Swamp Murder

Swamp Murder. 75

Zhan's POV

The world narrowed until it was only Wangs brother's face, pale, sweating, that ridiculous man I'd once wanted to respect. The words hit like ice.

My knees buckled and I had to step forward to stop myself from collapsing. I felt everything at once, rage, betrayal, the memory of cold concrete and slammed doors, the smell of bleach in a cell that never really left me. Dre's hand tightened on the arm of his seat so hard his knuckles went white. Wang stood statue-still, eyes gone glassy.

"I'd do it again," Wang's brother said, small and defiant in the face of what he'd confessed. He sounded proud. Proud. The taste of bile rose in my throat.

I moved before I thought. My hands were steady, and the first thing I did was close the distance between us—close enough that he could see all the lines in my face, the places I'd been broken and the places I'd learned to harden. I put my palm against his cheek. It was a touch meant to measure him, to see if there was still any human under the smugness.

"You do know what real fear feels like," I said, and my voice held something that wasn't the childish anger he'd expected. "You watched boys you didn't even know rot for mattresses and bread. You watched while they bled and you called it protection."

He tried to pull away; his hand trembled. "Wang—" he began.

I slapped him. It wasn't hard. It was clean and precise, and not nearly the damage I had intended to do. The slap cracked loud in the air and his head snapped to the side, eyes watering, confusion mixing with a dawning, terrible comprehension.

"All right," I said, quieter. "You want to save face? Fine. We'll play your little token of 'protection.' But you won't walk away. Not after this."

I stepped back and looked at Wang. He'd gone very still, color draining from his face. He hadn't defended his brother. He'd only watched, hurt and furious in his own private corner of the room.

"Dre," I said, looking at him. "Decide. Do you want him to watch what he has set in motion? Or do you want him to live long enough to drown in the weight of each life he took?"

Dre's jaw worked. The man had been broken and put back together in a hundred ugly ways; I didn't know what he would choose. But the choice didn't matter only to him. It mattered to all of us—the ones who'd crawled out from under.

Wang's brother's eyes were wide and empty, suddenly became a child. "Please," he begged, but the word had no weight anymore.

I let the silence stretch until it felt like a verdict. Then I took a step back and did the only thing that didn't make me feel like the same monster he'd been: I said, "You'll live. You'll watch. You'll say their names. You will be the voice that binds what you broke, every night until you can't sleep for the faces."

He started to shake, the admission and the sentence knitting together into something final. He had wanted to be saved from the choice; now he had to carry it. The knowledge would eat him, as it had eaten us.

Later—maybe—I would decide what else he deserved. For now, letting him live and feel was punishment enough. It would span a lifetime of nights. It would be slow. It would be precise.

I turned my face to the darkwater beyond the rail and breathed. The ocean answered with a wave that knocked the yacht's hull with a dull thump.

Dre, who had chosen to stay; Wang, who had sat with his brother's betrayal and not cut him down on sight; Ezra, who had always preferred the long game; and myself, the one who once wanted only to survive. We had come here to end a story of violence.

Only now I understood the truth I'd been avoiding, endings aren't clean. They're messy. They ask that you look into the eyes of the people who hurt you and choose how much of your humanity you keep.