Chance

by Lagomarsino, Giulia

  “Where the fuck is Mark?” I murmured. “I thought he was supposed to fucking know.”

  “He’s been with us for a few days. Anything could have happened,” Cap said.

  Fuck, this meant that we couldn’t just take him out. I would have to play with this guy, and the only way I liked to play was with a knife.

  “You have my attention,” Chief said as he stopped in front of the house. He was close enough for a decent shot, but still far enough away from me that I could escape a deadly injury.

  “Scared to come closer?” I mocked.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  “Did anyone ever tell you it’s rude to shoot at your guests?”

  “You shot my guard.”

  “He was taking too fucking long.”

  “You just murdered about fifteen of my men.”

  “It was eighteen, but who’s counting?”

  He took another step toward me, lowering his weapon, which was really fucking stupid.

  “Do not take the shot,” Chance said in my ear. “He’s mine.”

  “So, if I heard right, you’re Mr. Knight. Any reason I should know that name?”

  “It’s Garrick. Mister is so formal.”

  “Garrick,” he said with a nod, but then stopped when he put it together. “Garrick Knight. You’re dead.”

  “My death has been greatly exaggerated.”

  “Holy shit, Cap. You didn’t tell me you had an assassin working for you,” Cash said.

  “What do you want? Are you here to kill me?”

  “That depends on whether or not you accept my deal.”

  “And what deal is that?”

  “I have merchandise which I know for a fact you sell. I think we could come to an understanding and both make a nice profit.”

  He eyed me, but I could tell he was interested. Now I just needed him to let my team in. We needed to find out who was here and anyone else that might be part of this clusterfuck. And fucking Chance wanted him alive. With just a flick of my wrist, I could put this asshole down.

  “Alright, let’s say I’m interested-”

  “You are.”

  “What if I don’t agree to the terms?”

  I narrowed my eyes dangerously at him. “You don’t have a fucking choice. You think death is the worst thing that could happen to you?”

  “Ever heard the phrase don’t bring a knife to a gun fight?”

  “I think it’s cute that you think you stand a chance against me.”

  He watched me, waiting for me to sweat, but I never sweat. This was the most alive I had felt in years and it felt fucking fantastic.

  “Fine. I’ll agree to hear you out, but you’re going to have to fight me for it.”

  I smirked and took off my jacket. “Give me your best shot. I’ll even let you have the first shot.”

  “Knight, are you fucking stupid?” Hunter yelled in my ear. I did my best not to flinch from the electronics screeching in my ear.

  “Of course he’s fucking stupid. He just challenged a man with a gun,” Chance said.

  I smirked as Chief raised his gun. I studied his stance, waiting for his tell. And there it was. I watched as he swallowed harshly. He was scared. He knew that he had to kill me and he wasn’t sure his shot would be accurate. He leaned slightly to the right. I counted heartbeats as I watched the slight rise and fall of his shoulders. His finger slipped over the trigger and I counted heartbeats until my moment. I counted to four and dodged to the left just as he pulled the trigger. His shot didn’t even come close.

  I stood straight and flipped my knife. He was sweating his ass off. If he was smart, he would take another shot until he put me down. But he was still a man of honor in some respects. He didn’t want to be seen as a coward. So he stood there and waited for me to make my move.

  “Knight, you crazy fucker,” Hunter hissed. “How the fuck did you do that.”

  I ignored Hunter, putting his voice out of my head as I concentrated on my target. It was a shame that I wasn’t allowed to kill him. I watched him again. He didn’t have a fucking clue which way to go, which made him unpredictable. I turned around, flipping my knife back and forth in my hand. I could feel him itching to raise his gun. He couldn’t stand the anticipation of it all. On the last flip of my knife, I spun and drew back my knife. It was only a split second, but I saw the way he leaned to the left. I corrected at the last second and flung the knife, embedding it in his thigh.

  I sighed in disappointment that I couldn’t hit his femoral artery. It would have been nice to watch him bleed out. I walked forward and kicked the gun away from his grip. I bent over and yanked out my knife, wiping it on his pants.

  “Now, are we ready to talk?”

  He nodded and radioed for the front gate to be opened.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Chance

  The gates opened and Cash and his team drove through in the car and the van. When the car stopped, Cash and Red stepped out, taking their stance behind Knight. Eli and Brad stepped out of the van and went around to the back to open the doors. Maggie, Claire, Ali, Lola, Lindsey, Ivy, and Emma stepped out, bound at the wrists and gagged, followed by some women that Cash had brought in. I hadn’t had a chance to find out who they were before we set off for the meet. They all were wearing clothes that were dirty and torn, something that would make it look like we were just as ruthless as he was. Knight pulled Maggie in front of him, holding his knife to her throat.

  “If that slips even a fucking centimeter, I’ll gut you and turn you over to the military.”

  “This is a sample of some of our merchandise. This one in particular is a real fighter, as you can see from her missing finger.”

  “How much do you want for them?”

  “Half a million.”

  “You have to be shitting me.”

  “A piece.”

  “You’re fucking crazy.”

  “They’ll bring in a million a piece. We split it right down the middle. I guarantee you’ll make the same or I’ll reimburse your share.”

  “I don’t need that many women. I just had a shipment of women I have to offload first.”

  “How many?”

  “Excuse me?” Chief asked.

  “I said, how many?” Knight said with a growl.

  “I have forty.”

  “You have forty up for auction?”

  “No, I have forty here, waiting to be brought to auction.”

  I saw the glimmer in Knight’s eyes. “These women will bring more. Whatever you have, they won’t hold a candle. You get your women off the streets. I’m more selective.”

  “Like I said, I already have stock.”

  “You’re mistaken if you think this is a negotiation.”

  Chief waited, trying to figure out his next move. “I want a sample first.”

  Knight gripped Maggie by the hair and shoved her to the ground. “Suck him.”

  Maggie was doing a fucking great job of acting, but Cap was losing his shit.

  “What the fuck did you just say to my wife?” I heard rustling over coms. Cap was obviously struggling to break free from someone. “You get her off the fucking ground right now, you asshole.”

  Knight pushed Maggie forward and she raised her hands.

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” Cap shouted. “Knight, I swear to God, get her out of there now.”

  Chief lowered his gaze and looked at Maggie as she pulled down his zipper. Cap was shouting over the coms and I had to pull the piece out of my ear so I didn’t lose my hearing. Chief was distracted, too intent on watching Maggie. She pulled out his cock and then fucking winked at him. His brows furrowed and he slowly looked up. It was like watching in slow motion as he mouthed oh, fuck, and then Maggie fucking yanked his dick hard, sending him to the ground writhing in pain.

  I didn’t hesitate. The moment Maggie took him down, I knew chaos was going to break out. I looked through my scope and started shooting, taking out anyone that was close to the wo
men. Eli, Brad, and Red formed a protective guard around the women, but there weren’t enough of them to fully block them. And of course, Maggie snatched a weapon from Cash and started firing. Our crew took cover around the vehicles, but it wouldn’t be enough for long.

  More guards ran out into the courtyard. They needed to get the women out of there before someone got injured. Claire ran back to the van and I covered her as best I could. I expected the rest of the women to follow, but they stayed where they were. Claire came running back with a go bag thrown over her shoulder. She threw it to the ground and opened it. Each of the women grabbed weapons and started firing. I grinned at how badass they were.

  When the guards started working their way closer to the vehicles, Cap gave the order.

  “Everyone move in.”

  Everyone from Reed Security and OPS jumped the fences and the walls. I stayed in my position and continued to take out anyone I could with my sniper rifle, but eventually, everyone was fighting too close and I couldn’t make accurate shots. I abandoned my rifle. It wouldn’t do me any good in close quarters. I ran toward the fighting, pulling my knife and shoving it into the first man I came across. I needed this, needed to rip these men to shreds and take back a piece of me that had been taken in the last year. My ability to fight back.

  “Maggie,” Cap shouted over coms. “Get the women in the van and get the fuck out of here.”

  Maggie held up her middle finger and pulled another magazine, shoving it into her gun, and started firing again.

  “Goddamnit, Maggie. You need to fucking listen to me! Knight, get her out of there!”

  Knight wrapped his arms around the neck of a man that had tried to attack him from behind and swung him around to face Maggie. She pulled her knife from her ankle and slammed it into the guy’s throat. I grinned and then got back to fighting. Obviously, Maggie wasn’t going to listen to Cap.

  I looked for Chief through the haze of fighting and spotted him trying to run toward the house. He was still clutching his junk in pain. I took off after him. He was mine and he wasn’t getting away this time. I caught up with him inside when he was trying to get to a room at the back of the house. I fired a warning shot that lodged in the wall just next to his head. He turned slowly and the shock that crossed his face was similar to what I felt when I found out he was behind all this.

  “That’s right, fucker.”

  “This is not what it looks like.”

  “Let me guess,” I spat, “you’re posing as a pimp to help the feds catch the leader of the prostitution ring.”

  He dropped his hands and shook his head as he glared at me. “I should have fucking known. From the moment I visited you at Reed Security and you looked at me like I was fucking scum, I should have just put you down. But I let the fact that we served together sway me. I couldn’t put a fucking bullet in you.”

  “And the alternative was so much better,” I scoffed. “You had me held on an island for a fucking year and tortured. How could you do that?”

  “You knew what could happen the minute you started digging. Come on, Sniper, we were both SEALs. You knew what you were dealing with and you went ahead with it anyway.”

  “So that justifies imprisoning me and twenty kids? I don’t even fucking recognize you anymore. How did I not see this side of you when we served together?”

  “Because you saw what you wanted to. You didn’t even see that your wife was fucking using you. You thought she loved you so much because you were blind. I saw it every time we came home from a deployment. She was screwing around behind your back every time you were gone.”

  He was baiting me, but I wasn’t going to fall for it. Yeah, I had figured that she was screwing around. When she left and was married just six months after our divorce, it was pretty fucking clear that she had found someone else while I was gone.

  “You’re not getting out of this, Chief. I won’t let you walk out of here to pull the same shit on someone else.”

  “If you want to stop me, you’re gonna have to shoot me. And I don’t think you have the balls. That high moral standard that you have keeps you from killing someone in cold blood.”

  I lowered my weapon. He was right. I couldn’t just shoot him outright. “You’re right. I’m not like you. I can’t just shoot you.” He smirked at me, thinking he had won. He hobbled backwards like he was going to walk out the fucking door. I holstered my weapon and charged forward, tackling him around the waist and smashing him into the wall. Rearing back, I punched him several times in the face. Every time I punched him, I saw those assholes on the island. I grabbed onto his shirt and threw him over a table. He smashed through it, groaning as he hit the floor. Picking up a broken table leg, I rolled him over and yanked up his shirt.

  “You want to know what it was like for me, asshole?”

  I slammed the table leg down on his back, leaving a large, red stripe across his back. But it wasn’t enough. I hit him over and over, feeling the whip against my skin. When he started to bleed, I tossed the table leg across the room and pulled out my lighter.

  “Have you ever had cigarettes put out on your skin? Do you remember the smell of burning flesh from when we were overseas? I remember it, but then I actually experienced it. And now you will too.”

  I straddled his back to hold him down and flicked the lighter, holding it against his skin. His face tensed, but he didn’t scream. I held it there longer, until the skin began to turn bright red. He started writhing underneath me, screaming in pain as his skin started to melt away. I thought I would feel better getting my revenge against him, and in the moment I did. But when I stood after I had burned a good portion of his back, all I felt was pity. He was a sick man that didn’t give a shit about anything in life. He had no moral code and a paycheck was what drove him in life. He wasn’t worth any more of my time.

  I looked up to see Mark standing across the room. All I saw on his face was hate. His own father ignored him his whole life and then used him as a pawn in his sick game.

  “You’re a pathetic piece of shit and I would gladly take your life, but there’s someone else that deserves this more than I do.”

  Mark walked toward me, glaring down at his father.

  “This is because of you?” Chief said, struggling to take a breath. “You always were a disappointment.”

  “I could say the same, but there was one thing you taught me.”

  Chief grinned, thinking he was going to get out of this. “What’s that?”

  “When to put a bullet in someone’s head.” He pointed his gun at Chief’s head and didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. Blood and brains splattered across the floor behind him and his eyes stared sightlessly off into the distance.

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked, still staring at the man I once thought of as a great man.

  “That’s up to the feds. The deal was based on whether or not they were able to take down the prostitution rings I told them about. I’m either looking at jail time or probation. I guess we’ll see which way it goes.”

  “You know, he may have been a SEAL and served his country with distinction, but you’re a better man than he’ll ever be. Just remember that when you’re finally able to move on with your life.” I held my hand out to Mark and shook his hand. “If you ever need anything, you call me.”

  “Thanks.”

  I headed outside. I did what I came to do. I would leave the rest of the bloodlust up to the other guys. All I wanted right now was to head home and wrap my girls in my arms. Nothing else mattered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Morgan

  I didn’t even wait for the trucks to stop before I ran out to see Chance. I had wanted to be with him, but there was no way he was going to put me in danger. And he was right. No matter how much I wanted revenge for what had happened, I knew that there was no way I could leave Payton for any reason. I raced into Chance’s arms the moment he stepped out of the truck.

  “Is he gone?”

  “Yes. It�
�s all over.”

  I squeezed him tight, so grateful that it was done and we could move on with our lives. I felt tiny little arms wrap around my legs and then Payton was shoving me aside.

  “Chance! You came back!”

  “Of course I came back.” He grinned at Payton and tickled her neck. “Who would I get to tickle if you weren’t here?”

  “No one!” she shouted. “You can only tickle me!”

  Chance feigned shock and continued to play with Payton as I watched. I just couldn’t get over how good he was with her, how fast they had connected despite only knowing each other for a short time. Payton seemed to really like playing with the other kids, and now that she had bonded with them, there was no way I would break that connection, even if I thought it was ridiculous that they wore military uniforms.

  Chance leaned in, wrapping his arm around my waist to pull me in close. “So, does this mean that you and Payton are going to move home with me?”

  I pulled back, a little shocked that he was asking me. I knew that we were moving forward with our relationship, but I didn’t know that he was ready for something like that.

  “Can we talk about this inside?”

  I flicked my eyes down to Payton and then back to him. He looked disappointed that I hadn’t immediately said yes, but nodded and followed me inside.

  “Payton, why don’t you see if Mrs. Cartwright wants help making dinner.”

  “Okay!”

  Payton ran off and Chance pulled me to our bedroom, shoving me to sit down on the bed as soon as the door was closed. He spread my legs and stood between them.

  “What’s going on? What do you have to think about?”

  “It’s just been a lot of changes lately and-”

  He pulled away and I grabbed his hand before he could get far.

  “It’s okay. I understand.”

  “No, you don’t. I’m not saying no. I just want to talk about it first.”

  I stood and pulled him closer, but he wouldn’t look at me. I could tell something was bothering him, but he didn’t want to say. It was almost like he was ashamed.