Chapter Twenty-Nine
Creed
The minute my mother opens the door, the scent of sex and lies lances my nostrils. And while my keen sense of smell has proven useful in battle, today it turns my damn stomach.
“Hello, Mother.”
She stares back at me with the same blue eyes I’d once possessed myself, with the kind of welcome reflected in their depths that one might give a tiger in the wild—a fa?ade of regal indifference meant to show no fear that also hopes to mask an underlying desire to bolt. I have no doubt I do, indeed, look the role of an angry tiger, ragged from battle and battered by the rain.
I’m only here out of what is already a misplaced sense of obligation to her as her son to confirm her as guilty or innocent before ruining her. She reeks of guilt. She’s always been just as guilty as my father.
“And here, I thought you’d forgotten I existed,” she replies shortly.
“I’m sure you hoped as much,” I say dryly. “We need to talk.”
She tilts her head, studying me for several long seconds. The years had been kind to her, despite the demands of leading Taylor Industries—a task she’d begged me to undertake. Her skin is smooth, her long, dark hair sleek and glossy. She has aged like fine wine, younger than her years, beautiful even. It seems killing people agrees with her. But then, she had plenty of money to ease the effects of age.
“Come in,” she says finally, stepping back into the foyer to allow my approach. I enter the house I’d once called home—expensive Italian marble beneath my feet, etched plate-glass windows lining high ceilings—and wish like hell I didn’t have to be there.
“This way,” she says.
I follow her down the hallway to the kitchen, a room I’d loved as a child, a place where cookies and milk had awaited me after school and holiday meals had been festive. But age had dispelled the fa?ade of a fairy tale family. I’d discovered my mother had been playing house at the expense of her moral compass, ignoring the people my father helped kill. Apparently, she’s found herself willing to take over where her husband had left off.
In a defensive posture, she places the eight-foot, navy-blue kitchen island between us. Neither of us bother with a bar stool.
I waste no time getting down to business, setting a bullet on the tile counter. The rosy color drains from her face.
“I see you finally managed to make Green Hornets market-worthy.”
“Where did you get that?” she demands.
“Dug it out of my rib cage,” I say. “I see you’re up to Dad’s old tricks, selling weapons to whoever will buy them regardless of consequence.”
“That’s impossible,” she counters.
“I promise you it’s not,” I say. “And I have friends, good men fighting for their country, who are now fighting for their lives because of those bullets. I want names. Who you sold them to, when, and in what quantities.”
“That list is short. The U.S. Army. Period. There are no other customers. So, if you’re shooting each other up with them, that’s not my problem.”
“You’re lying.” She can barely look me in the eye, but then, it’s been a long time since she could—maybe all the way back to the days of those after-school cookies. She wasn’t that woman anymore—the perfect housewife and mother—if she ever had been.
She glares at me. “Don’t you dare come in here and pretend honor while you judge me, because we both know you’ve plenty to be judged on yourself. And your day is coming, Creed.”
“I want names,” I demand, my tone harsh by design. “Who did you sell the Green Hornets to?”
“I’m not giving you anything,” she declares. “You certainly haven’t given a damn thing to me.”
“If even one more of these bullets ends up in one of our soldiers,” I say. “I promise you, I will make destroying you and Taylor Industries my life mission.”
That pale, plastic surgery-created face reddens. “What’s so pathetic,” she says, “is that I believe you. I believe my son would try to destroy me.”
“Your son died years ago,” I assure her. “You killed him.”
I’d come here for answers and hoped to find the loving mother I’d grown up with, not the enemy she’s become. Jesus Christ, I’m a fool. I expect Addie to give up on her father, and yet I still haven’t managed to do so with my mother. “Talking isn’t working,” I say. “Let’s go to your computer.”
Her eyes go wide. “Why would I do that?”
“Because I want more than the names of who you sold those bullets to. I want inventory of every last bullet stocked in your warehouses.” Alarm slides across her face, and she looked like she might refuse, so I softly add, “We can do this the easy way, Mother , or the hard way.”
She glowers, her gaze skittering to the gun and two knives strapped to my hips, swallowing hard as she inventories how easily I can make good on that ultimatum. Without looking at me, she turns on her heels and marches down the hall, turning to the office on the right that had once been my father’s.
I’m behind her solid mahogany desk by the time she’s on the opposite side. She isn’t doing anything I don’t supervise. I sit and key her MacBook to life.
“Already logged in,” I note, glancing up at her. “I’m ashamed, Mother. You should be more careful.” I point to the visitor’s chair across from me. “Sit.” Her lips purse, but she does as she’s told.
I pull out my gun and set it on the desk, reminding her how easily I can use it, and start typing. A second password screen pops up the instant I type in “Green Hornets.”
“What’s the password?”
“Creed,” she informs me, giving me a go to hell glare.
I don’t miss the implication that she made those bullets to kill me and those like me. She hates me almost as much as I hate her. I type in my name.
The information I need appears on the screen, including storage locations and past shipments, which indicate sales to only one buyer—the U.S. Army, just as she claims.
Or so the sales documents indicate.
“Call your security team. Clear Caleb Rain to pick up a shipment.”
She goes ghost-white. “You won’t get away with this,” she vows.
“Just make the call.”
She makes the call, and the instant she hangs up, I snatch my cell and contact my Renegade team.
“We’ll wait together while they retrieve the bullets,” I tell her. “That way, you can help me clear up any trouble they might run into.”
In the meantime, I want the specs to manufacture those bullets. I return my attention to her MacBook and get to work downloading her data onto a drive.
That’s when my nostrils flare with the scent of sex again and something else that’s familiar. My gaze jerks to hers with realization. It’s Lawrence. Holy hell, it’s the fucking general.
I pick up my weapon and stand. “Get up,” I command. “And take me to him.”