Dark (Dangerous Web #2) - Aleatha Romig Page 0,2

lying upon the back seat of Mason’s truck. I reached for the edge of the open door, my grip intensifying and stomach rolling as I took her in, really looked at her. Lorna Murray was the strongest and most beautiful woman I had ever encountered, and yet in this moment, as my circulation slowed and my skin cooled from the sight before me, I felt an overwhelming sense of failure. I’d failed to keep her safe. I’d failed to keep her from harm.

I found solace in her survival, yet where would she go from here? How could she move past this horrible injustice?

Lorna’s pulse was faint and slow. Her beautiful alabaster skin marred by evidence of the last few days—the trauma she’d endured and the misery she’d suffered.

With each passing second, every thought, even those of failure, was obscured by a darkness like I’d never known. It clouded my being and infiltrated my flesh. It seeped into my bloodstream and saturated my hardening heart.

This emotion wasn’t directed toward Lorna, never to her.

The dark that flooded my mind brought on thoughts I’d never before entertained.

While I’d known disappointment, grieved the loss of loved ones, and battled personal demons, I’d avoided one pure emotion for most of my life.

Until this moment, I’d never known hatred.

Pure, unadulterated loathing.

It slithered through my circulation like a snake, leaving behind drops of its venom in every cell. As I stood under the drenching rain, I felt its presence taking hold, setting roots, and growing ounce by ounce. All-consuming, the hatred fueled a potential for devastation without measure.

My boots splashed in the mud as I fought for literal footing. My muscles spasmed with the desire to hold and comfort Lorna, while at the same time harboring the need to lash out at a world that would allow this to occur.

I’d heard that love is light. Knowing the life Lorna and I had made, I agreed.

In contrast, hate was without light.

It was dark.

And while hate and loathing were new to me, I recognized them without question. This moment in time would mark the instant when, like the sky above, my light became obscured by dark. There would be before and after—everything affected by this point in time.

I recalled instances when I should have known this emotion, yet I hadn’t.

As a soldier in war, I’d walked with my platoon into scattered villages, knowing that danger lurked in the most innocent of places. A child’s backpack filled with explosives had the potential to take out an entire block. An old woman in a doorframe could be the enticement to death, or worse, captivity and torture. Yet I didn’t hate our enemy. I’d understood that the differences between us and them weren’t personal. It was war, two opposing sanctions with a long history that time had brought to a head.

As a black man growing up in Chicago, I’d learned at a young age that life wasn’t the same for everyone. It didn’t matter that some may see a level playing field. It didn’t exist.

I’d been born into what many would consider a good upper-middle-class neighborhood. My father was an attorney, given his chance by the US Army. He’d joined the service young and scored exceptionally high on their multitude of tests. Physically and intellectually blessed, the military saw his asset in academic endeavors.

He was encouraged to enter the JAG Corps—the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, a branch of the military concerned with military justice. While spending three years in a civilian law school—he was accepted at Loyola, University of Chicago—he met my mother. After graduation, his service was to the military.

When his obligation to the military was complete, they married. Two years later I was born. In hindsight, I realized my father was older than many other dads, yet I was too young then to notice.

Three years later, my father, as a retired lieutenant colonel, volunteered for deployment, taking on a new commission and deployment to the Gulf War buildup, code-named Operation Desert Shield. History would say the war was short—five months. If you asked my mother, it was a lifetime—my father’s.

He was one of the less than three hundred US servicemen and -women who didn’t return.

While I experienced growing up without a father, I never hated the military. On the contrary, joining the service was my testament to him.

Eventually, my mother, grandmother, and I moved from the neighborhood where I was born to a comfortable, albeit less affluent one. My mother refused to let our circumstances bring us down. Her hard