But it was the only truth I had to offer.
He reached up, fingers brushing the dog tags at his neck. He turned one over, showing me it.
A list of names were engraved there, any the lump in my throat made me choke.
"They were my family."
The way he said it, so broken and defeated, made my chest ache. I thought about my own mother, sick and alone in her hospital bed. About the half-siblings I'd never known. About the father who'd abandoned us both. Family meant something different to Jackson. Something earned in blood and sacrifice.
Now I understood why he never took them off.
I didn't say anything else. What could I possibly add that wouldn't cheapen what he'd shared? Instead, I curled closer, my hand resting over his heart, where the metal tags lay cold against his skin. A memorial he carried everywhere.
My mind whirled with questions. How had the Donatis found him? How had they learned of him in particular? What exactly had they asked in return for his freedom? To just obey, or to kill?
But those were questions for another time. Right now, all that mattered was that he'd trusted me with this piece of himself—this raw, wounded part he kept hidden from the world.
"I think… I think I might sleep, Elena. If you can take next watch."
"Of course. I'm right here."
Eventually, the silence softened. Not gone. Just... less sharp. The tension in his body gradually eased, his breathing deepening.
Now I finally knew what had hardened this man.
This man I was only falling deeper for.
19
JACKSON
The morning air was too clean, too fresh.
After everything, it felt wrong, like the world had reset without asking if I was ready. Washed away all the horrors of yesterday. Alfeo's body was gone. Dragged off into the trees like he'd never existed.
Good. That was what I'd hoped for.
I watched Ivy shudder beside me, wrapping her arms around herself despite the warmth of the morning sun. Her normally confident posture had crumpled, shoulders hunched forward as if she could make herself smaller.
"Thank God that bastard's gone," she muttered, glancing at the spot where he'd fallen. "Even the blood washed away in the storm. It's like it never happened."
We walked in silence, the three of us strung out like survivors of some apocalypse. No idea where we were, no map. Just the crunch of gravel under Ivy's boots and the occasional wince when pain shot through my leg. Again and again. I kept my eyes on the horizon, scanning for a house, a road, anything that might lead us back to civilization.
