Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
OREN
Dad had his doubts, and I didn’t blame him. I’d defied his orders for years, and for me to all of a sudden fall into his lap and beg for his guidance?
Hell, I’d also find it weird as fuck.
Three days of training, and my muscles were beyond sore. Dad watched everything. Every strike. Every hit… every mistake, as I landed on my ass more times than with Thorne.
Unlike my shit of a commander, my father was an excellent teacher. He was a hard ass, but he knew how to operate. The subtle nature of his points, the sneer he’d give me or a smack to the back of my head worked better than any beatings I’d taken from Thorne because they had purpose.
I found purpose in the routine because the outcome would make me stronger than anyone here on base. I fully committed myself to the work he handed me.
When I wasn’t training, I was learning the basics of what it meant to be a commander. When I wasn’t learning the basics, I was observing my father’s punishments, gathering intel and methods to weaken a man.
Last night had been especially eventful; my very own squad mate who’d been left behind just like me was sent for interrogation, but it was a false decree. A fake order meant to test me again… to see if I’d crack while my father beat a man senseless.
He’d done nothing wrong, but there was no pity in my bones because for the first time, it wasn’t me. I wasn’t the one sitting in that chair as my father tortured me. I’d officially learned that defiance earned you nothing.
This was just another step.
Another step to becoming soulless like my father.
As blood splattered on my cheeks from the blubbering idiot, I gritted my teeth. Not from rage at what my father was doing, but my own ineptitude.
How had I survived for so long?
How had I sat in that chair for years, wasting away beneath a false sense of freedom? I almost laughed, but I knew my father would’ve taken it the wrong way.
I had an image to uphold. Well, an image to grow into.
The men on base didn’t fear me. They still viewed me as a defiant bitch, a man with a moral compass who viewed his life in terms of how he could help.
Except that wasn’t true anymore, and Dad made sure the word would spread as I curled my fingers into my palms.
The interrogation room was never clean, a river of blood always running along the floor. Its iron smell lingered in the air as I pulled my mind back to the present, to what I had to accomplish.
“What the fuck! I didn’t do anything!” The scream fully tore me from my internalized observations, my attention landing on the auburn-haired male, Lucas, whom Thorne had ordered to take Simon to the medical wing.
Simon.
Fuck, I couldn’t think about him… them right now.
I cracked my fist against his cheek, the impact reverberating throughout my entire body. “What the fuck did I say? Shut. Up.”
“This is a false accusation!” He struggled against the cuffs securing his wrists. “Thorne, all of us,” he spat at me, failing to suggest that I’d ever belonged on that piece of shit’s squad, “we’ve done nothing!”
“Nothing?” I grabbed a fistful of his hair before cracking my knee into his nose, the sound of it breaking sending a thrill through me. Not weak. I’m not fucking weak anymore.
He coughed up a mouthful of blood, slouching forward as he shook his head. “Y-You’ve failed yourself, O-Oren. Even knowing who your f-father is… You’ve let him win, and that’s a hell you’ll never escape…”
“You think I failed myself?” I tossed him to the ground, a kick flying into his stomach as Thorne had done to me. “Thorne failed me, and he failed you. I’ve lived in hell since the moment I was born. I just finally learned to get comfortable with it.”
Having stood in the shadows, observing in silence, my father finally elected to speak as Lucas struggled for the air I’d robbed him of. “What do you know of your Commander’s decisions to go rogue in Venezuela?”
Rogue?
What?
“I-I don’t… I don’t know anything!”
At my father’s nod, I slammed my foot into his face, blood splattering across the already tainted floor. “Bullshit. If you’re hiding information, it’s not worth it to protect his dumb ass. He won’t save you, Lucas. He’s a spineless man who focuses on his gain… on what he earns for himself.”
Choking on his own life force, he planted a shaky arm beneath him, struggling to push his battered body off the floor. “I s-swear, O-Oren… I don’t know anything, p-please…”
My jaw clenched as I stared at his battered face. He’d helped Simon… there was no denying it, but I couldn’t. To feel meant there was still weakness, and I couldn’t let it enter again.
Scoffing, my dad’s command tore through me like ice water. “Kill him.”
Biting my lip, hesitation still lingered in my bones. “Maybe…” I stopped, squaring my shoulders. I’d asked for this. I knew what my dad did, so why was I fighting it? I wanted to get stronger, and this… this would solidify it.
I’d paint my hands red, and not in the way my mother ever wanted me to, but I wasn’t her son anymore. I was the product of my father.
Lucas scrambled, the soles of his boots slipping across the bloodied ground beneath him. “N-No! PLEASE! I don’t want to die… I-I don’t…”
I kept my gaze hardened, muscles tight as I pulled the gun from the holster on my hip. “I’m sorry, but death is more merciful than living.”
I pulled the trigger.
Watching the crimson pool, a macabre flower of desolation swirled toward the drain in the center of the room. A numbness flooded my body, and for a moment, I wondered if I had died alongside him. That was until the door to the interrogation room slammed open, one of my father’s men barging in.
“Sir, we just got word from Spec Unit Six,” he panted, the name he uttered reigniting my wrath. “Thorne has patched himself in.”
The image of Lucas’s body still flooded my brain, the sound of the gunshot echoing in the chambers of my mind as I looked to my father.
I didn’t want to hear Thorne’s voice, but I also wanted to remember it as I trained. To give me something solid to hone in on… An outlet for my rage.
Static flared, the timbre of man I once thought I was ready to fall in love with filling the conference room. “General Valens.”
“Speak.”
“The target’s been handled, the estate swept.” There was the military tone he’d extended to me when I first arrived—his truth. “I am—”
A pause.
A rustle of fabric.
And then a question not directed to us, but to someone else entirely. “I fucking told you not to follow me!”
Another muffled voice spoke, but I couldn't detect it as I leaned closer to the comms device.
“Not another step! Simon—”
Before I could process his words, a gut-churning detonation sounded. And then? The crackle of a disconnected line.
“Get them back,” I whispered, barely audible. I lifted my gaze to my father’s. “Get. Them. Back.”
“Send an emergency evac,” my father commanded, the men around him frantically working to follow orders. “It seems Thorne Graves has failed to keep his men safe yet again.”
That name… I hated that name.
He went rogue and Simon… Simon…
Storming out of the office, I was unable to remain in my father’s presence, because he’d witnessed the last bit of weakness I would ever exude.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
The walls were so fucking narrow that I used them to keep me standing.
Climbing… I was climbing through the hallways, looking for somewhere to collapse. My hand stumbled upon a doorknob, and I opened it, not even caring that it led to a supply closet.
I slammed the door, utter darkness enveloping me as I shattered.
I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there to protect my friends, and they got hurt.
There was nothing I could do but wait.
Was Simon alive?
Did Thorne… Did he betray everyone?
The thoughts wouldn’t stop, not even when I scratched my arms enough to bleed—an old habit I thought I’d never return to.
Ringing punctured my ears, but it wasn’t as loud as the sound of Simon’s name being called.
Tears poured, the cover of darkness blanketing my final departure from who I used to be.
No.
I was going to kill Thorne Graves because this… All of it was his fault.