Chapter 603

Madeline:

“You were supposed to care for her,” Ron said when we met.

We stood face to face. Dried tears clung to his eyes and cheeks, hinting that he had cried to the point where no tears were left.

“I tried my best,” I said when he grunted, slamming his hand in the air, almost like a shrug, jerking his hands.

“If you tried, she would have been saved by now. If you had tried, she wouldn’t be dead now,” he screamed, then bit his tongue, placing his hands on the back of his neck.

“You were going to get her the cure?” he asked.

I shifted my weight to one side, scared of giving him another disappointment.

“I did, I got the cure for her,” I whispered, and before he could ask anything else, I added, “but the people from your pack and other packs were waiting outside the border. They snatched the bottle from me and broke it.”

As I tried to explain, Ron rolled his eyes as if calling it bullshit.

“Why was your house key left outside?” he questioned, his hands turning into fists beside his body.

“My house key? What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to get closer, not to touch him, but because I wanted to understand him better.

But he stepped back, almost indicating that his trust in me had broken.

“Your house key. How do you think the shooter got in? If he had broken the door, somebody would have woken up. At least Yuvonne would have,” he complained as he began explaining what had been found at the site.

He surprised me when he said they had found the house key outside, which made it easy for the shooter to get inside and kill her.

At that moment, my world started to shake.

” Yes, Miss Madeline, you dropped the house key when you were leaving, which let the shooter sneak in and kill her, not giving her a chance to defend herself.”

Every word he spoke caused my breath to hitch.

I started to look around and felt a coldness in my head.

I had been blaming myself before, but now I realized it was true.

It was my mistake.

“If you could not protect her, why did you take her home?” he questioned again, and

a single tear rolled down his eyes, which he quickly wiped away.

“I don’t know, maybe I was in a hurry. I grabbed both keys and dropped one,” I said, making excuses, explaining that it had been such a worrisome night that I might have dropped the key outside.

“No, Madeline, it’s not something you can apologize for. You fucking got her killed. How could you do that? You were supposed to protect her,” he screamed before a sob broke out of his lips.

“Fuck, if they killed your own children, then? how could you be so careless?”

He screamed at me, and I closed my eyes, looking down, clutching my fingers together.

Now the guilt hit even harder when I realized it was all my fucking fault.

“It’s not like she dropped it on purpose,” Byron said, stepping in, but I raised my hand to stop him because him defending me was not right.

I dropped the key.

Of course I did.

That is how the shooter got inside.

It all made sense now.

I was at fault.

I started to hyperventilate as Ron shook his head at me in disapproval.

“Why are you here, Ron? You accuse her instead of the shooter,” Byron asked,

stepping in between us even when I told him not to.

Ron looked at him steadily, then grunted, scoffing.

“They came for Madeline, didn’t they?” he mumbled, almost like reminding me that if

they had come for me, it should have been me they took.

I understood his words all too well, even when he did not say them out loud.

“I just came here to let you know, Madeline, that you’re not the hero you think you

are. So stop taking responsibility when you cannot fulfill it.”

Ron’s words stabbed me in the chest like nothing before.

My eyes filled with tears, and I lowered my head even more.

“Think about all the times you have lost,” he kissed, continuing to remind me of my reality that others had been too afraid to say to my face because they did not want t@hurt me.

“You haven’t done anything for the children either. You try to save them, and then what? Something else appears. It’s like you ignore the main issue because you want to feel like you mean something, that you want, them to keep coming to help. Otherwise, you would have done something about it if you really wanted to, since you were such a great researcher.”

Those last words he screamed at me.

Then he ran the back of his hand over his cheeks and sniffled, nodding in understanding.

“Just know, Madeline, Yuvonne’s

blood is on your hands. It doesn’t matter what she said in her last moments. It only proves that she forgave you, just as she thought you had forgiven her,” he finished as he stepped back.

“You know what happens to people who take responsibility for someone they

couldn’t protect? They never find happiness,” Ron said.

His words hit me hard, and my heart crumbled.

The wind blew between us, and I watched his face with my eyes wide open, shock

visible on my face at the brutal words he left for me.

Then he walked away, and I dropped to my knees and started to cry.