Page 120 of Beneath His Robes

Detective Weston nodded, his expression still serious but with a slight shift as if something had changed in him too.

“You got Jack in custody. His confession about what happened with your mother—about what he did to you, to Elias—it was all being processed. And trust me, there won’t be any more hiding. He’s guilty of all charges. You made sure of that, Mister Saint Clare.”

A weight lifted from my chest, but it felt too surreal. I had spent so long tangled in the pain, the grief, and the rage that I didn’t know what to feel now that the truth was finally being laid bare. Jack would be held accountable for everything.

I turned to Father Franklin, the man who helped Elias when he was at his worst, my voice hoarse. “You…you really came for me?”

He smiled softly, his eyes warm despite the sadness that still clung to the edges of his gaze. “Of course. You don’t have to go through this alone, Ronan. You never have to again. The path of healing from loss is not one you walk alone.”

I swallowed hard, the sting of emotion threatening to overwhelm me. My chest tightened, but for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t with anger. It was with something softer—something that made the tears I had been holding back rise to the surface.

“I miss him, my child.” Father Franklin’s words were that dam that held back the tears. The emotion I was afraid to feel.

Detective Weston glanced between Father Franklin and me, his gaze lingering for a moment before he spoke again.

“Just so you know,” he said, his voice steady, “Jack will be facing more than just the charges for your mother. We’re charging him with assault and battery toward you and with the recent developments in his confession in regard to the burning of the church. It looks like there’ll be more. Bribery, for one, and I don’t need to tell you, but…you won’t be seeing him again.”

His words were sharp, final. And for the first time in a long time, I felt like I had a chance like there might be a way out of the prison I had been living in for so long.

Father Franklin placed a hand on my back and guided me toward the exit. “Come on, Ronan. We’re going home. We’ve got a long road ahead, but at least now, you’re not facing it alone.”

As we walked out of the station, the sunlight hit my face, and for the first time in months, I didn’t feel like I was trapped. I didn’t feel like everything I had lost was still weighing down on me.

I felt…free.

The case against Jack was finally over, and I could finally take a breath, knowing that the truth had won.

And though I still had a long way to go, I had people now—people who cared. And maybe, just maybe, that was all I needed to start moving forward.

ChapterForty-Three

Ronan

Six Months Later

Today was the day that the monsters who stole my innocence were put to death.

I didn’t want to watch this, but I needed to with Elias by my side.

I stood at the back of the gallery, my eyes fixed on the glass that separated me from them—the men who had raped me and brutalized me. All the faces that had shattered me, one by one that night, still haunted my dreams.

They were strapped in, their bodies unnervingly still, and the sterile white light of the chamber made them almost look like ghosts. The entire scene felt like a dream, the kind where everything was too sharp and too distant at the same time.

The heavy hum of the fluorescent lights overhead droned on, filling the space between us with an almost suffocating quiet.

These were the men who had assaulted me, who had left me broken in ways I wasn’t sure anyone could understand—not even Elias. Now they sat, waiting, knowing what was coming. It was unbelievable that they still had the nerve to be defiant in their silence, still refusing to look at me through the glass.

The younger one—the man who hadn’t touched me but had laughed and watched all the others—his eyes darted around nervously like a caged animal.

He appeared to be trying to gauge the situation, looking for any way to get out of it, maybe hoping for some miraculous reprieve. They were all killers, all predators desperate to run so they could find another helpless prey to devour. The cop, the fucking cop, the man sworn to protect, to serve…he was angry.

The amount of information that had been uncovered about how dirty his badge had become was too overwhelming. It extended well past what he’d done to me and dove into the sexual trafficking arena.

‘Depravity’ was the only word that kept running through my head.

Now he sat with his jaw clenched, his arms folded tightly over his chest as if he could somehow shut out what was happening, and still didn’t accept that his time had come. He had always carried himself that way—ignorant, defiant, arrogant, but now that mask was cracking.

I tried to breathe, but it felt like the air had thickened.

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