Chapter 25 #2
“I went down hard with the third and felt like an epic failure, like the trust the command put in me was wasted. All the years I’d spent thinking good always won laughed in my face as I lay there bleeding out in the dirt, listening to men scream.
Some hostiles moved into the area to clear it and make sure we were all dead before setting the place on fire.
Woodly, one of the men I trained with—a damn good man—was beside me, his throat slit.
I dragged his body over mine and pretended to be dead. ”
Tears stung the backs of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I refused to cry because I had no right. The amount of anger and despair I felt just hearing this was nothing compared to what Kieran had lived.
“I’d almost given up. The pain, blood loss, and being outnumbered were odds I didn’t expect to overcome. Besides, why bother trying to survive? For what? To go home alone, to bear the weight of everyone’s eyes asking what happened and why I let my brothers die?”
“It’s not your fault,” I whispered.
“I must have really looked dead because they started talking,” Kieran rasped. “Make sure they’re all dead or we won’t get paid. Stupid Americans think they’re better, but here they are, killing their own just like the rest of us.”
I cuddled into his chest again, wanting to comfort him but not knowing how.
“My first reaction was denial, but it was hard to deny something when I was lying in the middle of a massacre, riddled with guilt for letting down the people who’d apparently sent us there to die. I got angry. So fucking angry that I didn’t even feel the pain anymore.
And then from across the dirt, someone else yelled, “There’s only four. One’s MIA! The one who isn’t American! They laughed. The one closest to me said, Imagine dying for a country that isn’t even yours.”
“Ghost,” I whispered, picturing his Asian features in my head.
“Yeah,” Kieran replied. “The spark of hope I felt knowing he might be alive coupled with the rage burning through my veins gave me the will to live. To fight. To make them pay.”
I felt it in the air. The energy he must have embodied that day as he rose from betrayal and blood-stained earth, leaving behind the hopeful boy he’d been to become a stoic man who walked among death.
“I grabbed the grenade attached to the belt of my fallen brother and launched it. The second it went off, I leaped up and started shooting, channeling the rage I felt into every bullet. I took down all the hostiles nearby and ducked into a building for shelter. I was out of ammo, and a group of men was heading my way. I searched the place, looking for something—anything—and found Ghost in a closet, bleeding from a stomach wound. He handed me his last two grenades and told me to leave him. I told him to fuck off and threw him over my shoulder. The front door burst in, and I headed out the back while Ghost tossed both grenades into the house. The force of the blast knocked us on our asses, but somehow we made it out. The fire and confusion were perfect cover to haul ass out of there. I’d barely made it a mile from that hellhole, when I collapsed.
I woke up a couple hours later in a tiny house with dirt floors.
A couple had found us, and instead of turning us in, they gave us first aid and hid us overnight.
That night, they drove into the next town, and we hopped a train. ”
“And then what?” I asked, completely amazed.
“We went off grid, knowing eventually they’d figure out that two of us got out.
Neither of us trusted anyone anymore, so going to the government for help was out.
About two months later, we learned they were looking for us, so we separated.
For a couple years, I moved from country to country, barely sleeping, always looking over my shoulder.
I took shitty jobs for cash and lived for the sole purpose of getting revenge.
And then I got caught. I thought for sure they’d assassinate me right there on the spot. Instead, they offered me a job.”
“A job!” I exclaimed. “You have to be freaking kidding me!”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” he mused.
“I hate to break it to you, but on a scale of one to ten, your sense of humor is a negative five.”
He scowled, so I leaned forward to peck a kiss to his lips. “That’s okay. I’m funny enough for the both of us.”
“You are not funny.”
“I am.” I disagreed. “What kind of job?”
“They wanted me to do their dirty work. The stuff the government couldn’t be caught doing.”
Shocked at the audacity, I shot up. “Wait. Isn’t that basically what you were doing when they tried to kill you?”
Kieran half smiled. “They didn’t seem to appreciate it when I pointed out the very same thing.”
“You told them to eat shit and die, right?”
“Crude words for such a sweet mouth,” he murmured, pressing the pad of his thumb into my bottom lip.
I pushed his hand away and glared.
“I snapped the neck of the man offering me the job,” he stated almost as if he was talking about the weather.
I gasped. “You didn’t.”
“It hadn’t occurred to me at the time to tell him to eat shit and die,” Kieran quipped.
I rolled my eyes.
“Maybe if it had, I would have avoided the two weeks in solitary confinement afterward.”
“Solitary confinement!” I fumed. I mean, obviously, killing was wrong, but Kieran was more wronged than them!
“It’s fine, baby doll. After years of being on the run in the shittiest places in the world, quiet and steady meals seemed like a vacation.”
“And after that, they just let you go?”
Kieran’s eyes settled on mine, and a chill slid down my spine. “One thing you need to realize, Hazard, is that, for a man like me, there is no walking away. The only freedom I will ever have is the kind I earn.”
We’ve all heard the saying freedom isn’t free. But was that what this was? Or was it captivity disguised as choice?
“So you took the job?” I surmised, trying to digest everything I was learning. Pretty sure it was going to cause acid reflux.
“It was either that or get prosecuted for war crimes, going AWOL, and murder of a government official.”
I wrinkled my nose. “AWOL?”
“Technically, I wasn’t discharged for my injuries. I ran and went into hiding. That’s considered absence without leave, and it’s very dishonorable.”
“But they tried to kill you!” Surely, there had to be an exception for that.
His reply was modulated, every word controlled as if he’d heard the words over and over until they were part of him. “The moment I enlisted in the military, my body was no longer mine but theirs to do with as they pleased, including murder.”
I never realized the military was so… grim. “Then why not just kill you like they tried to do before?”
“I was an asset. Not only did I make it through nine months of rigorous training and knew classified information, but I also survived an ambush and stayed off grid in the aftermath. Plus, now they had an entire folder of charges to blackmail me with.”
“Everything that happened to you was their fault.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” He affirmed. “The betrayal of that day whispers in every moment I breathe. And when I’m nothing but ashes mixed with earth, the wind will carry my echo into infamy that can never be erased.”
There was something slightly chilling about those words, maybe because he spoke so casually about his own death. Or maybe because the contempt and duplicity inside him was so strong that it would remain even when he did not.
“And I thought being abandoned at birth was bad,” I mumbled, wrapping my arms around myself to ward off the unpleasant air.
“What?” Kieran’s sharp voice brought my head up.
“What?” I echoed.
“You were abandoned at birth?” he asked, stare roaming my face.
“I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” I muttered around my fingers.
Kieran snatched my nails from my teeth. “Is it true?”
I nodded. “Yeah. My birth mother left me on the steps of the hospital when I was just a couple hours old.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Didn’t want me, I guess.”
“I can’t imagine anyone not wanting you.”
The unexpected words turned me gooey inside, melting away some of the tension and distress from this heavy conversation. “Really?”
Lifting my hand, he pressed a kiss to the back. “I want you so much that I’m spilling all my secrets.”
I climbed into his lap, sitting sideways, and laid my cheek on his shoulder. “You’ve been through a lot.”
“Most people have.”
“The government hasn’t tried to kill most people,” I countered.
He paused. Then quietly, “They’ve killed more than you know.”
Realization dawned. “You’re a hitman for the government. That’s the dirty work they have you doing.”
He hummed. “The official term is sanctioned operative.”
“So you’re allowed to kill because the government says you can?” I asked.
“I have official approval to carry out sanctioned missions.”
I made a sound because that sounded like something right out of a handbook. Oooh, does he have a hitman handbook? “That’s the same thing!”
“Technically, it’s not. I can’t just go down the street and kill someone. The people I assassinate are not random nobodies or cheating partners. I take out high-level threats like terrorists, weapons dealers, spies, global criminal kingpins, and sometimes even crooked politicians.”
“So you kill the bad guys.”
He made another of those grunting sounds. “Just because you’re making me a good guy in your story doesn’t mean I’m not a bad guy in others.”
“But those people you named are all bad,” I argued.
“The government once ordered a hit on me and my unit. Does that make us bad too?” he asked.
“Of course not.”
“Then who’s to say everyone I’ve taken out is as bad as they say?”