He Watched Me Die Twice Chapter 08
Giovani stepped onto the stage and took the mic from a guard.
He looked up at my giant black-and-white portrait.
“Originally, Brianna’s identity was the department’s most closely guarded secret. It was meant to stay buried forever.”
His solemn voice washed over the plaza through the speakers.
“However, we cannot stand by and let our hero be falsely accused.
“Nor will we allow her reputation to be tarnished after her death.”
Martha, who had slumped to the ground, went pale the second she saw Giovani.
She knew it was over.
Giovani glanced at Jonathan before turning to face the thousands of citizens packed into the square.
“Now, I am going to tell you all who the real Brianna was.”
A heavy hush fell over the crowd.
“Brianna was a top-tier cadet at the academy. She ranked first in every single subject.
“She had a long, incredibly successful career ahead of her.
“But the year she graduated, I met with her personally to ask if she would be willing to take on a long-term, high-risk undercover assignment.
“She agreed without a moment’s hesitation.”
Giovani paused, his voice trembling over the speakers.
“From that day on, the department sealed her file.
“She stopped being Officer Brianna and became just another street informant everyone looked down on.
“But she kept feeding us vital intel.
“Because of her, we dismantled three massive drug rings and put over a hundred dealers behind bars.
“No one will ever really know how many times she was hurt, or what the hell she went through out there.”
Across the plaza, a few people started crying quietly.
“Eventually, she tracked down her biological father,” Giovani said, gripping the microphone tighter.
“But our records showed that Grayson — her dad — was one of the biggest drug kingpins in Chicago.”
Giovani paused again to steady himself.
“I brought her in and asked what she wanted to do.
“I told her she could walk away, clean, and no one would blame her. I even offered to reinstate her right then and there with a commendation.
“She just sat there in silence for a long time. Then she told me she was going to see it through.
“She said that because he was her father, she had to be the one to slap the cuffs on him so he couldn’t hurt anyone else.
“She only asked for one thing in return — take the death penalty off the table.
“I agreed.”
Hovering above the crowd, I watched Jonathan stagger, suddenly losing his balance.
He was remembering the dead, blank look on my face the day the cops accidentally shot my father.
It was finally hitting him — he was the one who had destroyed my last shred of hope.
“The raid at the family reunion went south,” Giovani continued.
“A jumpy officer accidentally fired his weapon and killed Grayson instantly.
“Brianna lost her dad right after she finally met him, and the sheer stress of it all caused her to miscarry.
“I went to her, fully planning to pull her out of the field and bring her home to the department.
“I told her she’d already sacrificed enough.
“But she refused.
“She said her father’s death had to mean something, because a major distributor named Damian was still operating right above him. She insisted that if we didn’t take Damian down, the local drug trade wouldn’t even skip a beat.”
I looked down at Jonathan, the man I used to love. All the color had drained from his face; his legs looked like they could barely hold him up.
Giovani’s eyes welled with tears.
“You all saw her working for Damian. You saw her using a kid as a mule, even shooting up dope herself.
“But she never went dirty.
“She was risking her life every single day to gather intel for us.
“That girl she forced to carry the drugs?
“She had a map to the precinct on her, sure, but she was also carrying the exact coordinates to every single one of Damian’s manufacturing labs.
“Brianna used that whole setup just to slip us the intel.”
He pointed up at the screen, his voice booming.
“Martha secretly pocketed that USB drive and sold the information straight to Damian.
“Because of her, Damian lured our people into a trap.
“If Martha hadn’t done that, those thirteen narcotics officers on that freighter would still be alive today.”
The whole truth was finally out.
The very same people who had been hurling insults at me earlier were now staring at their shoes.
A dead silence washed over the plaza.