Our Saving Grace

Greece - Luke

We found an email tipping off both the Drakos family and the Patras' police that intruders had broken into their house

One simple sentence with the power to change... well nothing. 

It couldn't change what happened and it wasn't nearly powerful enough to change how disgusting and dirty I felt in my own skin. But while it couldn't completely change anything, maybe it could alter. Maybe it could lessen the crushing weight of guilt that I had been wasting away under.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when a small cold hand touched my arm. I spun around and it took me a moment to fight through the sudden rush of panic to see that Sang was standing before me. She didn't try to touch me again but waited patiently until I calmed down. I searched her face and didn't see one once of pity, anger, or guilt. Almost everyone I looked at these days looked at me with those emotions and the only thing it accomplished was to make me feel even shitier.

Sang was different. She understood. Her demons bonded with my demons.

"It wasn't my fault," I managed to croak out through my tightening throat. Just saying those words out loud and really meaning them for the first time, shifted something inside of me.

Nothing changed, but it did alter.

"I didn't do anything wrong. I wasn't careless. I didn't set off any hidden alarms or attract any attention. I wasn't the reason the police were called. It wasn't my fault," I said again and this time the words tore through me, exposing the festering wound within me. The next thing I know, I am on my knees in the grass, and Sang has her arms wrapped around me.

"It wasn't your fault," Sang agreed in a soft voice and a sob was wrenched from my soul. I clung to her as the lifeline that she was as weeks of pent-up hurt combined with my overall relief that I hadn't actively done something to put me in that prison.

It wasn't my fault. I had done my job right. It was that bitch Mia's fault. And if it was her fault then it couldn't be my own. I couldn't have done anything differently.

As awful as it sounded, I was grateful that we discovered Kota's girlfriend was a fucking psycho with a grudge. Now that I knew what she had done, everything that happened in Greece was something that happened to me, instead of it being something that I had caused. We helped victims of heinous crimes all the time. I understood how to come back from such a place because I had helped so many out of similar situations.

I had been lost within the fact that my own actions had sent me to hell. At least now I had someone to actively blame.

Greece was Mia's fault. Not mine.

With that thought circling through my mind in a constant loop, I found that I couldn't keep the words inside anymore. They were the puss in my festering wound and I had to get them out. Like an infection that needed to be debrided. And while I didn't believe that anyone should be forced to carry the burden of my story, I knew that Sang was strong enough.

"Silas's uncle called him because his food market was on the brink of collapse because the local criminal gang was bleeding him and the rest of the neighborhood dry. They were demanding protection money and had only increased how much they wanted each week. Silas's uncle and the rest of the business owners couldn't do it anymore and were going to be forced to sell stores that had been in their families for generations. Silas's uncle called and we all went to Greece to help," I told Sang once my breathing had evened out.

She unwound her arms from around me and cupped my face with her small hands. She used her thumbs to wipe away the rest of my tears and I continued on before I lost my nerve. "It turned out that the criminal organization was trying to make all of the owners sell because they wanted the property. We came up with this plan where we would steal their ledger and hand it over as evidence of their criminal activity. The idea was that the police would arrest the top bosses and they would be so busy with their own troubles that they wouldn't have time to harass the business owners anymore. Plus any money that we found in the house, we were going to give back to the locals.