Sometimes death doesn't come from strangers in the dark.
Sometimes it slips in through the cracks left by the very people who should've stopped it.
The guards who weren't at their post.
The friends who once left a girl bleeding on the highway.
Me, frozen when I should've stopped the killer.
That's how Liam Everhart died.
It wasn't just one moment that killed him.
It was all of us.
Every failure, every hesitation, every time we chose fear instead of action.
That's what took Liam Everhart's life.
Not fate. Not chance.
But us.
The beeping stopped. The monitor went flat. And in that second, the world went silent.
I saw it first in Dominic's eyes. God. He looked broken in a way I'd never seen before…like his body was still standing, but his soul had dropped somewhere I couldn't reach.
"He's gone," I whispered. The words broke me as soon as I said them.
