Page 149 of The Thief
"Because of you. Because of all of you."
Maverick moves closer, fists clenched, violence radiating off him in waves. "Explain that."
"She was coming back to Dublin to be with me. We had plans, a future. She was going to leave Trace, leave Boston, and start over with our baby."
"Your baby?"
The question comes out strangled. Because if Ava was pregnant with Jason's child, that changes everything. The timeline, the motivation, the reason Trace killed her.
"Mine. The child she was carrying when she died, that was my baby."
The words hit like sledgehammers. Ava wasn't carrying Trace's child. She was carrying Jason's. Which means her death wasn't just about betrayal or territory; it was about love, and jealousy—the oldest motives in the world.
"How long?" I ask, needing to understand the scope of this deception.
"How long what?"
"How long were you and Ava together?"
"Since we were teenagers—ten years on and off. When things got complicated between us, when we fought or broke up, she'd go to you. You were her safety net, Freddie. Her backup plan."
The casual way he says it, like I was just some convenient distraction, makes my blood boil. But underneath the anger, there's something else. Relief, maybe. The knowledge that what I felt for Ava wasn't real love; it was just loneliness and need dressed up as something deeper.
"She was using me."
"She was protecting herself. Ava loved me, but she was smart enough to know that putting all her eggs in one basket was dangerous in our world."
"So she played us both."
"She survived. Until you and Jer got involved, until Jer started pushing her to sort her life out. That's when everything went to hell."
Maverick steps forward, his face carved from stone. "You're blaming us for Trace killing his own wife?"
"I'm blaming you for putting her in an impossible position. She was trying to get information for me, trying to find a way for us to disappear together. But that was never enough. Jer hated that she was upsetting Callie by always being gone. He knew she was up to something."
"She was married to our enemy."
"Because she was trapped! Trace would have killed her if he'd found out about us. But she was working on it, finding a way out. We just needed more time."
I study Jason's face, seeing him clearly for the first time in months. The stress lines around his eyes, the way his hands shake slightly even though he's trying to hide it. He's been carrying this burden alone, planning something desperate.
"So you decided to get revenge," I say.
"I decided to make you pay for destroying our future."
"We didn't destroy anything. Trace killed his wife because he's a paranoid psychopath."
"Trace killed his wife because you made him paranoid. Because you killed his father and destabilized his entire organization."
The logic is twisted, but I can see how Jason might believe it. Grief makes people think in ways that don't make sense to anyone else.
Maverick grabs a metal chair from somewhere in the warehouse debris and sets it down hard enough to make Jason flinch.
"Let's cut the bullshit," he says, settling into the chair. "You've been feeding information to Trace for months. Getting our people killed."
"I've been trying to stay alive long enough to avenge the woman I love."
"By betraying the men who treated you like family?"
