The pain in his eyes did not escape her, but it didn’t dredge up any ounce of sympathy from her either.
She had hoped that her suspicion of what he had told her though texts wasn’t true, but of course it was. The Dogs had a mole problem. That same mole problem cost her the life of another brother. “You knew that you had a rat in your camp and you didn’t think to share this bit of detail before you rode out here with Gray.” The scoff in her voice was apparent. She didn’t feel the need to hide her dislike for him, for his crew. She had no more reason to try to play nice. “Why am I not surprised? The Hellhounds and the LBJ holds no trust between each other. You Dogs always act out the way you want to act out without any regards for the lives outside of your walls. Now, that same self-serving attitude has slipped into your camp and you didn’t even have the slightest bit of decency to warn us about it.”
Her brows furrowed together as she dropped her gaze down from his. She couldn’t look him in the eyes. Not right now. Not after what he’d just confirmed to her. She crossed her ankles together as she continued to even out her tone. “You know,” she said slowly, “I could look past what you’ve done in the past and I could turn a temporary blind eye to what you’ve been doing up until now because, for whatever reason, my gut told me that you were a reliable man who, despite how you run your park, would keep his word.” She didn’t say anything for a second before her eyes shot back up at him, “Today, I’d learned that I was wrong. I shouldn’t have given you even the benefit of the doubt. It was fucking stupid of me to assume that you were any different from the rest of your crew who do nothing but harm innocent people and I am so fucking disappointed in myself that I didn’t realize this sooner, that I’d somehow found myself trusting you and your word enough to let you bring Gray back to us alone.”
The fury had diminished from her gaze to make way for solemnity and regret. She shouldn’t be saying this much to him. He didn’t care. It wasn’t going to change anything. It wasn’t going to absolve anything. She was giving him too much of herself. “The fact of the matter is,” she said, keeping her own chin held high, “you took a leader, a partner, a father away from us today because you were careless. A little girl lost her dad today because… because what? You have too much trust in your shelter to suspect a mole? You had too much pride to give us a heads up about it? Or did you just not even think about it at all?” Jadyn could feel the anger seeping back in, but she continued anyway, “He was kidnapped, tortured, and bitten, yet he had survived, Rodeo. Despite it fucking all, he had somehow miraculously survived and he was going to make it back to us today and now he is dead because you had a... a rat problem? Is that the explanation I’m supposed to give his daughter when she asks me later why her dad is dead? Why her dad had survived a fucking zombie bite just to get killed on his way home to her from a fluke? Maybe you might not give a damn about the repercussions of people’s lives outside of your own group, but I’m the one who has to explain to civilians why they suddenly don’t have a mother, a brother, a sister, a father anymore. Not because of zombies but because of the selfishness of other human beings.”