I Became Death

{TYLER}

I'm standing in the cellar, hands on my hips, when I hear footsteps coming down the stairs.

"Angel?"

"Yeah."

Sasha comes up behind me and wraps his arms around me. He doesn't ask why I'm down here, and I love that about him. He knows. He gets it. We stand there together, breathing in and out, coming to terms with what we've done tonight.

I told Sasha more than once that I wanted to be there when we ended the man who started all these chaos. He was resistant at first, but when the Commission laid out their objections, he agreed I could be there at the dinner—as long as I had a gun with me.

"I like my husband armed and dangerous," he told me, "and able to defend himself."

"No arguments from me," I told him. Vollero was the one who fed us intel about when a sympathetic bodyguard would be on duty—Thursday night— and everything fell into place. When that bodyguard patted me down, he said nothing about the gun strapped to my ankle.