Chapter sixteen
Greyson
“Don’t be such a fucking baby,” Tilly mutters as she dabs at another cut with an alcohol wipe. I wince again. It bloody stings. “So much for the fearless bodyguard.”
“Your uncle cut the word traitor into my chest with his pen knife. Forgive me for flinching.”
She rolls her eyes as if bored. “I would love nothing better than to spank you this minute,” I say, reaching for her pert rear as she bends to reach whatever wound she’s cleaning.
Her breathing hitches as her cheeks glow pink.
I love how my words affect her. “You’d like that too, wouldn’t you, Miss?”
“You’re giving me fucking whiplash, Greyson. Dirty words on your lips, but you refuse to kiss me.”
“I’m in the look-don’t-touch phase. It’s necessary for us both to survive the next few weeks.”
Our interaction reminds me of a similar one Cash and Cami had on our mission before Christmas, though without the flirting. Tilly has a similar empathy level to Cami—fucking ground zero.
Our team had infiltrated the enemy at an abandoned warehouse. Everything was going swimmingly when shots were fired. Outnumbered, our only option was to retreat. As we weaved through the junkyard outside the property, Cash had caught his thigh on a rusty piece of metal.
Finally, once back at the safe house, we inspected the damage. Cami and I were unscathed, but Cash had a deep wound around five inches long. It bled heavily, his clothing and skin turning a deep red.
“Fuck,” he snarled, picking up a glass and throwing it at the opposite wall in the kitchen. “I’ll bleed out at this rate.” Cami had rolled her eyes at him like Tilly had just done to me.
“Take your pants off and get on the table,” she ordered.
“No fucking way.”
“Do it now; we don’t want you to bleed to death, do we?” She had started pulling open the cupboards in search of something. “Greyson, go find a first aid kit.”
“Here? You expect me to find medical supplies in this hellhole? What am I, a magician?”
“Don’t be a fuckwit. Alcohol, find me alcohol and something that I can use as a bandage,” she shot back, not amused by my questioning of her.
We were so far into our assignment by then that most of our supplies were gone.
The small amount of food and medical items provided by our company in the beginning were obliterated, but I did as I was told and went off in pursuit of her desired items.
When I returned with a bottle of vodka, a grimy white bath towel, and a shredded curtain in hand, Cash was lying on the kitchen table in his t-shirt and boxers with Cami poking at the gash on his leg.
His face twisted in discomfort, but his lips pressed closed.
No doubt he didn’t want to be reprimanded by our temporary matron again for being a pussy.
“It will need stitching,” she said, matter of factly. Her eyes roamed the old kitchen and focused on a cupboard above the sink. “Greyson, see if there’s a sewing box in there.”
“Why would there be…”
“Call it women’s intuition. Stop fucking interrogating me and look.”
Sure enough, I found an old tin filled with thread and pins but no needles.
Cami rummaged in the box and extracted black thread and a safety pin.
She straightened the metal out to create a curved needle-like instrument.
After bending the end to create a loop, she expertly threaded the homemade needle.
“Hold him down,” she said, and I went to Cash’s side. He looked fucking terrified. So would I be if that crazy bitch was planning on punching holes in my skin.
“Don’t worry, mate,” I told him. “At least you ain’t bleeding out. You would be dead already.”
“That may be preferable,” he replied before practically jumping off the table. I looked up and saw Cami pouring the vodka I found liberally into the wound. “What the actual fuck, Cami! Give a man some notice; my balls are in my throat.”
“Shut up and lie back down. If I’m going to have to sew you up while looking at your dick, I don’t want you to die of infection after. I can’t go through this for nothing. Digging your grave would be the final straw.”
I had watched on, held Cash’s hand, and gritted my teeth with him as Cami slid the needle skillfully through his skin and closed the gash within minutes.
“Greyson!” Tilly says sharply, focusing my attention back on her. “Are you still in the room with me or on bloody cloud nine?”
“This is as far from cloud nine as I can get.”
“Well, listen when I’m talking to you,” she snaps, then returns to cleaning each cut.
Damon had dropped the medical kit into the room five minutes after he left.
Tilly had assumed a nurse-like persona ever since, ordering me around.
It had almost been enjoyable when she removed my shirt. “Your family, did you visit them?”
“Um…” I stutter, surprised by her question. I forgot we had that conversation back in the empty farmhouse. It was barely a week ago that I had been sent to collect her after she had absconded with friends. And now, here we are, having slept together and her uncle wanting to cut my balls off.
“Yes, I went to see my father,” I tell her eventually.
“And…” she prompts, still focused on her task.
“He wants me to disappear. He doesn’t feel my appearance in his life would benefit either of us.”
I hadn’t thought much of the meeting with my father a few days ago. After what happened in Scotland, it seemed more crucial than ever to put a face to the name “father.” It was something I had to do.
With the little I had been told of him growing up, I knew he was influential in London.
What I didn’t realize was that my mother had been his mistress, and when she fell pregnant, he discarded her.
It had been news that I had a whole other biological family who didn’t want to meet me.
That’s assuming they had been told of my existence. He said he had; I’m not convinced.
“What a bastard,” Tilly says. She glances up from her work and gives me a sympathetic smile.
“Don’t pity me,” I grumble. “He made it worth my while not to bother him.”
“Really? Did you have to threaten him at all?”
I laugh out loud with her assumption that I would automatically move to violence when a situation didn’t go my way. She doesn’t understand me, but that’s obvious. We barely know each other. My hard-ass personality is necessary for the job, not who I want to be.
“No, Miss. No threats required. He kindly offered up five million and an NDA if I walked away. My mother certainly had a taste for rich men.”
“Who is he?” I raise my eyebrows and shake my head.
“Worth a try. I probably know him. Every English bastard is friends with my family. We are firmly members of the ‘big bank accounts, no morals’ club.”
She’s now moved to the cut across my chest spelling out “TRAITOR.”
How I am now seen in the eyes of the man I’ve protected for years.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice soft. “This is my fault. I can’t believe he did this.”
“Tilly, I’m as much to blame, if not more so. But do you know something?”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t change what happened between us for the world. Now, fix me up so I can go beat up some bad guys, and then we can work out how to get you out of here before the big day.”
When I arrive in the basement, I find the twin brothers standing in the center of the empty room wearing only their boxers. Hunter stands to one side, twirling a knife between his fingers.
“Nice of you to join us, Greyson,” he mocks. “But you still look a fucking mess in clean clothes.”
“Unexpected altercation,” I mutter back, not giving him the time of day.
Before leaving the office, I had dressed in the fresh suit and stared at myself in the mirror.
The purple coloring on my face was already dark.
They’d struck me hard. I knew it was terrible when the assault was taking place, but seeing it brought the reality of my life home.
It also confirmed it was one I didn’t want to live with anymore, and more importantly, that these were people I didn’t want Tilly to be with any longer.
Marrying out of this mafia family into another wouldn’t make her life any better—more likely, it would make it worse.
She was to be paid for. That would make her an asset that could be disposed of if she no longer was fit for purpose.
As she tended to my injuries, albeit snarkily, I decided I needed to do something I should have done long ago.
Leave. It was time to start living the dream. My dream.
Ironically, my father, who’d abandoned me all those years ago, would be the man making it possible.
His payout for my silence was more than I needed to disappear.
Somehow, I would get Tilly and myself away from here.
We would evaporate into nothing and never be seen again. But first, I had to work out how.
I walk over to the first man calmly. Their names escape me, but I know they sound similar.
More importantly, they know exactly who I am and what I’m capable of.
Of all the men I work with, I am one of the best at getting answers.
I have no qualms about disassembling a man piece by piece and keeping him alive long enough to witness most of it.
“Who wants to go first?” I ask casually. Neither man speaks. “Everyone in this room knows what information you need to give me. I need your employer.”
“Hunter Devane,” the first brother replies with a smirk.
“Your other employer.” They both shrug, and I take a breath then let it out loudly. “Fuck, I was sure hoping you were going to make this easier on yourselves.”
Damon stands in the opposite corner to Hunter. I walk toward him, trying to figure out how far he wants me to go with them. Do they need to die? Or are they to be made a spectacle of? A warning that double agents are treated with no mercy.
“How far?”
“As far as you need to,” he says as I lift a saw hanging on the wall beside him. “The one on the left is besotted with the safety of the one on the right. Start cutting him up, and his brother will sing.”
“Noted,” I mutter, returning to my victims, knowing precisely what I need to do.
Two hours later, two men lie at our feet in pieces. Damon and I are covered in blood as we wrap the body parts in black plastic, adding weights to ensure they sink.
“He held out longer than I thought he would,” Damon muses, throwing part of an arm in beside the foot I’m stuffing in a black bag.
“It tends to be the ones you think won’t handle it that do.”
In the past, I’ve enjoyed this kind of sadistic violence. The feeling of the power of having another life at my fingertips. Today, it all feels so fucking pointless.
“You okay?” Damon asks.
Hunter left as soon as they gave up the name of the man who paid them to play the gunshots at his New Year Ball: Rodion Anastasov, Tilly’s Russian cousin, the man who wanted to marry her, or at least his father did.
The little I know of him is that his mother, Rose, died in childbirth, and she was a sister to Tilly’s father.
But these families' systems are messy. Cousins marry cousins to get deals done more often than not.
“Well, McKinney, today I’ve been beaten, sliced open, and threatened. Then, I dismembered two men I worked with. So no, I am not okay.”
Damon chuckles, and I glare at him. The whole damn world sucks.
“Can I help at all?” His offer surprises me.
As an ex-cop and steadfast Hunter supporter, for all I trust him, I would never think he was on my side.
But I also know that extracting not only myself but Tilly from here will be complex and dangerous.
I could do with at least one person on my team.
So, I do something I would rather not: I broach the subject of what I need.
“Maybe it depends on if I can trust you.”
“Anything said now will never be repeated as long as it doesn’t constitute murdering my employer. I need to eat. I am human, Greyson. I know a conflicted man when I see one. Tell me.”
“I need to disappear,” I admit.
“That should be easy enough. Forged documents and a flight, as long as you have funds.” The idea of me running away doesn’t faze him. Even though he utilizes my skills and appreciates what I can do, he knows men can be replaced. He also understands that a man wanting out is one that needs to go.
“Funds aren’t the issue. But there is another thing…”
Damon looks up from whatever body part he prepares to be sunk in the river. “I have a feeling a won’t like this,” he says with a smirk.
“I want to take Tilly with me.”