Chapter 17 A Complication
A Complication
Exiting my car, I stood outside the remains of a familiar nearly burned-down warehouse.
Listening carefully, I watched for anything and everything to catch my eye, noting if anything seemed out of place.
We’d always agreed to meet alone, and while I had five of my soldiers on standby not too far away, I intended to abide by the agreement. We were just here to talk after all.
As I headed into the warehouse, the heavy, rusted door creaked when I pushed it open, revealing musky air and dark shadows inside. The place looked like a bomb had blown up inside it, which wasn’t too far from the truth, but it still held a purpose for meetings such as these.
My footsteps echoed slightly as I clocked the older man standing in the dim moonlight that filtered through the large hole in the ceiling, his back to me.
I would have called him foolish if he had been any other man, but he knew he was safe, so being a condescending old prick was a privilege he could afford. Until now.
“I hope you didn’t request my presence to waste my time with nonnegotiable terms, General,” I declared firmly as I closed the distance. “I have a great deal of things to tend to.”
In response to my tone, he sharply turned around to face me, the wretched, scarred face of a tired, aging man leering back at me.
His signature scowl was a permanent fixture on his face that only deepened as his steel gray eyes practically skewered me.
It was nothing personal. The man hated everyone, including his nephew.
“Then I’ll make this brief, though it’s less than you deserve,” he growled, stepping around some of the scattered rubble.
“Surrender your brother to me now, or you will surrender a hell of a lot more by the time I’m through with you.
” His voice was scratchy, dry, and irritating.
The result of far too many cigars over the years.
“Ah, so you were the one who picked him up last night,” I asserted, my eyes catching his admission with the curl of his scowl. “Very intuitive of you to watch out for your nephew like that, given the stupidity of his actions.”
“Compared to the stupidity of your brother’s impulsive actions?” he retorted quickly. “Matthew wasn’t the one who carelessly started a war.”
“He may not have started it, but he certainly escalated it when he threatened my wife last night. That alone is a death sentence.”
He scoffed, shaking his head. “Your petty grievances do not interest me,” he snarled. “You will hand over your brother and right what has been wronged.”
My gaze narrowed at his false show of confidence. “If that is your only demand, then allow me to be even more brief than yourself. No.” I then turned away and headed back for the door. At least it had been a predictable waste of time.
“You dare turn your back on me!” he shouted. “I could bury you in the deepest, darkest cell a hundred feet below the surface to rot in for the rest of your life for the crimes you’ve committed! You would never see the light of day!”
I stopped in my tracks and turned to show him the sneer on my face at his little threat.
“As true as that may be, General Rainer, given the numerous war crimes you’ve committed around the globe and your connections to multiple criminal empires, you’d be buried right there next to me. We could even be cellmates.”
He grunted at my rebuke, but it was only a bluff. He knew his hands were just as filthy as mine, and I had the mountains of dirt to prove it. Leverage was always the most formidable of weapons.
“So I should just have you both killed then, is that it?”
I shrugged. “Only if you want to spend your prison sentence alone.”
The hardness in his eyes became piercing as he stared me down, the clear rage emanating from his round body making his face turn red.
“Enough! You know our laws. Your brother knew what he did, and what must be done to right it. Unless you want a war on your hands the likes of which you’ve never even dreamed of, you’ll deliver him to Matthew no later than tomorrow evening.”
“The way I see it, General, is that your niece is the reason my youngest brother is dead. As far as I’m concerned, what Daniel did was an act of revenge, an act he was more than entitled to.”
“If Regina wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, then as far as I’m concerned, she had no hand in Dominic’s murder!”
I chuckled at that, shaking my head at the audacity of the old fool.
“I’ve wiped out entire families who have had less involvement than she did for the very same reasons.
Regina is not exempt from the consequences of her own actions just because your dying brother guilted Matt into accepting an impossible task. ”
“Regina was innocent!” he bellowed back, spittle dotting his lips.
“That girl has never been innocent,” I argued sharply. “You forget I also had cause to kill her myself when she tried to secretly murder my wife on our honeymoon.”
The general shook his head, waving his hand through the air dismissively. “A minor lapse in judgment,” he muttered. I rolled my eyes.
“As was my agreement to this useless meeting. I will not surrender my brother,” I pressed, the hard tone in my voice barely disguising my rage.
“From this moment on, any move you personally make against me or my family will be met with the release of every concrete block of evidence I have that will permanently sink you to the bottom of the hole you’ve been digging yourself in for the last decade. ”
He scorned my warning, sputtering all over himself at my threat.
“You really want to fuck with the abilities of the US military?!” he roared.
“I could just as easily leave instructions with my best and most trusted soldiers. Even if you did succeed in putting me away, that doesn’t make you safe from my reaches and influence.
I know the locations of many of your operations.
I could have them wiped out in a single night. ”
I sneered at him then. “I invite you to try. You may have a decent supply of dirty soldiers loyal to you, General, but my supply is endless. And they don’t play by the same rules.”
The general’s lips tightened, his eyes bouncing back and forth as he considered his growing lack of options. He finally took a step forward. “If Matt fails, he will lose my protection, and by association, so will you,” he continued to argue, his voice growing anxious.
I shook my head at his clear desperation, as if I’d sacrifice my brother to protect such an inconsequential interest.
“If Matt is still relying on you to cover up his mistakes, then he obviously hasn’t learned from them.
And your protection by association is not worth the life of my brother, especially when I have several of my own shields still in place.
You are not the only paid player in this game, General, and you have long outgrown your usefulness to me. ”
We stared each other down for several seconds, the tension building in the air as the two of us refused to yield.
He should have fucking known better. The audacity for him to think I would actually bow to his ridiculous demand and give up my last living brother was a sure sign the man was losing his touch.
If he needed a reality check, I would happily oblige in blood.
General Rainer’s face continued to redden as his stance remained rigid and tense, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. I stood relaxed with my hands in my pockets, waiting impatiently for him to concede his pointless bullshit demands.
“Fine, Darren. Have it your way. But there will be consequences.”
I smirked at him. “At this point, General, I hold no ill will toward any of you. Matt already took a bullet from me for his threat against my wife, so I’ll consider that to be his one and only warning.
I’ll even overlook the bullet he put in Daniel’s chest as a sign of good faith.
But make one more move against me or mine, and I start killing you all. ”
I ended the conversation there and turned to exit the building, my steps as sure as the words I spoke.
I hated admitting it, but Matt’s uncle would be a formidable opponent should he become one.
He was not an enemy I wanted on my ass, given the global influence he had due to his ranking in the US military, a very esteemed position that he’d held for a very long time.
The man had plenty of loyalists on his side, and while they may come in handy for this trial, it wouldn’t mean shit against the hard evidence I had on him.
He was truthfully more of a psychopath than I was.
He’d order entire villages wiped out under the guise of harboring terrorists just so he could take whatever resources they had and sell them to the real terrorists.
It was genius really. But unfortunately for him, well documented.
I had spies everywhere, my reach spanning beyond the limits of the law or borders. And that was the one thing my adversaries always forgot right before they met their downfall. And I intended to deliver.
After driving home, I stepped through the doorway and stood in the foyer for a moment, noticing the silence of my home. Even with the guards stationed inside, there wasn’t a single creak in the house. After tonight, I probably wouldn’t be stumbling upon this kind of silence for a long time.
Walking into my office, I moved straight for the bar, ignoring Scott’s presence as he sat at my conference table, staring intently at the screen of his laptop. I poured myself a glass of whiskey, swallowing back the dark liquid and letting it burn away the irritation growing in my blood.
“That bad, eh?” Scott commented.
With a sigh, I grabbed my glass and walked toward the table to take a seat across from him.
“The General is going to make a move,” I informed him, pinching the bridge of my nose to release the tension growing. “We need to be ready.”
Scott hummed his annoyance, rubbing his tired eyes as he brought his dark gaze to mine.
He knew just as well as I did the pain in the ass it would be dealing with the stubborn old man should he truly become a problem.
And we both knew it would be foolish to assume otherwise. So we needed to act first.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
I rolled my shoulders as the domino effect played out in my mind. A very calculated domino effect.
“We need to find out where his most trusted soldiers are stationed when they’re operating outside of the US.” The General’s type of men tended to pray upon impoverished, vulnerable rural governments to influence them into their favor and self-interests.
Scott arched a brow. “And then?”
I smirked, taking another sip of my whiskey.
“And then we liberate the locals.”
Scott nodded, the ghost of a smile lingering on his lips as his eyes went back to the laptop screen. This wasn’t our first rodeo. And Scott had a particular fetish for international influence and disaster.
Unfortunately for him, he wouldn’t be able to direct anything in the actual field since there couldn’t be any ties that would lead back to us. He’d have plenty of other chances, though.
“If things are about to heat up the way I think they are, then I’ll need to speed up the training of the new recruits,” Scott said as he began typing something.
I nodded in agreement. We were going to need all hands-on deck very soon, and we couldn’t afford to have failures among the ranks.
No weak links. This meant, as much as I wanted to hold out just a little longer, I had to stop stalling with Jaden and let her finally walk again.
It would be detrimental to keep her bedridden when things were about to escalate, and I couldn’t risk leaving her so vulnerable anymore.
It was time to get her ass moving again, and knowing her, she’d be all too eager to jump straight into the fire.
I’d still have to keep it controlled so she didn’t overdo it and send herself right back to where she started.
She’d still hate me for it, but that had never concerned me before.
She’d learn to be grateful for what little steps I did grant her.
Even if they were still just baby steps.