21. Ember #2
“Nearly tore the man apart.”
“Jesus, Ax.”
His shoulder lifts in a half-hearted shrug. “I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, but what Gunnar did was inhuman. A thirteen-year-old child. He didn’t even know the man.”
“Then why cover it up?” Hyland shakes his head.
“Mum blamed herself for the state Gunnar was in. We don’t know what happened to him, but he was close to starving, all beaten and bruised. Could barely talk. She never got over abandoning him and refused to watch his life be taken away by a prison sentence too.”
“So you wove a lie.” I nod in sick understanding.
“Not me,” he corrects. “It was all her. Gunnar didn’t exist to us. Not outside of her memories. She ordered him to disappear and never return. In exchange, she’d make it all go away.”
The realisation that Axel had no choice but to conceal a brutal crime as a young kid leaves me cold. Not only did he lose his family, but he also had to rewrite his own family history. All to protect a child forged into a monster.
“I don’t know what kind of life he thinks I had after losing everything.” His shoulders shake, voice trembling hard. “But Gunnar believes that I took his future from him. Now he wants it back.”
“You were just a child,” I reason.
“The one child who didn’t get sent away. Who wasn’t abandoned and left to survive all alone. In his mind, I got everything that he never had, no matter how false that really is.”
“So that’s why he’s back,” Warner muses.
After knocking back the last of his whiskey, Axel places the glass down. He takes a pause to wipe his face, still not looking at any of us.
“I don’t know much about my brother, but Gunnar is tangled up in Madden’s world. He’s the reason this is happening. I told you that criminal can’t be trusted.”
“Can you be trusted?” Warner’s jaw tics.
“Yes. I’m your teammate.”
“You fucking lied to us, Axel! You’ve been lying to us for two years!”
Honey-hued sadness begs for forgiveness, bouncing between the two men Axel calls his brothers. A part of me aches for him. Whatever evil he’s hiding, I can see the toll it’s taken. Nobody lives a lie for no good reason.
Another part of me remembers all the strained looks between him and Blaine. The tension so thick, no blade could hope to cut it. Their constant sniping. It has been going on for months, and still, Axel didn’t think to trust us.
He kept lying.
On and on and on.
It’s far worse for Warner and Hyland. The Anaconda Team is built on trust. That was made clear to me on my very first day. This secret isn’t just Axel’s cross to bear—it shakes the very core of their foundation.
“Why did Gunnar save me from those jackasses just to knock me out?” I ask the room.
“He clearly didn’t want to chat.” Axel stares down at his hands.
“But why intervene at all?”
“Truthfully, I don’t know what he hopes to achieve.”
“Then let’s ask someone who does.” Warner pulls out his phone, angrily jabbing the screen.
We all watch him make the phone call that will bring our fractured team back together. I doubt Blaine’s gone far. Whatever game he’s playing, he did remain in the hospital while I was checked over and declared fit to leave.
Fraught silence reins until the penthouse’s doorbell rings. The fact that Warner hasn’t clued Blaine in on our security system yet speaks volumes. At this rate, our enemies could pull our team apart like wet tissue paper.
Warner hobbles on his prosthetic while escorting the obsidian-eyed troublemaker into the room. Blaine shoots me a searching look, parking himself in the corner against the built-in TV unit where Axel can’t launch a surprise attack.
“How do you know Gunnar Slaughter?” Warner doesn’t beat around the bush.
Seeing Blaine’s surprise is a novelty. He clearly didn’t expect Axel to come clean. The fact that he knew about the deceit all along only adds to the burn of betrayal I’m sure we all feel.
“Professionally,” Blaine responds.
“Meaning?”
“He’s known to the criminal underworld.”
I watch Warner pinch the bridge of his nose. “Be more specific.”
“Gunnar provides services to the international community. We met years ago while I was running a drug operation in Argentina. He’s done a few jobs for me over the years.”
“What kind of services?” Axel gets hold of his emotions long enough to ask.
“Your research didn’t turn that information up?”
“Fuck you, Madden. You’re playing with forces that you don’t understand.”
“I think I understand a lot more than you do, pup. This is above your pay grade.”
“Don’t antagonise him,” Warner barks, halting their heated stare off. “Just answer the question.”
Blaine tears his dark gaze away, delaying an all-out war. I have a feeling that Axel would be happy to get his favourite knives out to play for Blaine’s execution right about now.
“Gunnar Slaughter is what we would call a bounty hunter.” Blaine shrugs. “Codename, The Hunter. He only takes the most complex cases and charges fees higher than the GDP of most European nations.”
“How do you know this?” Warner presses.
“Because I used him to track down your precious little jailbird almost a year ago.” His black stare strays to me. “The Hunter found Ember for us.”
No one speaks for a second. Then the whole room erupts with shouts and questions. Only I don’t have a single word to offer. Not yet. All I can do is stare back at Blaine, attempting to fathom his mind.
Regardless of his motivations, he rescued me. It sounds like that cost him a pretty penny too. I was a bargaining chip then. A tasty morsel to be dangled in front of his prey. What I need to know now is whether or not that’s really changed.
“Enough!” Warner shouts over the barrage of voices. “This doesn’t explain what on earth this man is doing in London, butting into our criminal case.”
“He’s supposed to be on a job for me.” Blaine rolls his lip piercing.
“What job?” Hyland booms.
When Blaine drops his stare from mine, I know we’re in for a treat.
“I hired him to locate Gracie Livingstone.”
“You did what?” I blurt out.
“It’s the fastest way to locate the girl.” He smooths a hand down his clean t-shirt. “You wanted her found, right?”
“Well… yes. Obviously.”
“So I called Gunnar. He agreed to take the hit.”
“The hit?” Axel splutters.
“The case, the target, whatever.” Blaine waves him off, unaffected. “He’s supposed to be tracking our missing girl, not gallivanting around London and mowing down rogue criminals.”
“Clearly, he’s not! My psycho brother is here right now!”
“That’s your problem. Not mine. I didn’t ask him to come.”
“Then what does he want from me?” Axel hisses in anger.
“I’d imagine to add your name to his list.”
“His list?” I parrot.
“The Hunter operates on a strict moral code. Anyone who crosses him soon finds themselves on a list then floating in chunks at the bottom of a ravine.”
In any other circumstance, seeing Axel’s eyes bug out would be amusing. But not while hearing that his bounty hunter, illegal assassin of a brother holds some stupid childhood grudge.
“Wait.” Warner holds up a hand. “Regardless of the infrastructure we failed to dismantle, you don’t have the capital to afford this. How are you paying him?”
“Ah,” Blaine hums. “The catch.”
Coursing with an invisible current of ire, Axel steps closer to Blaine. Each movement shrieks of untapped violence. My eyes flit between them, the lessening distance spelling out danger. It’s like watching two tornados circle each other.
“What did you offer him?” Axel implores, advancing another step.
“I did this for Ember. To end her pain and turmoil.”
“What. Did. You. Offer. Him?”
“Information,” Blaine admits.
“Such as?” Axel specifies.
“He wanted to know all about his lucky twin brother and the life he never got to have. The Hunter wants to hunt you next.”
All hell breaks loose.
Axel pounces on Blaine, the pair coming to blows in a spectacular fashion. I’m lifted from the sofa and shoved backwards by Warner, his yelling going unheeded. Neither man stops trying to batter the other.
They slam into the TV console, sending a priceless vase flying. Crystal smashes against the hardwood floor before Blaine’s dropped onto the shattered fragments. He doesn’t appear to feel it, too busy smashing up Axel’s face like a man possessed.
The sight of spraying blood only cheers Blaine’s viciousness on. He’s a ruthless whirlwind. Axel gives as good as he gets, kneeing him in the dick then clocking his barely healed nose with a powerful right hook.
They twist and roll, slamming backwards into the long wooden unit. It causes the television to waver, almost like it’s listening to Hyland’s warning cry, then the flat screen topples forwards on top of them.
There’s an electric pop as glass and plastic fall apart, burying the two men. But it still isn’t enough to halt them. Axel emerges from beneath the ruined TV first, a hand curled around Blaine’s leg to drag him out too. Only to wallop him straight in the gut.
“They’re going to kill each other!” I tug on Warner’s grip.
“Let them get it out,” he grunts in my ear.
“Forget it!”
“None of us are getting in the middle of that fight. Especially not you.”
“We can’t just watch them!”
“Axel betrayed the trust of our entire team, and Blaine fed private, personal information to his estranged psychopathic twin. I think they’re entitled to beat the shit out of each other.”
“I have a decent view from here,” Hyland calls from the sofa. “The little shit owes me a new flat screen, though. Axel knows we have a no fighting in the penthouse rule.”
“We’ve got to stop this!”
“Stay out of it.” Warner winds two strong arms around my waist. “Violence is the only language these two speak.”
Hoisting Blaine around the midsection, Axel howls like some kind of deranged animal. He hauls his captive upright then batters him into the wooden coffee table, causing the structure to crack clean down the middle.