Pros & Cons of Vengeance

by Wasp, A. E.

  “What the fuck was that?” Leo demanded.

  “That was a man reaching his breaking point,” Wes said. He shook his head and looked at me. “Congrats, Blondie. You broke him. I didn’t think it was possible.”

  “That’s not…” I began, but then I swallowed. My eyes filled with tears.

  What was I gonna say? I hadn’t meant for that to happen? Hadn’t meant to push so hard, he’d had to run away? Sure, that’s not what I’d intended to happen, but my intentions didn’t count for shit when I was hurting someone I cared about. I knew how protective Steele was, and I’d pushed anyway, demanding he let me put myself in danger. All because of my pride.

  When my back was against the wall, when shit got real, my pride made me push back.

  When my mom had come to me threatening Ridge, I’d given her all the money in the account Ridge had set up for me. I’d told myself I was protecting Ridge by keeping the truth from him, but really, I’d been protecting my pride. And I’d decided to earn back the money the fastest way I could, so he never had to learn the truth. Pride again. And when that had failed spectacularly, and he’d come to help me, I’d pushed and pushed, too proud to accept that he had a right to worry about me.

  The question now was, what was I going to do about it?

  “I’ll just go… make sure he’s okay,” Josie said into the silence. She half-rose from her seat.

  “No,” Danny said, standing and holding out a hand to stop her. “No, Breck should go.”

  Wes snorted. “Breck’s the last person Steele wants to see right now.”

  “Au contraire. Breck is the only one Steele wants to see,” Danny retorted.

  “And you know this, how? Breck’s the one who caused this whole…”

  “No,” Danny said, talking over him. “He didn’t.” He glared at Wes. “I don’t know what your issue is, Geek Boy. Maybe you’ve been staring at a screen so long, it’s made you incapable of being a decent human, so let me school you a little bit. We are people. That means we don’t have circuits that follow straight paths, it means we don’t always make logical decisions, and it means we all have our own motivations for the shit we do, which don’t always follow the prime directive.” He paused. “That was a Star Trek reference, there. I’m tryna get on your level.”

  Wes blinked at him. “Are you… are you for real right now? You don’t know the first fucking thing about…”

  “About Steele’s past? About your secrets?” Danny demanded. “Nope. Not the first thing. And I don’t give two shits either. But I know you have ‘em, just like I have mine. And they make us have knee-jerk reactions when people scare the crap out of us.” He looked at me. “And both Breck and Steele look like they’re scared to death. So that means this… mission, or whatever the fuck you’re calling it, can just sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.”

  “I, uh, think you might be mixing your metaphors a little, sweetie,” Josie told Danny in an audible whisper. But then she nodded firmly and raised her voice. “But I agree with you in spirit. This mission can shut the fuck up for a minute while Steele and Breck have a talk.”

  “Josie, maybe that can wait until…” Miranda began, but Josie gave her a stern glare, and Miranda held up her hands. “Alright, alright. It’s like The Bachelor: Gay Edition over here. Go get your man, Pfeiffer,” she told me.

  I hesitated. What was I supposed to say? How could I make this better? Even now, my mind screamed for me to push, to insist, to convince Steele that I was right and that I needed to do things for myself.

  Surprisingly, it was my brother who stepped forward, his face solemn. “Danny’s right, Breck. Steele needs you.” He jerked his head in the direction Steele had headed. “Go talk to him.”

  “But I don’t know…” How to do this. How to care so much for someone without being a total pushover. How to play any role but my mother’s… or my own.

  Ridge seemed to read my mind. “You care about him, don’t you?”

  I shot him a look.

  “Right. And any idiot can see he cares about you,” Ridge continued.

  “Apparently, if you finally figured it out,” Leo joked.

  “So you’ll find a way to work shit out, Brekkie.” He gave me a small smile. “Have confidence in yourself. You were always the smarter of the two of us when it came to shit like that, after all.”

  “Shit like that?” I repeated.

  “Emotional stuff. Caring stuff.” He shrugged.

  I frowned. “I’m beginning to wonder if that’s true,” I told him honestly. I’d always imagined myself as being more in touch with my emotions, more open and available, but that was surface stuff. The really deep shit made me want to vomit. “I’m starting to think you’ve been better at it than I have, in some ways.”

  Ridge made an exaggerated expression of shock. “Wait, I’m sorry. Did you just admit that I was better at something than you are? Did you just actually come out and say it in so many words?” He turned to Wes. “Do we have anything recording this right now?”

  I rolled my eyes and punched him in the gut – his very, very solid gut. “And this is why we can’t have nice moments,” I told him.

  One side of his mouth turned up. “We’ll have our nice moment later. For now…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I sighed, staring at the beach. “For now, I’m gonna get my man.”

  I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders.

  “Jesus, I’ve seen men face down gun-toting assassins with less of a pep talk than this,” Wes bitched. “Can you just go find Steele and screw like bunnies so we can all move on with our lives?”

  I chuckled and Ridge shook his head.

  “Such a charmer,” Danny said. “Tell me, have you been laid in this millennium?”

  Wes’s jaw hardened. “I have no problem pulling, thank you very much.”

  Danny folded his lean arms over his chest and glared down at Wesley. “When you say pulling, do you mean…” He made a wanking motion with his fist, and Wes turned red.

  “I don’t need to have sex every day, like some people. It’s not my fucking career,” Wes snapped, pushing his chair back with a scrape. He seemed to realize what he’d said the next minute, and his face blanked. “Not that…”

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that?” Danny retorted. “You know, I so appreciate it when you, a near total stranger, give me your implicit blessing on my life choices.” He patted me on the arm. “Go take care of Steele, honey.” His voice hardened. “I’m going to take care of this asshole.”

  Lucky Wes. I found myself smiling, in spite of everything, because Danny was somehow in his element now, not the scared, fragile man he’d been just a couple of days ago. And I knew that I had these people – Leo and Carson, Ridge and Steele, Josie and Miranda, and even Wesley… maybe especially Wesley – to thank for it.

  I grabbed a towel I’d draped over a chair and wrapped it around my waist as I walked around the pool and down to the beach. I could do this. Somehow. And if I didn’t, what was the worst that could happen?

  Well, Steele could walk away from me, or I could give in when I really didn’t want to, losing my self-respect.

  Both of those prospects were legitimately terrible, so that wasn’t comforting at all.

  The tide was high when I reached the beach, and the white sand was nearly deserted except for a few lonely souls splashing around on a sandbar down toward the public access area in the distance. It was easy enough to find Steele, a lone figure standing in calf-deep water, staring out at the horizon. His skin glowed like copper in the sunlight.

  I approached him quietly, still unsure of what to say or how to begin. I stood next to him, maybe a foot away, and fixed my gaze on the same spot he was watching so intently.

  “I’m sorry,” he said without preamble. “I freaked out. Did I… hurt you? Physically, I mean?”

  I turned my head to look at him and found his profile, instead. “What? No. Of course not.”

  “I was hold
ing you tightly. Too tightly.” He laughed once, without humor. “I should know better.”

  “You weren’t,” I insisted.

  He nodded, but his face was stony, unreadable in a way I hadn’t seen it before. And it was weird that after knowing him for such a short time, I could say that an expression was strange or looked wrong on him, but it was true. Everything about Steele was heat and vitality. He’d warmed me inside and out from the first moment I’d met him.

  “His name was Asadi,” Steele said, his dark eyes still focused on the water. And though his voice was even, like he’d recited this story before, the pain just beneath the surface of those few simple words made my heart ache.

  “He was twelve when I met him. He wanted to be a doctor or possibly a superhero when he grew up.” His jaw moved back and forth for a moment. “But he didn’t grow up.”

  I took a step closer, crossing the distance between us, and laid my head against Steele’s arm. He didn’t acknowledge my touch at first, but then a shudder moved through him and his body relaxed a fraction.

  “We were on a mission in Sar-e Pol in northwest Afghanistan to take out Haji Khan. Khan was a local crime boss who’d been on our radar for years as a drug trafficker who hid his illegal activities by claiming he ran a kind of halfway house for underprivileged kids, teaching them job skills. But then he got greedy. He started expanding his opium empire into actual terrorist activities, which took him from a low-level threat to a situation that needed to be dealt with. We weren’t sure if he was tied to the Islamic State or the Taliban…hell, it could have been both for all we knew…but Khan was no true believer, and the locals knew it. He was a sick fucker with a taste for power and a craving for young boys.”

  Oh, God. I closed my eyes.

  “The Powers That Be wanted him taken out, but quietly. No cluster bombs lighting up the mountain, you know? And that’s where my team came in.” Steele blew out a slow breath.

  “Our plan was to make his death look like a targeted hit from a rival, the kind of thing that wouldn’t arouse much suspicion. But the problem was, the guy was fucking surrounded by children. Always a kid in the house, a kid sitting right beside him in his fucking car, a kid standing in front of him like body armor when he walked through town.”

  He shook his head. “Fucking frustrating, but the guys upstairs were determined that this was the way to play it. Minimal civilian casualties, they said. Not none, just minimal.” His voice was bitter. “The guys on my team are fucking professionals, dedicated to the mission, but there was no way any of us was taking out a kid. That wasn’t acceptable to any of us.”

  “Of course,” I whispered. I could see where this was going, felt the horror waiting for me, ready to steel my breath. How did Steele live with the things he’d seen and done? He did he get over it? Could he?

  Maybe the problem was, he hadn’t.

  “We’d been boots on the ground for a little over a week, keeping an eye on some of our undercover guys. We’d clocked Asadi in our surveillance, of course. He was one of Khan’s favorites. He always, just…had his fucking hands all over that kid. And the sounds. Jesus.” Steele’s voice was starting to shake, and he sighed from the bottom of his soul, rubbing his hands across his eyes as if he could erase the sights and sounds from his memory.

  “So one night, we’re tucked away in our fucking hidey hole, and the kid just comes strolling into our camp, leading a couple of goats.” Steele chuckled, like he was reliving it, and maybe he was.

  “He just appeared out of the desert night, right in front of our fire. Like a fucking tiny djinn. We’re SpecOps. We’re supposed to be secret. But there he was. And the kid says he can help us. Told us Khan knew we were watching him, but he could get us the intel we needed to take Khan down.”

  Steele shook his head. “I didn’t trust him at first, you know? How the hell had he found us?” He paused. “Cutest fucking kid. So underfed, man. I thought he was eight. Ten at the most. Reminded me of myself at that age.”

  I nodded, imagining Steele’s forceful personality contained in a slightly smaller frame – condensed and concentrated. The kid must have been a force of nature.

  “Over there…you can’t be sure. You can never be sure. Lots of kids are tools, weapons, something to be used. A weakness in us that they can exploit. And the kids, they don’t know what the fuck is going on, right? They just…do what they’ve been told.”

  “But then Asadi tells us…” Steele paused and swallowed hard. “He tells us how Khan took him from his family, from his home, when he was only seven. Threatened to kill them all if Asadi tried to escape. Told him he was too beautiful for a boy and how his beauty tempted men. And I could see that some part of the kid thought it was true, even though he hated Khan and knew he was evil. I believed Asadi then,” Steele whispered. “I believed him.”

  I pressed my hand gently against the small of Steele’s back, afraid of startling him the way I’d be afraid of waking a sleepwalker. Steele was so caught up in the memory, it almost felt like the same thing.

  Steele cleared his throat. “Some of the other guys weren’t as sure. Check twice, you know? But then Asadi showed us how Khan had marked him, branded him on his shoulder like he was an animal.” His voice cracked. “I think that was enough for everyone.”

  “God.” I leaned more of my weight into Steele’s side, a slight pressure I hoped conveyed my sympathy, since I knew literally nothing I could say would be enough to take away his pain.

  “We promised. We fucking promised we’d keep him safe, get him back home.”

  Steele drifted off, staring at the horizon while whitecaps lapped at our legs, sucking our feet further into the seabed as they retreated. Gulls screamed and cawed. The sky was so blue it almost hurt, and the sun beat down on us, breaking into golden splinters on the water. I knew Steele wasn’t seeing any of it, though. He was gone far away, across the ocean and through time.

  One wave, larger than the rest, broke against us, splashing my thighs and plastering thick seaweed around Steele’s knees.

  Steele shook his head as if coming out of a trance, then bent down and scooped up a handful of salty water. He splashed his shoulders and chest with it, cooling himself down.

  “So, anyway. The kid started hanging around more and more, right? Whenever it was safe for him to get away. I taught him how play solitaire, and the other guys gave him the dessert from their MREs. He was like a mascot, the little brother we’d never known we needed.” Steele paused, then continued after a moment. “And he was fucking useful. Determined. Brave. Told us Asadi was Urdu for lion, and that’s what he wanted to be.”

  Steele swallowed hard again, and when he continued, his voice was barely a whisper in the warm breeze. “He started feeding us information, a little at a time. We were able to intercept a couple major transports, one of drugs and one of weapons. But what we really needed to do was take this fucker out, and the brass was getting impatient. Then Asadi told us Khan had a major meeting planned, something big enough that he’d be sending the boys away for nearly twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, chatter from our intelligence experts suggested that a Taliban power player was moving into the area. It all seemed to fit. We planned a raid for late that night. When Asadi was out of the house and it would be safe.”

  “Oh, fuck,” I breathed. I pulled back to look up at Steele’s face and almost wished I hadn’t. His eyes were haunted.

  “That’s about right,” Steele agreed. “The op was a total clusterfuck from start to finish. Khan totally knew we were coming. There was return fire the second we came over the wall. More security than we’d ever seen in the week we’d had eyes on the place. I don’t even know where the hell they’d come from. We’d had eyes on every road in and out of that fucking place. And when we breached—” He broke off and shook his head.

  I wrapped my other arm around his waist, holding him securely. I wouldn’t push, wouldn’t. But every instinct said he needed to get this out, to purge it like poison, and I prayed he�
��d keep talking. He draped his arm around my shoulder.

  “When we breached, Asadi was there,” Steele finally continued. “Khan’s fucking human shield. Ops was screaming in my earpiece take the shot, take the shot, take the fucking shot, Alvarez. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. One of my men screamed in Dari, ‘Duck, Asadi!’ And right then Khan realized that Asadi was the one who’d betrayed him.” Steele looked down at me. “I could see it in his fucking eyes. He knew it.”

  “The whole firefight—you’ve ever been in a firefight? No, of course you haven’t,” he said before I could answer. “They’re loud, Brekkie. Fucking loud every time. And shit shows like this? Hell. Gunshots and women screaming and shit exploding. Your buddies are going down around you. Plaster’s flying off the walls, dust and dirt everywhere. You can’t see, you can’t hear.” He pressed the heel of his hand over his ear and shook his head as if to clear it. “And you’re just…Your body is pumped up with adrenaline. You can feel your heart beating against your eardrums.”

  With my head pushed against his side, I thought I could hear his heart beating. I felt his chest heaving, sucking in oxygen against a threat that didn’t exist. This time the silence stretched. I fought with myself. Should I urge him out of the water, out of the past, and back to the house? Or should I ask what happened? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  No. I knew I didn’t want to know. But if Steele had had to live through it, and if that brave Afghan boy had had to suffer whatever horrible fate I knew was waiting for him, I could be strong enough to listen.

  I didn’t know how or even if my hearing the end of the story would help. It couldn’t change the outcome, of course. But if simply listening would in any way lessen Steele’s burden, I had to do it. I would do it for Asadi. For Steele. “What happened?” I asked, knowing I would never be able to forget it, whatever it was.

  “We lost,” he said bitterly. “It was a slaughter. Two of my men were gone. Almost every one of Khan’s guys was dead or subdued. He knew it was over for him. And then? I hear a helo coming. Whup-whup-whup, rotors shaking the whole fucking house. And I know it’s not one of ours, it’s gotta be his. His ticket out. Khan starts walking backwards to a door, Asadi held tight against him, holding him up high so we can’t get a head shot, and he’s got this big motherfucking knife pressed right against the kid’s throat. ‘I kill him,’ he’s screaming in English. ‘I’ll kill the little whore.’