33. ~Joseph Stover~
33
~Joseph Stover~
“I failed to protect you once. I won’t fail again. You’re my daughter.”
My daughter.
I’d failed my own daughter.
She and her mother both.
They’d endured so much suffering because I’d made the wrong call.
More so, because I hadn’t stepped in when I should have.
I’d relinquished control and sat back and let things play out.
And it had hurt them.
The two people who I cared about most in the world.
Truthfully, the only two people I’d ever cared about.
This was my chance to rectify that.
To do right by Caterina.
Tonight had been too close. The enemy had come into their home. If it had been Erebus themselves, they wouldn’t have survived it.
The takedown of the operational center was fast approaching, but I hadn’t been able to leave it in their hands, knowing how skilled and fucking brutal Erebus was. I couldn’t risk Caterina falling. I couldn’t risk those she loved falling either. It would surely break her.
She’d been through far too much as it was. I couldn’t let her suffer anything more.
I stared at the entrance to the storage facility, one that Erebus had used in the past, but that had been abandoned when I’d been on a mission a few years back that had exposed this as one of their arms storage facilities.
It had come as no surprise to me that Nathan had chosen this location for our meet. It had marked the time that I’d first directly crossed him as the leader of Erebus.
The time before had been me exposing his illicit activities when we’d served together.
The storage facility was a former aircraft hangar, the airport it had belonged to no longer in service. It hadn’t been for years.
As my boots crunched on the tarmac, making my presence known intentionally, the air shifted.
I already knew they were here.
I hadn’t come this far surviving in this fucked-up world of ours not to be able to pick up on a threat in my vicinity.
They were hiding for no reason.
Or, perhaps, knowing Nathan, to emerge dramatically.
He was a big fan of that and the intimidation factor.
He should know better than to believe that would work on me.
Then again, he had grown far too bold of late.
Trying to take the City of Tolhurst, working to settle there and inject the poison that was Erebus into the infrastructure and sources of power there… it had been beyond brazen.
The fact he’d chosen Tolhurst at all had been foolish, doing it to take a dig at me, to get under my skin, while severely underestimating what I would do once word had reached me.
I strode to the entrance and pushed open the heavy steel doors.
As I walked further into the space, the rumble of footsteps sounded.
And then they were there like ghosts in the night, bursting in from the several entrances to the space, stepping out of the shadows, thirty of them surrounding me, a sea of tactical gear and those eerie masks.
One of them stepped forward and pulled his mask up, resting it on his gray buzz cut.
“It’s been a while,” he spoke, that familiar sadistic smirk of his settling on his face.
He had a few more age lines since I’d last seen him, but he wore them well. He was still a roided-out monster of a man. The bulk of the tactical gear he was decked out in only served to emphasize that. And those eerie pale-blue eyes fixed on me with that usual menacing edge.
“Nathan,” I ground out, resisting the instinctual urge to pull my gun and shoot him dead right here and now.
That wasn’t the plan.
Not yet.
“I didn’t think you’d have the balls to finally come out of the dark and face me.”
“I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to try to take Tolhurst alongside that sadistic shit, Santino.”
“It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. The tide has turned for Erebus. We no longer want to operate from the shadows. We want to be front and center.”
“An impossibility. Erebus has always been a shadowed group. It’s the foundation of its entire makeup. Getting greedy, even beyond what you already are, and trying to alter that was a mistake, as I’m sure you’ve realized with the resistance that you’ve come up against.”
“Resistance. Yes, those who are fighting your battles for you. Carlo Benzino and the Marchetti boy.”
“That ends here today. You pull your men out and go elsewhere. You’ve already lost too much to maintain a foothold there as it is. You know you need to cut your losses. And that was our agreement for me coming to you.”
“In exchange for you preventing their attack on my operational center.”
“There will be no need for the attack when you make it clear that you’re retreating and turning your attention elsewhere. I’m certain you already have another place in mind anyway—or several.”
“That I do.” He stepped closer until he was just shy of my personal space. “But first, let’s discuss your part in all of this.”
“My part was clear.”
“Yes, yes. You’d give yourself over to me. Take your punishment and then allow me to reconfigure you to my liking without any resistance.”
“I’m a formidable asset.”
“You were, certainly. What you can do, very few can match. Even the best of my operatives. Even me. Where fieldwork is concerned. Your ability to move undetected, to eliminate a threat.”
“Exactly. And in return, you’ll pull out of Tolhurst.”
“I knew you wouldn’t be thrilled with the likes of me infiltrating your former home. But that’s what it is to you, Joseph. A former home. You haven’t resided there for years. Decades, even. You did have a personal connection to it, but we both know that Bianca Leone is no longer in said city.” He started striding up and down in front of me, making a show of thinking on it, as he rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. “So it got me thinking. Why such resistance? Why go to such lengths to try to spare it from me? Why risk yourself by intervening directly, too?” He stopped right in front of me, his eyes darkening. “Because of Caterina Leone. Your daughter.”
A chill rolled down my spine.
“What are you talking about?”
“Please. Spare me your futile attempts at denial. We were inside her system. To gain intel on her specifically. It didn’t take much from there. Not with the reach I possess.”
“It makes no difference either way. The deal still holds.”
“With the decimation of our communications network, my priority is not to bring in somebody like you anymore. I need her .”
“The hell you do.”
“At first, I considered Levi Knight. He was a part of it, as we’ve discovered. But I don’t want to destabilize Knightsridge Engineering. Their next-gen tech is highly valuable to us and will no doubt come in handy down the road. Targeting the son of the owner would cause a great deal of destabilization that we can’t afford. Moreover, his reckless edge is a sticking point for me and mine. Besides, Caterina was the lead on all of this. It’s been her all this time, working in the shadows, undercutting my efforts. It was even she who murdered Santino. I want her. ”
“Never,” I seethed.
“Sure, you’re resistant. You obviously offered this to me all in the name of protecting her. But, Joseph, you’re under the illusion that you actually have a choice. I will take her. Now, I can do that without harming her, or I can inflict a great deal upon her. I can break her and build her back up to my liking. You do get to make a decision where that’s concerned.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Call off their attack immediately. Then get on your fucking knees and lay down your life. No games. No tricks.”
“I won’t let you corrupt my daughter.”
“As I’ve said, where that’s concerned, you don’t have a choice. It’s already done.”
“The hell it is.”
I stepped back and ripped open my tactical jacket.
His eyes shot wide, and he jerked back.
Even his operatives followed suit and shuffled back several steps without orders from him to do so. That was how shocked they were. And afraid.
Good. Really fucking good.
“You’ve lost your mind,” Nathan choked, staring at the shit-ton of explosives that I had strapped to my torso. His eyes darted to the trigger than I’d just released from being hidden up my sleeve, and he swallowed hard.
“Given everything I’ve endured, you’d think it would have happened sooner, no?”
“You do this and we all die.”
I lifted a shoulder. “I don’t have a problem with that.”
His men went to take aim at me, but he held up a single hand that had them holding off. “Don’t be fools.”
“I’ll protect Caterina to my last fucking breath,” I seethed. “And all of yours.”
My finger brushed the detonator.
“Stop!” a voice rang out.
My whole body tensed.
And that reaction got a whole lot worse and harder to contain, when she came into view, flanked by her men.
There she was, over by the northeast exit, in her turquoise leather jacket and a pair of jeans, not even protected in proper gear, indicating she’d rushed up here.
Nico, Julian, and Milo were much the same way, just in their street clothes.
But Julian and Milo were holding grenades in both hands, a clear warning to Erebus and Nathan. Nico had a gun trained on Nathan’s skull.
And Caterina had her knives.
My God.
It was insanity.
Why?
Why would she do this?
Why would she risk this?
“It doesn’t need to be this way,” she called to me.
“Of course it does. How long have you been here? Did you hear everything he said? His plans for you?”
“Yes.”
“So, you see, then? You see why I need to do this?”
“I see why you think you need to. Because you have tunnel vision when it comes to me, and because you believe you need to prove yourself as my father. You don’t.”
“Of course I—”
“Not like this!”
“Caterina—”
“Prove it by sticking around! By being in my life! By developing a proper relationship with me! Not by sacrificing yourself when there’s another way!”
When I hesitated, my finger still hot on the trigger, Nico cut in, “The assault on the operational hub is complete, Stover!”
“What?” Nathan roared.
I frowned. “How—”
“You don’t think we anticipated this? That we didn’t know where you were headed?” he put to me. “You underestimate your daughter.”
She’d tagged me.
Likely with a liquid tracker, knowing how she—the protein shakes!
“It’s over,” Nico said, glaring at Nathan. “Your operatives weren’t expecting us. We moved up the timeframe. They’ve all fallen. The hub is decimated to fucking ash. You’re done.”
They’d done it? They’d actually taken them down without falling in the process?
I couldn’t—I’d thought—I had underestimated things.
I’d allowed my fear for her wellbeing to cloud so much.
To almost kill me.
To take me away from her yet again.
Fuck me.
“You won’t survive this,” Nathan seethed at Nico. “I’ll come for you. The Marchetti Syndicate. The Benzino Family. Everything and everyone you fucking love!”
My finger wavered on the trigger.
“Not like this!” Caterina called to me.
“I can’t just—”
“Trust us! Trust me!”
As Nathan lost his shit, realizing he was beaten, he kept spouting off threats of ruin and death, over and over, unable to do much else, because if he so much as signaled his men to fire, he knew I’d take out the whole place with the vest.
“Dad!”
Caterina’s cry cut through it all.
Calling me by that name… fuck me… it was everything.
I turned to look out at her, our gazes locking.
And I fucking smiled.
“I hear you. I’m with you.”
Relief flooded her features.
I backed away toward the door with them, Nathan pacing in a fury and his men left impotent because of the threat I still posed.
The moment we were through the door, I was ushered several feet away by Caterina.
“Disarm it,” she ordered me fiercely. “Right the hell now.”
I took care of it, and then I pulled it off and away from me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Her fierce, pissed expression cracked. “I know you are. It’s okay now. It’s all okay.”
“It won’t be all the while they remain,” I warned.
“We’ve got that covered,” Julian told me.
“What?”
Nico pulled out a sleek, metal cylindrical device. “With all the self-important talking Donahue was doing, it gave us time to wire the place.”
“Impressive.”
“Shouldn’t have doubted us,” Milo told me.
“It wasn’t about doubt. It’s them. They’re—”
As if to prove my point, the door we’d exited through flew open, and then Nathan barreled out with several of his guards flanking him.
He caught sight of us quickly as he roared profanities our way, then took aim at Nico.
A shot fired, ripping right through Nathan’s skull before he could even pull the trigger.
As he jolted and dropped hard from the instant kill, I caught sight of Milo’s gun aimed his way.
He smiled at Nico. “Always got you, brother.”
“Blow it,” Caterina breathed, clearly unsettled by how close that had been.
We didn’t need to worry about any more of that, though, as Nico set off the explosives that they’d rigged.
Balls of fire tore through the structure, debris blowing sky-high, along with all those inside, and even those Nathan had just brought outside with him.
The place was utterly annihilated within moments, collapsing in on itself, windows, metal, and wood blown to shit.
I watched the four of them all draw together, wrapping their arms around one another.
“The bastard is gone. It’s done,” Julian uttered.
Through it, Caterina smiled and reached out to me.
I went to her and took her hand.
She pulled me against her, bringing me in close, making me a part of it.
“You’re my dad. I want you to stay. Do you understand me?”
“I do. And, fuck, you don’t know how much I’ve wanted that, too. For so long.”
“Well, now, is our chance. Let’s not waste it.”
I smiled and hugged her to me. “Let’s not.”
“This marks the beginning of our freedom,” Julian spoke, before crying out into the night, “Whoop!”
A chorus of celebratory cheers followed as his words sank in.
It was a hell of a thing.
No more just surviving.
There was a hell of a lot of actual living to do now.
I couldn’t wait to get started with my daughter.
And her mother.
So much loss along the way.
No more.