A Fatal Accomplice

4.

The door swung shut behind me, as I left Jaydon's room, but my thoughts remained trapped inside with the echoes of our conversation. Lupe's image lingered, vivid and clear, until a jarring collision snapped me back to the present.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't see you....." The familiar voice said.  Time seemed to freeze as our eyes met, the intervening years melting away like morning mist. A surge of warmth flooded me, a testament to the enduring bond we shared. 

"Lupe?...." 

His face was almost unchanged from the last day I saw him, as if time had paused. The same familiar features stared back at me—every line, every detail just as I remembered. It was as though no days had passed, yet the moment felt surreal, caught between memory and reality.

The moment our eyes met, my heart skipped a beat, and the air seemed to thicken around me. It felt as though the ground had been pulled from under my feet. Grief, which had been lurking beneath the surface, suddenly surged, but something else followed—confusion, doubt. My mind raced with a whirlwind of questions.

How was this possible? How could he still be alive? Was everything I believed a lie? My thoughts spiraled. Had he somehow faked his death? How had he pulled off something so elaborate, so cruel? And more importantly, why? What had driven him to disappear, to let everyone think he was gone? I searched his  face for answers, desperate for clues, but all I found was silence.

My chest tightened as I grappled with the truth I didn't want to confront. If he was alive, if he had truly deceived everyone, then what did that make of everything I thought I knew? The world I thought was solid suddenly felt fragile, built on foundations that were crumbling beneath me.

"Hey," he said softly, his voice barely more than a whisper, as if he was afraid of being heard.

I could feel my earlier happiness drain away in an instant, replaced by a hot wave of anger that surged through my veins. My chest tightened, and before I could even think, words began pouring out of me—sharp, biting, and laced with bitterness.

"You selfish bastard!" I spat, my voice trembling with emotion. "How could you? How could you do that to everyone? To me?"

Each word felt like a knife, cutting deeper into the space between us. His face fell, but I couldn't stop myself. I was too far gone, consumed by the betrayal, by the hurt that I hadn't even known was festering until that very moment. Every ounce of trust I had in him shattered, and the pieces felt jagged, sharp enough to hurt if I held onto them any longer.

I took a shaky breath, but the fury wouldn't subside. "How could you look me in the eye and act like everything is fine? Like none of it mattered? After everything we've been through!"

He threw his hands up in a frantic gesture of defense, eyes wide with a mix of panic and desperation. "Quinn, I swear it wasn't my idea!" His voice trembled as he yelled, his words tumbling out in a rush, almost tripping over each other. His breathing was ragged, his chest heaving as if he had run miles, not just spoken. The dim light from the overhead bulb cast sharp shadows across his face, highlighting the beads of sweat that had begun to gather on his brow.

"It was all part of Jay's plan," he continued, his voice breaking slightly. "I had no choice, Quinn, you have to believe me. Jay set everything up—taking down MI6, every step of it—it was his idea from the start. I swear, I wanted to tell you!" His eyes darted to the floor for a brief moment, unable to meet Quinn's piercing gaze, before snapping back to her, pleading. He took a small, shaky step back, the fear in his voice palpable. "I just... I didn't know how to stop him."

I stood motionless, arms crossed ,my was face unreadable, the silence between us thick and suffocating.

 My eyes burned with a mixture of hurt and fury, my breath steady but my voice low and razor-sharp. I stepped forward, closing the distance between us with deliberate slowness, every inch of my posture taut with suppressed rage. "I don't care if it was his idea, Lupe," I spat, the words dripping with venom. My hand clenched into a fist at my side, the nails digging into my palm as I struggled to keep control. "You could have told me something—anything—before you let me believe you were fucking dead!"

My voice cracked slightly as I let the last words escape, as though they'd been lodged in my chest for far too long. My chest rose and fell rapidly, the intensity of my anger making my entire body tremble. "Do you have any idea what that did to me? What it fucking cost me?"

I ran a hand through my hair, pushing it back from my face in frustration, my eyes never leaving his. The muscles in my jaw worked, teeth grinding together as I struggled to keep the floodgates from opening. "I couldn't talk to anyone, Lupe," I continued, my voice growing quieter but no less intense, my words sharp as broken glass. "I stopped eating, stopped sleeping. I thought you were gone, and it was my fault. I thought I failed you. Every single day, I thought I failed you."

My breath hitched, and I took a step back, my gaze hardening. "I worked alone, pushed everyone away. Our friends? They stopped calling, stopped texting because I—" I choked, swallowing the lump that had formed in my throat. "I didn't care, Lupe. I didn't care about anything anymore. Not after you were gone. Because I thought it was my fault." I lowered my head for a moment, my voice barely above a whisper. "Your death... ruined me."

I looked up at him then, eyes blazing with unshed tears, the rawness of my emotions laid bare. "And now you're standing here, acting like you had no choice? Like I should just forgive you? You've got some fucking nerve."

His face was laced with an unmistakable sorrow, the kind of sadness that weighed down his features, pulling at the corners of his eyes and the set of his mouth. It was as if every regret, every moment of hesitation, had finally caught up with him and made its mark. For a brief, gut-wrenching moment, I felt a pang of pity for him, a fleeting softness that threatened to crack my resolve. But I couldn't afford to let that shift anything—especially not now, not after everything.

I took a deep breath, my chest tight, the air thick with tension. With as much strength as I could muster, I kept my gaze steady, my eyes hardening. "Later," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, low and controlled, the kind of tone that brokered no argument.

Without waiting for him to respond, I turned on my heel, the sound of my boots clicking sharply against the cold floor as I moved past him. Every step felt deliberate, the echo of it hanging in the hall like a warning. Behind me, I could sense him still standing there, unmoving, the weight of his gaze heavy against the back of my neck. But I couldn't—no, I wouldn't—turn around. Not now.

The silence between us stretched, suffocating, as I walked away, leaving him there, the broken fragments of his regret still suspended in the air.