Page 65 of Tangled Past
The words landed without heat. Without drama. A statement. A conclusion reached long ago.
Asa felt Maya’s terror from where he stood. “No,” Asa said. “You don’t get to decide that either.”
Jonas tilted his head, studying him. “You could have walked away. I tried to give you that chance.”
“You erased Vanessa,” Asa said. “You burned Maya’s past. You hunted her mother and killed her because she could identify you. You don’t get to pretend you were ever the good guy.”
Jonas’s mouth twisted. “I tried to be a good uncle.”
The words hit harder than anything else.
“You watched me grow up,” Asa whispered. “You sat at my table.”
“Yes,” Jonas said. “And I loved you.”
Asa felt something tear loose inside his chest. “You loved me, and you still murdered my father. That’s not love.”
Jonas took one step forward.
Asa matched it without thinking, gun unwavering.
“You don’t want to do this,” Jonas said.
Asa’s voice was steel. “I’ve never wanted anything more.”
Jonas glanced toward the window, then back at Asa. “This ends tonight.”
“Yes,” he said. “It does.”
In that moment, standing in front of the man who helped make him the adult he was now, but also the one who’d destroyed his childhood, Asa knew there was no version of this where both of them walked out alive.
