11. Dallas

CHAPTER 11

DALLAS

As the door shuts behind us, the thunderous pulse of my heart clashes with the silence of the condo. Isaac's breath is ragged, uneven. He's a storm barely contained by skin and sinew. I should be thinking about protocols, about lines that mustn't be crossed again. Instead, I'm fighting the urge to pull him close, to shelter him from pain, both internal and external.

"Always a fucking hero," he slurs at me, a ghost of a loopy smile on his lips. But his eyes are haunted houses where joy doesn't live. The care I try to tamp down flares up, like a stubborn blaze. He sways and I reach out instinctively, steadying hands betraying the detachment I'm supposed to maintain.

Isaac's back hits the wall with a dull thud, but it's not the impact that sucks the air from the room. It's his hands, urgent and hot, that yank me forward into an inferno. His lips crash against mine, and there is nothing soft about this kiss—it's desperation, it's war, it's raw edges and bitter whiskey.

And stupid me, I respond.

Our mouths meet with the fierce rhythm of both hearts racing toward oblivion. There's no tenderness here, only the crashing of waves against a rocky shore. His taste is still what I remember, an intoxicating blend of expensive drink and darker, forbidden flavors—a garden of nightshade blooms under a blood moon.

The law and loyalty become dust in the back of my mind—unnecessary presence overshadowed by the heat of Isaac's body against mine. We are fire and drought, destined to consume and ruin. His tongue writes secrets across the inside of my mouth, scripts of longing that have no place in our world. And I read them all, insatiable for the narrative that could destroy us both.

The realization that we're enemies, that this moment is a stolen relic from a timeline we can never own, hangs between us like an unspoken eulogy for what can't be. But it doesn't extinguish the dark flame licking at the corners of my resolve. It merely drops shadows that make the heat more acute, the danger more enticing.

His fingers, hungry and delightfully sloppy, thread through my hair.

I'm drowning, I realize, sinking deeper into the abyss with every ragged breath, every shattering touch of lips. The wall isn't just holding Isaac up anymore; it's the only thing keeping us from falling off the edge of the world.

And there's a part of me, the one that doesn't care about anything but him, that wants to stay like this forever. But I've got a job to do and if I don't, I'll be ruined. And he'll be ruined too.

"Isaac," I gasp when our lips finally part in an attempt to get more air. It's a silent plea for sanity, for the strength to resist the undertow. My voice is a broken hallelujah in the cathedral of our sins.

"Despite you being the last person I should be with, I want you to stay," he whispers against my neck, his voice drunk, sweet and deadly, promising things I'm not allowed to covet in soft, seductive tones.

I want to—I want to more than I've ever wanted anything.

And the taste of his desperation is a bitter cocktail of need and whiskey on my lips.

"Isaac," I mutter, the word almost a sigh. "We can't do this."

"We've already done this," he retorts.

"We shouldn't have."

It's like watching a house of cards collapse under the weight of a wind. His bravado crumbles, revealing the boy beneath the villain. His brown eyes are glassy, swimming with unshed tears. He looks younger, stripped of his armor, and it guts me—that I could forget the vulnerability hidden beneath that hardened shell. I've seen it before. Seen him like this. Bared and simple and…beautiful.

"I'm sorry," I whisper roughly. "I shouldn't have let it get this far." My apology, suspended in the space between us, is an admission of guilt for the worst crime committed.

He chuckles, low and hollow, and it doesn't reach his eyes. It's the sound of someone who has been to hell and back, only to find the road paved with good intentions.

"Come on." I steer him toward the bedroom. "Let's get you settled."

Inside, the room feels too big, too empty—like a stage after the final act when the actors have taken their bows and the audience has departed. It seems almost impersonal compared to Isaac's house.

He leans heavily against me as we make our way through the room. I don't bother to look for a light switch. The city's own neon illumination streaming through the open windows is enough. I ease his jacket off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor with a soft thud. The scent of leather and cologne fills the air, mingling with a sense of intimacy that has no right to exist.

He falls onto the bed and lets out a loud sigh, like he's been wanting to do this all day.

"Perfect husband, huh?" he mutters as I carefully remove his shoes, aligning them neatly by the bed.

And for a moment, I'm caught in a dream that will never be—a place where bullets don't whisper our names and loyalty isn't measured in blood.

"Maybe in another life," I reply, brushing off the comment like lint on a suit jacket. But it sticks to me nonetheless, a hole in the fabric of my composure. "I better go," I say, moving along the bed toward its headboard. I watch him, this enigma of strength and fragility, and wonder how many layers one must peel back to find the truth at his core. "Get some rest," I tell him gently, fully prepared to leave.

He's a grown man. He'll be fine.

Isaac's hand is sudden and unexpected, gripping my belt. I stumble, gravity pulling me down until the bed catches us both in its indifferent embrace. His eyes are twin voids, dark and fathomless, reaching out for something to anchor him in this moment.

"Please," he breathes out like it's a secret, "I don't want to be alone tonight."

I roll over to lie on my back like a silent guardian beside him, feeling his presence, the electricity of his nearness.

"Just stay," he whispers, his voice unraveling into the empty space.

"Isaac..." My throat tightens around his name.

"Let's pretend," he murmurs, a wistful note beneath the slurred words, "just for tonight, that we're two normal people. No blood on our hands, no ghosts at our backs."

The silence stretches, a canvas upon which a thousand unsaid confessions might be painted.

"Another life," he finally says, his gaze locked onto some distant point where pain doesn't exist, "I would have never let you go."

His words are a knife through my heart. I swallow past the ache in my chest, the surge of emotion threatening to submerge me.

"Things can be fixed, Isaac," I offer, words inadequate against the tide of what-ifs and could-have-beens. Even though it feels like a lie.

He scoffs, a sound that scrapes against the walls. "Maybe the money, yeah," he admits. "Maybe we can deal with the Russians, but Toro... he's a madman." He pauses. "And madmen… they operate differently. They don't follow rules whatsoever. Not even rules of my world. They tear them apart and set the pieces on fire."

I listen closely, my pulse wretches up for some inexplicable reason.

Isaac lies there, a figure veiled in shadows, the faint neon light casting a colorful sheen over his troubled features. My hands are restless, unsure if comfort or distance is what he needs, and I choose not to touch him. Choose to keep my needs to myself.

"I know a thing or two about madmen," Isaac chokes out. "Jacob Thoreau…he wasn't my real father." His breath hitches, the revelation is a bullet to the chest. I suddenly don't know what to do with this information.

"Mother," he starts, and even drunk, I can hear the pain sharpening his words, "she needed to escape him, you know? He was beating her almost to a fucking pulp. So she found solace elsewhere... with someone else."

The silence stretches, heavy and suffocating. I don't say anything. I can hardly breathe.

"And he punished her. Punished me too." His laugh is weak and bitter, lacking humor. "Guess he figured since I wasn't his blood, I was something to be used. He started coming into my room when I was around twelve. That's when things changed for us. For our family. I had no idea why. Mother never told me Jacob wasn't my real father until after I ended him. I only realized why he did what he did in prison. But back then, when I was still in high school, I thought that if I could just wait until I'd turn eighteen, until I'm legal, I could run away, take my mother with me and disappear. But one night, he just went off on her. Beat her with a…" Isaac's voice falters, stumbling over sounds like broken feet over stone. His Adam's apple bobs under his skin as he swallows back the memory. "I couldn't take it anymore. I don't remember much. Just that I was furious. I saw red. I'd been in trouble in school a few times by then. Broke some jock's arm once for bullying a girl. This anger in me… It'd been building for years, leading me up to that moment, the moment I saw my mother all bloody cowering on the floor. I snapped. Took a kitchen knife and..."

A cold fist of understanding settles in my stomach. "Oh, Isaac..." My heart clenches at the thought of him, just a kid, trying to save what little safety they had left in this world. "You did what you had to do."

"Am I any better than him now, Dallas?"

"You're not him," I whisper truthfully. I know what Jacob Thoreau did. I studied that file carefully before the assignment. "But that doesn't mean you don't deserve another chance."

His barely audible laugh stings my very bones. "There is no redemption for men like us."

I exhale slowly, my own sense of justice twisting inside me, rage and sorrow mingling in a toxic brew. "Maybe there is."

"I killed the sadistic fuck in cold blood. I wanted him to die," Isaac whispers. There's some semblance of clarity in his voice now. "He made our lives hell. And you know what the most fucked up part is? I'm pretty certain the fucker was shooting blanks all those years he and Mother were married. And he probably knew it but he wouldn't admit it because of his ego and his pride. So, he took it out on her. And then on me."

"I'm not sure what to say."

"There's nothing to say. I'll never know the truth. They are both dead now and I'm dealing with this pile of shit they left me."

"Does anyone know about this—Jacob not being your biological father?" The question seems cruel, intrusive, but I ask it anyway. Because it changes things.

"Maurice does."

"Is that why he didn't give you the money?"

"He wants me gone but he doesn't want to dirty his hands. He's trying to go as legit as possible and murder isn't in his plans."

A shiver runs down my spine as his confession unfolds, becomes something bigger than what we are. "He wants either the Russians or Toro to do the job for him."

"Now you're catching on, Agent Bradley," Isaac murmurs solemnly.

"Are you scared?"

"Every second of every day, but I have people that need me. Scared or not, life goes on."

"Justice," I say, the word tasting like ash on my tongue. "Sometimes that's all we have left to hold onto."

"Justice," Isaac repeats, his voice trailing off as he succumbs to the weight of his own exhaustion and whiskey, his consciousness slipping away into the dark embrace of drunken sleep. "Justice isn't always right."

And maybe, just maybe Isaac is correct.

"Who was he? Your real father? Do you know?" I ask carefully.

"Don't know. Don't care," he slurs, the bitterness slicing through the stillness like a knife through warm butter. "Jacob probably offed him when he found out about the affair." Pause. "Do you think Jacob deserved what he got, Agent Bradley?"

My chest tightens, words become traitors refusing to leave my lungs, stuck in my throat.

"Do you?" Isaac presses. "Or do you think justice wasn't served right?"

"Yes, he deserved it."

"What about me? Did I deserve what happened next?" Isaac rolls over toward me and I turn my head on the bedsheets to look at him. Half of his face is illuminated by the city lights and his gaze, although hooded and glazed, is a challenge. "Do you think it was justice…what they did to me in prison or that they sent me there for trying to protect my mother?"

I can't speak. I realize no matter what I say right now, I'll betray everything I'm supposed to stand for. But the thing is I don't know what I am anymore. I don't know who I am after meeting Isaac Thoreau.

"Answer me," he demands.

"Nobody deserves what happened to you," I finally manage, but it's like trying to bandage a wound too deep to heal. "You were just a kid."

"That's right. Yet it happens," Isaac whispers, the resignation in his voice more harrowing than any scream. "It happens to thousands of kids. This world it's a fucked-up place, Dallas. It's a place, that no matter how hard you try, it won't get better. Deep down we are all animals. Justice is a lie they feed to the weak."

I watch him, the pain etched into the lines of his face—it's a roadmap of hurt I'm still learning to navigate. The law is clear-cut, black and white, but life... life is a myriad of grays. I've always believed in right and wrong, but here, with Isaac, it all blends into a haze of unknown color.

"Jacob Thoreau," I begin, but falter, feeling the tremble of my own shifting convictions. "Men like him, they skirt the edges. Where the law can't—or won't—reach."

"Exactly." Isaac's eyes are heavy-lidded now, the weight of the whiskey in his system dragging them down. "It's a show, a farce. It preys on the weak, ignores the monsters with deep pockets."

"Isaac..."

"I had no choice." His voice is distant, like he's speaking from the end of a long, dark tunnel. "I was born into this fucking chaos. I never asked for this life. But I'll fight through it."

Something inside me fractures. He's so deeply entrenched in a war that was decided for him at birth, a soldier in a battle where the only spoils are survival or death.

I want to tell him there's another way, but the words never leave my mouth.

His breathing evens out, and I'm alone with the silence and the darkness of my thoughts. The world outside these walls is oblivious to the tragedy playing out within them. I should feel resolve, but there's only emptiness—a void where justice should be. It mocks me, a concept clad in the garb of legal righteousness. A concept that doesn't really serve everyone like it should.

In this preverbal twilight land between lawman and outlaw, I'm lost, adrift in an ocean of moral ambiguity where each wave brings a fresh surge of doubt. There are no heroes here, only survivors clinging to the wreckage of their humanity, fighting against a cruel and merciless tide.

Later on, in the dead of the night, I pad into the living room and sink into the leather couch of Isaac's condo. The scattered light from the cityscape outside brings macabre shadows inside that dance across the walls, as if taunting me with their silent judgment.

Protect him , they whisper soundlessly and I follow their lead and pledge my alliance to the unconscious man in the other room. It's more than a promise. It's a necessity.

Somewhere in the apartment, the clock ticks, a relentless metronome marking the passage of time and the weight of choices. Each second is a reminder of the path I've chosen, a road paved with good intentions leading straight to perdition.

My mission was obvious until Isaac blurred the lines, his pain becoming my own, his darkness a mirror to the abyss I find myself staring into.

Unable to sleep due to his revelation, I rise from the couch and pace around the living room. I try to ensure my strides are quiet. I walk myself until I'm so exhausted physically and mentally that I have no choice but to lie down before I drop to my knees.

As dawn threatens to break, I realize that the night has passed in a fever dream of turmoil, leaving behind nothing but ashes where once there might have been the promise of something more. Something better. Something like redemption.

But redemption is a luxury neither Isaac nor I can afford.