Chapter 5

FLAMES

NOT MY CIRCUS, NOT MY FUCKING MONKEYS.

Still when the look alike Clark Kent pulled me aside for a talk, I felt a fucking pang of guilt choke me.

Elise wouldn’t have wanted this for her sister. I didn’t particularly feel homey towards Mia but I’d lived long enough to know the difference between wounds and scars. And ten years in the Marines had taught me one fucking thing.

Wounds healed but scars didn’t. Scars ran so fucking deep they nearly messed you up. And for her? Shit. Whether she had chosen to be with Bryant or not, he was a fucking inhumane bastard that deserved to be rotting away at some city graveyard.

It wasn’t just one scar on her arms or her waist. It was a shit ton of them and I had a gravely loose idea why she had panic attacks.

Frankly speaking she was strong, no woman I had fucked would endure the ton of shit she’d been subjected to.

“Your friend was right, the wound on her abdomen needed some cleaning otherwise she would have had an infection. Her bruises however, they’ll take time to heal. I’d recommend a few ointments for the scars too but unfortunately I’m too short-packed”, the spiffy doc said and I glanced at a shaking Mia seating by the metallic bench.

“Write the prescriptions down, I’ll get them”

The doc took out a piece of paper scribbled something down before he gave me the little piece of paper.

Two minutes later after the doc scurried away, I had my bag in one hand and another bag full of new clothes for the female.

“You ready to go?”

Her eyes shot up to meet mine and for the first time since I saw her, I fucking pitied her. Ironical wasn’t it.

The woman I had wished was dead instead of my sweet pea was standing in front of me with so much shit than a villain with a sadder back story.

Clinging to my jacket, her eyes wide enough you could see the splashy blue in them, she asked,

“Alaska?”

Last place an insane mob boss would try looking for her.

“Yes”

“What comes next after this? I-I can’t stay here. We’ll freeze out here”

Ignoring her bullshit, I walked away from the waiting area to the hall that led to an awaiting car outside.

“Andro”, she called softly behind me and I stopped in my tracks feeling rage drip inside me.

She didn’t need to call me that because her sister was the only woman—the only woman who called me that.

And while my conscience had done a total backflip after seeing her bruises, it still didn’t change the fact that I didn’t like Mia Tonelli.

Her eyes looked like Elise’s but yet so different. Unlike Elise’s sweet as fuck voice, Mia’s voice grated my nerves every damn second and her demeanor? As much as I liked submissives, she was a whole different submissive.

Scared and controlled like a turkey before thanksgiving.

Turning around and passing her a glare, she fidgeted before she corrected,

“Flames, I don’t think it’s safe…here”

“Why? What are you running from?”

It was a stupid shitty question but I wanted her to say it. I wanted her to admit that it was her own bullshit that had gotten us here. That had made us meet after all these years.

That had brought us all the way in Alaska.

She got involved with Bryant Knox! A fucking psycho. For what? Money? Power like the power-hungry buffoon her dad was?

“Bryant Knox but I suppose you knew that already before you asked”

“I don’t take bullshit assignments like these without knowing who I’m protecting my client from”

Taken aback a little but hiding it away easily, she asked,

“Client?”

No. She wasn’t but I would have rather let her believe that than told her I was doing this from the goodness of the little piece of heart that still remained in my body,

“Business. I get paid to keep you out of danger”

“I don’t understand-I don’t have any money to pay you- “

“Consider it charity, my boss does that a lot”

Her brows creased and her mouth formed into a thin line.

“I didn’t want anyone’s pity”, she declared.

I inched towards her my face so close to hers our breaths mixed.

“You should have thought of that before you showed up at my place of work, dressed in rags and covered in bruises”

The bruises weren’t her fault. I was being a dick and I knew it and I fucking embraced it.

“You had options. You could have turned away. You could have gotten rid of me instead of bringing me to this icy fortress they call a country”

Amused at her audacity to talk back and the bold charisma she stirred in her stance, I fired a reply.

“You are right, I should have but you are her sister and God damn it, I loved her”

Loved her.

It’d been too long since I uttered such crap from my mouth but my heart knew it and my past was imbued with Elise’s memories.

The scowl she had got swapped by a cool face of gratitude and something I couldn’t quite read.

“We don’t have all day. You coming or not?”

She fucking nodded and I mentally groaned a loud fuck my life.

It was going to be a long shitty month. Given all the protection Bryant had and the pussies Berkely had hired to take him down, the way I saw it, I was stuck with Mia frigging Tonelli for more than a month.

Twelve minutes later, I parked the car against a flurry covered coniferous tree staring at the blizzard past my windscreen that threatened to break out horridly.

“Why did we stop? Is this the place? There’s nothing here for Pete’s sake”

“Cabin’s up ahead. You have it in you to walk?”

I don’t even get why I was asking. Her answer didn’t matter because whether she liked it or not, I was not going to lead her fucking boyfriend straight to us by taking the car up to the cabin.

It was a huge forest by the time anyone found the car, the comms in the cabin would have alerted me not forgetting the booby traps that included landmines and fucking spikes.

“Not in these shoes I can’t”, she pointed the obvious and I unbuckled my seatbelt reaching for the boots in the back seat.

‘Wear those”, I ordered and although defiantly, she listened by taking off her sneakers one by one and placing them on the center console before she put on the boots.

“We go out there, you listen to me. You follow my every step like a goddamn soldier. I tell you to move, you fucking sprint. I tell you to stop, you fucking stop. Clear?”

“I’ve trudged on snow before. It’s not a big deal”

“You’ve ever disarmed a bomb?”

Confused she gazed at me,

“I don’t understand how that’s relevant in this context. If anything you should be worried of hypothermia going out in nothing but a shirt in this blizzard”

“Didn’t realize you cared about me”

“I don’t. I’m just saying we hate each other’s company but that doesn’t mean I’d like to see you die”

Her mouth said one thing but her eyes said another. She wished I was dead as did I. I wouldn’t be surprised if she gutted me in my sleep.

“No one’s going to die, if you listen to me. The cabin hasn’t been used for a long time. The booby traps can only be disarmed from the inside- “

“What booby traps?”

The kind that killed you within seconds way faster than mere hypothermia.

“I have everything covered; we have to move”

Dazed but still bold enough to trust me, she nodded and I opened my side of the door as did she.

My boots sunk into the ground; the snow cover ankle high. I could barely see shit past the snow flurry that roared like crazy.

Lucky for us I had a photogenic memory and I’d lived up here in isolation for a few years to know where the traps were and where there weren’t.

“Andro! I-I can’t see”, Mia shouted from the other side of the car clinging to my jacket against her shoulders.

I’d been trained to handle such conditions but even I could feel the ghastly effect of the cold breeze against my skin.

“Follow”, I barked moving one step at a time and with Mia following closely behind my back.

Her steps were more soft and less noisy compared to mine. I accessed the environment for the fifth time marking all the spots that had potential life-ending traps.

I could almost see the cabin’s beat up chimney from here. Fourteen more steps and we would be standing on the cabin’s porch.

Twelve more steps and I could almost smell the wood paint from the cabin’s walls.

Ten more steps and I could already imagine myself diving in the moose fur I got years ago from skinning a moose that I had shot while hunting.

Eight more…

“Flames?’ Mia called warily and I turned around, my fucking heart pulsating.

Her golden hair in her face, her sapphire eyes wide and her cheeks so pale I could almost see ice sticking to them she glanced down and I followed her gaze.

“I-I think I stepped on something”

The snow covering her ankles, we both knew that it was no squirrel or a dead raccoon she’d stepped on.

Of the few times she actually called my name right, I least enjoyed this one.

“I’m I going to die?” she asked horrified.

“No, Mia. You just stepped on a landmine, killing both of us”, I dripped sarcasm.