Chapter 3

FLAMES

ELEVEN FUCKING YEARS.

I hadn’t seen her in eleven fucking years.

Jason smiling smugly as usual gave her a warm look before his gaze fall on me.

“The man of the hour”, he mused and I wanted to rip his throat off his mellow body.

Blaze who stood next to him had the ever-hard scowl plastered on his face and I thanked the fucker for not talking. If he spoke, the little thread holding me in sheer calmness would snap.

“I need the room”, I simply said.

Blaze nodded his head in agreement while Jason although, annoying as fuck, left the room too.

Soon I was left with her and it sure as hell pissed me off.

She’d grown though. Not that pretty but she wasn’t bad. Her bones needed a little bit of meat and her hair needed a comb but otherwise it was her.

Fucking Mia Tonelli.

The irony of the situation being that I ran here to see her when I had vowed, I’d kill all the Tonellis if I ever laid eyes on them again.

Her blue eyes rose to meet mine and I pulled out a chair seating on it.

“Why the hell are you here, Mia?” I broke the ice and I ignored the shit clothes she had on, the bruises on her arms, the visible scrape through her ripped jeans and the visible dry lines of tears on her cheeks.

She was not my fucking problem.

I detested her and no amount of war would change the fact that she was a constant reminder of what I didn’t have in life.

She was the fucking reason my life was hell because without Elise, I was a fucking shell walking around with nothing but scars and pain inside.

Her hands still shaking, she locked eyes with me and opened her mouth to speak,

“I need your help”

I fucking grunted before my laugh echoed like a raging fire being added fuel. My help? My fucking help?

“I have nowhere to go and I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t-if you hadn-t”

My body stilled, my hands knotted into fists and I fucking dared her to say it. I fucking wanted her to stay it.

“You killed her”

I laid out the motherfucking truth. She stood up in her rags, her thin body towered before me and she did the one thing no sane man would do.

She touched me. Ten years in the Marine and the only brave person to touch me that way was a woman!

A slap so hard that it resonated in the room like a ping pong ball being tossed around.

A normal man I would have killed. Just taken out my pocket knife and slashed his neck he wouldn’t have known what hit him or jabbed the carotid artery and rendered him dead in seconds.

But no, a woman had slapped me. A woman I hated. A woman who’d waded into my life like the fucking bombs I avoided in Iran.

“You do not get to tell me that. I-I you were to blame for everything. Giving her false promises, putting absurd ideas into her mind. You never loved her because love doesn’t…love doesn’t mean putting people in harm’s way. You knew the consequences-you could have turned back”

Turned back.

Turning fucking back was suicide because of her devil of her father!

Standing up, rubbing my cheek I took in her form. Karma really was a fucking bitch. Elise died because she was of no use to Tonelli and here was his useful daughter coming to me for help.

“Touch me again and I swear you lose an arm. Coming here was the stupidest decision you could have made Tonelli”, I gritted making sure the message was loud and clear, “I can’t help you not because I despise you but because your face reminds me that she would have been with me right fucking now had you not existed. I look at you and I feel like ripping you bloody apart for even breathing the same air I am. Goodbye, Mia”

I hit a nerve. I knew I did because her eyes turned glossy and my conscience didn’t feel a fucking shit. I told the truth like how I fucking felt if that didn’t take her back to whatever hell she crawled from, I don’t know what would and I sure as hell wasn’t sticking around to find out.

Slamming the door on my way out, Berkely leaned on the opposite wall giving me that shitty look he had before he dropped a bomb.

“Taxi driver is dead. Two men seen near the premises. They left a message. Bloody fuckers think I’m like the rest of them cowards they can threaten”

I walked down the other way. If I could find the nearest elevator then hallelujah because this had to be one of the shittiest nights since my time in Russia.

Quite honestly, I preferred being back in Russia freezing to death while I tailed a major conglomerate with the intent of blowing his brains out.

“You are not curious?” Berkely asked behind me.

‘Not my problem”, I muttered spotting the elevator down the hall. I never set foot in the witnesses’ quarter or this floor for that fucking matter. I was more keen on the operations room that had the loaded goods any man could want. Guns, comms, grenades and any intel you could gather on anyone.

“You two have history”

I stopped right outside the elevator to face him.

“No”

His brows furrowed and he smirked,” Aah so you do have history. A lover, I suppose?”

Lover wasn’t the right word to describe it. I’d never bed Mia Tonelli, not in this lifetime or another.

“No”

“You know of all my employees you are the only fucker I couldn’t get information on. No family, no girlfriends, no nothing”

“What can I say I’m good at hiding my tracks”

Because I was and because I didn’t particularly thrive in the family or girlfriend department either.

“Yeah, that and you are really stupid as they come. The woman in there went through hell to get to you, you know why that is?”

She was insane. Stupid. Wanted to throw her pile of shit at me.

“I couldn’t give a fuck”

“Well you better start giving a fuck because you are the only person she can count on protecting her”

Anger sipped through my body in waves.

“She’s not my bloody problem, Berkely. You want to protect her? Fine but count me out”

He ran his hand through his hair before leveling me with a look,

“She’s your bloody problem alright. I keep tabs on my men, Flames and I know for a fact you didn’t go to Russia for some covert mission but because you had scores to settle. You killed her father so best believe she is your responsibility and I’m not asking, I’m ordering you to do so”

How the fuck did he know I killed Michael Tonelli in Russia. Had to be bloody Jason and his big mouth.

“And if I don’t comply to these wishes?”

I was the best in B&A, he couldn’t fire me not that that would even hurt my wallet in the least bit. Being a Marine came with cash and I’d invested plenty of cash in crypto that I didn’t need a job.

I had this job because like my colleagues, putting down the gun forever didn’t work well with us. All we knew was violence and we sure as hell needed violence to cure all the freaking shit, we saw at downrange.

“I’ll fucking kill you before Bryant Knox gets to her”

Bryant Knox? Mob boss. Worse than dead Giovanni Vincenzo mob boss.

The fucker was impenetrable. Filthy rich that he owned every illegal business you could think of.

“Fuck”

“He sent us a message. We take her back to him; he won’t touch us”

I really hated to say this but I did.

“No shit. If she ran away from him, there must have been some reason and we both know that reason isn’t pretty. He’ll do something worse than kill her”

“I know”

Another code for, I had a plan.

“What are you thinking?’

“Her safety first. Keep her as far away from him as possible until we contain Knox”

Contain Knox. He was the deadliest shit to ever walk the earth but he hadn’t met me. Killing one of them wasn’t easy but fuck, I’d killed ten what was one more on the list?

“You are not going after him”, Berkely read my mind. He knew I hungered to kill such assholes.

“You said contain him. I’m the only guy who can”

“Yeah and the only guy who’s crazy enough to go after him alone. Cannon’s out on a killing spree, I’m not losing another man for the thrill of it. We’ll take out Knox as a team until then I want you out of the country with her”

Hell!