22. Ember #2
“Choose a side and choose it fast. You were offered the chance to belong. Nobody is stopping you from making the right choices from here on out, only you.”
He captures my wrist before I can move, a thumb bearing down on my pulse point. Not even the razor-like pressure of Hyland’s stare into the side of my head can wrench me from Blaine’s depthless, midnight orbs.
“My choice has always been you.”
Despite wanting to strangle him, I can’t help but follow the trail of his tongue as it slips out to moisten his lips.
“That doesn’t entail trying to barter the lives of those I care about.”
“Perhaps you should revise who you allow into your heart then,” he suggests. “I’ve never once claimed to be a good man, but I am an honest one. Can you say that about all of them?”
“Careful, Madden,” Hyland cautions.
“Or what?” He peers over my head at the big grump lingering far too close. “You need me more than I need you right now.”
“I’ve never once needed a thing from you.”
“Then I can call this meeting off. Shall I?”
Moving away from the window, Warner menacingly steps into the melee. The look on his face is downright thunderous. Not a hint of the soft, reassuring soul that I’ve come to associate with safety.
“Ember belongs to us.” Warner delivers the words with stinging disdain. “Choose her and you choose us. Our team. Our rules. It’s high time you learn that lesson.”
“I’m not a part of your world.” Blaine narrows his black eyes.
“Then do what you do best, Madden. Just disappear.”
“Blaine isn’t going anywhere,” I say angrily. “Nor is Axel. For once, put your egos back in their fragile little boxes, and focus on the task at hand.”
When no one responds, my dwindling patience erupts.
“Now! Gracie’s life depends on it!”
Warner ducks his gaze while Blaine has the decency to look chastised. I cast Hyland a penetrating glare then move my eyes to include Axel in the sentiment. Silent or not, he’s still on our team.
The tension is far from defused, but each man backs down without throwing hands or making another empty threat. I wait for Blaine to stalk away and light a cigarette before looking at his people.
“Should we be calling you ‘boss’ now?” Spyder snickers.
“Shut it. You two are stowaways.”
Raye harrumphs, her stare sour. “You’re welcome.”
“For what exactly?”
“Our help. None of us want to be here, so don’t act like this makes us friends or whatever.”
“Raye,” Blaine scolds around a circle of smoke. “Back off.”
“Just calling it like it is, boss. She can’t talk to you like that.”
“I said enough.”
“Why are we even here?” She rolls her eyes. “This isn’t our fight.”
Blaine’s on the verge of giving Raye a public dressing down when an ear-piercing shatter cracks through the entire floor. Cold air rushes in to kiss my back, rippling through shards of fast-flying glass.
The huge, crisscrossed bay windows at our backs implode at the intrusion of a quickly moving shadow swinging into the room. Warner tackles me from the side to crush me as our hideout is infiltrated.
Before I hit the floor, I see the flying figure release what looks like a grappling rope to deftly land on two feet amidst the broken glass. Muscles taut as a highwire stretched to its limit, an attack or round of bullets never comes. Not even once Warner has me protectively tucked under him.
Our intruder doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t so much as offer an explanation beyond dusting himself off then surveying the entire floor and everyone on it. Those almost-glowing, honey eyes immediately reveal his identity.
Gunnar Slaughter.
So much for our perimeter.
The Hunter is cut beneath dark jeans and a black, military-style weapons vest over a muscle tee. He’s the same height and build as Axel but somehow lighter on his feet—a deft, deadly ballerina who picks through the shattered glass to get a better look at us all.
“Your security is lacking,” he announces casually. “If you’re going to guard the street, put men on the roof too. It’s a glaringly obvious exposure point.”
Once-purple hair is now a shock of spiked chocolate-brown, removing the identifiable feature he used to dupe me. But his boyish features, full lips and matching eyes are a dead giveaway. He’s a breathing replica of our Axel.
Everyone has moved as one, taking attack positions and quickly drawing weapons. Warner rises above me to spin and face our newest arrival.
“Was it necessary to break into the building?” Blaine drops his lit cigarette to warily approach us.
“Yes.” Gunnar cocks his head, his orange-hued gaze unsettlingly cold and appraising. “I don’t answer to your patrolling guard dogs, Phantom.”
A shiver snakes its way down my spine, nodule by nodule. Fuck, even his baritone is light and lilting, a carbon copy of the twin standing not so far away. Axel is ashen, stiller than a corpse while assessing his long-lost brother.
Gunnar casts an analytical look over us all, one by one. He lingers on me, the corner of his mouth twitching ever so slightly. I take the hand up that Warner offers, wincing when my bruises twinge from the hard landing.
When his icy stare touches the brother who lied to conceal his existence, Gunnar’s posture changes. He doesn’t seem to have much visible emotional range, but his legs spread, shoulders squaring in clear preparation.
“Brother.” He nods tersely.
With a telltale gulp, Axel takes a single step forward. “Brother.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Not long enough. What do you want?”
Glancing between them reveals a whole roster of differences. Axel can’t hide a single thought or feeling that crosses his mind. It seems his brother has the opposite problem. His identical features are disturbingly blank, failing to betray a single clue.
With a chilling smile, Gunnar slides a long, terrifyingly sharp hunting knife from his vest. Not even the guns being trained on him by Hyland, Spyder and Raye seem to provoke any hesitation. He acts like the rest of the room is invisible.
“I was summoned.” His shoulder twitches in dismissal.
“In London,” Axel clarifies.
“Ah. I had business to tend to.”
“And that’s what we’d like to discuss.” Warner remains in front of me, taking over the conversation. “A business proposition.”
Still, Gunnar ignores him. He may as well not even exist.
“Why didn’t you listen to her?”
Inching out of his corner, Axel calmly spreads his hands. “Who?”
“Meredith.”
I watch a shudder snap over Axel, almost shaking his knees. “What about her?”
“She told you to run.” Gunnar’s words are clipped. “Yet here you stand.”
“How do you know about that?”
The twisted look of pure contempt and disgust on Gunnar’s face fills me with a very bad feeling. What we’re witnessing isn’t the kind of hatred you can talk through. He looks physically repulsed by his twin.
“I’ve been privy to every conversation you’ve ever had with the woman who birthed us, brother mine. Every phone call. Every email. Every visitation request. Every time you neglected to mention the person you both cast aside while happily catching up.”
“Cast aside?” Axel’s laugh is achingly hollow.
“You abandoned me to die.”
“We protected you!”
“You erased me.”
“I did what she told me to do! I was thirteen!”
“You’re as pathetic as I imagined.” Gunnar steps forward, wielding the hunting knife as expertly as his name would suggest. “Killing you will have to be my warmup before Mother.”
“Take one more step, and there will be three bullets in your skull,” Warner booms from in front of me. “You’re in a room full of trained agents, Mr Slaughter.”
Looking back over us, Gunnar seems to remember that we’re still here. Armed and ready. Not that it deters him in the slightest. He merely sighs like this entire scene is some minor inconvenience.
“Why did you ask me to come here?”
“Gracie Livingstone,” I redirect.
His smirk spreads, oozing danger and bloodthirst. “I don’t work for free.”
“Name your price.”
“I believe I’ve already done that, 768. A life for a life.”
For once, the old name doesn’t make me flinch. Dealing with his kind feels like familiar ground.
“Axel isn’t up for grabs. Name another price.”
“You have precisely six seconds before I kill every last one of you.” Gunnar passes the blade back and forth in his hands. “So don’t waste time bargaining for my brother’s life. It’s mine regardless.”
“He’s off limits,” Warner deadpans. “Now lose the knife.”
“This has been a short negotiation. Who wishes to die first?”
Everyone braces, guns raised and aimed at our assailant while Gunnar menacingly eyes his twin. One wrong move and we’ll all be left to pick up the pieces.
“Just stop!” I hurriedly step in front of Axel, ignoring the protests it causes. “Axel is under our protection, so whatever issue you have with him, you take it up with us.”
Gunnar’s laugh is a deep, full-belly thunderclap that unnerves me.
“Believe me, you do not want that.”
“Then why did you agree to meet?” I question.
His smile grows savage. “I intend to repay my twin for the neglect he’s shown me all these years. When I’m done, he will know a mere ounce of my pain.”
“What pain?” Axel blusters from behind me.
“You know, brother.”
“No! I don’t know! And I’m sorry for whatever you’ve been through, Gunnar, but it isn’t my fault. I didn’t choose to send you away, and I don’t know where you’ve been all these years.”
“You. Lied.”
“I was a child!” Axel pushes me aside to shout back.
“So was I!”
The air chills, laden with irreconcilable secrets. Years worth of lies. The deceit meant to protect a child that instead doomed him to solitude. For Axel—his swirling amber orbs glistening with unshed moisture—the unbearable weight of that choice lies heavy.
His open posture, slack face and outstretched hands plead for his brother to show mercy. I must be na?ve for thinking he may just get it.
But I’m not prepared for Gunnar to draw back his arm then snap his blade out faster than any of us can intercept. The hunting knife slashes through the air at speed, hissing straight past me to find its fleshy target.