by Avril Ashton
“I was thinking of you. I was picturing your face. I had to call to tell you that.” He tried to chuckle, it only came out as a grunt. “I’m on a job,” he said softly. “The last place I want to be because, Mel—” The words stopped short, only to continue again. “I don’t think I can keep it together. I don’t think I can hold myself upright anymore.”
She would know what he meant. Distance and time apart never mattered. She knew him. “Sometimes I accept that this is all I’m good for and in the few bright, lucid moments I ache for more. I ache for you. I ache for him. I wish you were close enough to touch. If you were, I’d pull you close and kiss your hair, inhale you like I used to do. When I protected you, and you protected me.”
But he hadn’t protected her, and he no longer knew how to protect himself. He was in a fucking closet, naked with the lights out, sinking into the depressive memories, welcoming it as the memories ate him alive. A wave of grief washed over him and he picked up the handgun.
“Days like today, I wish they hadn’t done it. They should have left me where they found me, Mel.” Inside that box. Buried underground. “They should have let me die.” That would piss her off. He could picture the fire in her eyes, flashing.
The match burned down, singeing his thumb and index, but the pain didn’t even register before the spent stick fell onto his thigh. He glanced down. The blade of his knife glinted. The gun looked extra inviting.
Calling.
He’d answered that call too many times. Or at least he’d tried to. Dutch stopped him once. That was years ago when he’d lost…when he’d lost it all. His heart. His mind. His fucking soul. No, that last he’d given away. To men who never deserved it. Everything else he’d had stolen from him. The reason he’d put the gun to his mouth, sucked on it, hoping to follow.
Dutch didn’t even give him that.
He hunched his shoulders and realized he still had the phone to his ear. “Mel.” He could talk to Mel, the only person he trusted implicitly. He could share it with her, the ache. The burden. The guilt that never lessened, never left. But Mel knew it all already. “I miss you.”
Beep. The voicemail cut him off.
His vision got blurry. So many things he could tell her, but the one thing, the most important thing… “I miss you, Mel,” he whispered into the dark. Maybe if he could see her, look into her eyes, the cloud of loneliness wouldn’t be so hard or heavy on his shoulders. But he couldn’t see her, so he dropped the phone onto his lap.
Body bathed in sweat, he brought both knees up, hugged them to his chest. His teeth chattered as he rocked back and forth. He wanted to be quiet, silence was good. Silence was golden. Van was all about silence, except his teeth kept chattering and his gasps for breath were loud. Noisy. When he’d been in the clutches of Seraphina Cook, any sounds he made would find him kneeling on cold cement floors with his head in a bathtub filled with scalding water.
It’s been years, but things like that you didn’t forget.
Van couldn’t ever forget the undercover assignment that crippled him mentally. Straight from having his personal world blown up, Dutch, and Van’s father, Senator Mark Dulles, sent him into Seraphina’s organization. To be fair, they had no idea at the time that the man they were truly after, Seraphina’s husband, Christopher Cook, had died and she’d stepped in to quietly run the drug operation. Van had gone in officially to take Christopher Cook down. Instead he’d found Seraphina.
She’d known his true identity from the word go. Of course, Van had no clue. No idea that Seraphina and his father had a secret relationship once upon a time. That his old man had tried to kill her, and that she would use the son to hurt the father.
Somebody should have told her Mark Dulles gave no fucks about his son.
Van scrubbed at the sweat soaking his temple and dripping behind his ear. This closet, his fragile grasp on his mind, was far removed from the person he was pretending to be on this job. Spoiled, rich and pampered. The boy toy to corrupt hedge fund manager, Wyatt Gilman. Not the most difficult thing he’d ever done, and maybe Dutch had assigned this to him on purpose. But the fact was, Van was still pretending and that shit ate away at whatever there was left of him. Still, he had nothing else. No one else. He was only good for this.
The reason he always said yes when Dutch sent him off to be someone else.
A torture he willingly accepted, a cage he strode into knowing what lay within the dark shadows. He was at ease here, in a weird way. As much as he wanted to get Wyatt’s crooked ass locked up as soon as possible, something in him didn’t want any of this to change.
It was dangerous, just how far he’d fallen. How lost he was. He no longer knew the way back to who and what he used to be. But Mel would know. Mel would help.
If he could see her. If he could look into her eyes.
But that wasn’t happening. Not anymore.
He hadn’t checked in with Dutch yet. Things were escalating with Gilman, he’d been talking about going overseas and wanted Van to join him there. He’d said nothing about the wife he’d had for thirty-two years. A woman Gilman treated like absolute crap. Van wasn’t supposed to care about shit like that. He was the selfish, not-so-secret male lover.
Except he remembered another spouse, another person with the expression that seemed to stay in Caroline Gilman’s eyes. Absolute betrayal. He didn’t know how Wyatt remained standing whenever they were in the presence of his wife and she turned that gaze on him.
It sent Van to his knees, cut him to the fucking white meat, that gaze when it had been turned on him. From another spouse.
His husband.
Hs hand trembled when he stroked the broad side of the knife.
The memory of that expression shredded him on a level nothing else ever could. Seraphina Cook came close, but with all her torture, all the shit she’d inflicted on him physically and mentally, she had nothing on the man Van had married and deceived. The thought to put his marriage and the man he loved before the job, before the mission, came a little bit too late. And in the end he’d lost it all.
Everything that made him want to fight, everything that made him want to live, he’d lost it in a snap. There one minute, gone the next. Stolen by Dutch and Mark Dulles, but the blame wasn’t all at their feet. Van was just as complicit, so while he hated his father and fantasized about the different ways to kill Dutch, his were the eyes he couldn’t meet in the mirror.
His cellphone vibrated against his naked thigh and he tensed. It was the phone Wyatt had given him so he could be able to reach Van at any moment. Van didn’t want to be reached, but Wyatt was temperamental on a good fucking day. Dealing with his shit was not up there on Van’s to-do list.
He snatched the phone up after clearing his throat. Time to play the part he was so fucking good at. “Wyatt, you’re home.” His voice was different now, more in line with the man he was supposed to be. Pouty, insolent, self-indulgent. “I missed you.”
“You missed me, lover?”
The satisfaction in Wyatt’s voice made Van scowl, but he played along. Gave the man everything he wanted to hear.
“Come over,” Wyatt ordered after Van finished kissing his ass. “I brought you something pretty.”
Eyes closed, Van pounded his head against the wall of the closet. “I’ll be right there.”
To make up for leaving his needy lover lonely for three whole days, Wyatt Gilman bought Van a tricked out Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder, smoke gray. Bought, of course, with the stolen money from the poor unsuspecting fools who forked over their coins for Wyatt to invest for them. Like a good boyfriend would, Van thanked his benefactor by allowing him to sniff cocaine off his naked ass while spread eagle on the hood of the exotic car.
Then he did his job. Reciprocated. Fucked Wyatt while feeding him the coke, and got him to spill even more of his secrets.
By the time he rolled off Wyatt and hightailed it to the bathroom, Van was already scrubbing at his skin, scratching, digging into his flesh. Under the h
ot water in Wyatt’s luxury mansion, Van scrubbed and scrubbed without ever feeling clean.
Then he crept out, waving at Wyatt’s guards as he took off.
Back at his place, he went for a run. He did it every time they had sex, a futile attempt to outrun what he did every time. It never worked, just left him panting, breathless and right back at the starting line. He existed here in this space. The coke, the sex, the deception.
He fucking excelled at it.
He’d gotten his husband in a similar fashion, after all. Lied to him, fucked him, married him. That last part had not been part of the mission. That last part had simply been Van being selfish and taking what he’d had no right to. Trying desperately to hang on to happiness by his fingertips, claiming ownership before someone else stepped in and snatched it, took it all away. Thinking about it would send him spiraling again, but he couldn’t not. Especially not now when everything reminded him so acutely of what he’d done. He’d allowed himself the delusion that he could have it all, he’d tried hard to hold on to it, and the tighter he grasped that life the more it hurt when it was ripped away from him.
He ran in the park near the apartment Wyatt had secured for him. The apartment with the guard at the entrance to report every time Van left, who he brought over, who he spoke to. Wyatt liked control, except in the bedroom. That was the only place he allowed Van to exert his control
Oh, and he did. In that space he went in without mercy, without regret, fully intent on punishing. Wyatt liked that. His eagerness only made Van want to throw up, but he had a job to do.
One he did so well.
He sank down onto a nearby bench, panting, chest heaving. He had to call Dutch. With all the conversations he’d taped between him and Wyatt, the photos and videos, not to mention the paperwork he’d made copies of, they had everything they needed to take Wyatt down.
A relief and a fucking curse at the same time.
Someone sat next to him on the bench. “Van.”
Van stiffened at the low, familiar voice. “Sullivan?” He had to force himself not to turn to face the person next to him. It had to be Sullivan Black, a fellow agent and part of Dutch’s crew. What the hell was he doing? “The fuck are you doing here, breaking protocol?” Did something happen? That had to be the only reason.
“We’ve been compromised.” Sullivan explained what he meant in a rush, every word making Van’s stomach drop lower and lower. Someone had access to the names of the agents working for them, something that should be top secret and protected as such. They didn’t exist, none of the men who worked for Dutch. Though they were all agents, cops and others of the same ilk, they operated independent of any organization. In the shadows. Van knew that now, but back then, when he’d been doing whatever his dad and Dutch asked him to do, he’d worked under the assumption that they were part of the FBI.
That was the furthest thing from the truth, and only Van, Dutchand Mark Dulles knew it. After all, his father used to be Deputy Director of the FBI, Van was a Special Agent, and Dutch… It was only later, when things fell apart, that Van realized he’d had no clue what position exactly Dutch held within the FBI.
Now Sullivan was telling him someone had compiled a list of names of everyone who worked for Dutch and was offering it up to anyone interested? What the fuck?
“Did Dutch tell you?”
Like he fucking would. Van knew Dutch. “I haven’t reported in yet for the week.” That bastard wouldn’t share something like that. He wouldn’t give any hint of vulnerability, which meant Van was assed out. As were any other agent undercover at the moment. Jesus. Christ.
“We’ve known for a while.”
Van didn’t say anything. What could he say? That was Dutch. No way would he do anything to interrupt the job. Every man for himself. Nothing surprised Van when it came to Dutch.
“There’s more.” Sullivan’s voice dropped even lower, becoming hesitant. Whatever else he had to say was huge, and it sounded like Van’s friend didn’t want to share. That shit made him tense.
“What else is there? Man, I swear. That fucking Dutch is trying my patience.”
“I need you calm,” Sullivan said. “I need you on your A-game right now. Got me?”
The fuck? How bad was this shit? Van took a deep breath. Blew it out. “I got you.” Van braced. “Hit me.”
“Levi’s on the list.”
Shock jolted Van, had him going taut. He turned his head away from Sullivan and fisted his hands because…No. No. “That’s impossible,” he whispered. “That’s—”
“The truth.”
He still shook his head. That made no sense. Levi— Just thinking the name made him want to grab his middle and double over. And all he kept thinking, over and over, was no. “How? How is he on that list?” He’d walked away from it all to ensure Levi’s safety. Not that he’d had a choice. But he’d have fought to the bitter end if he’d thought for a second that Levi was or might be in danger. He’d bargained for this. He’d fucked men and women, snorted the coke, did all that depraved shit, and what was Sullivan telling him?
Nothing? It had all been for nothing?
“Just… He’s on the list.” But something in Sullivan’s voice put Van on alert. There was more. Much more to the story. “Right now that’s all you need to know.”
“Dutch is fucking dead,” Van spat. Dead. He’d do it. Unlike the last time when he’d had Dutch on his fucking knees and a blade at his throat, this go-round that bastard’s days were numbered.
“Priority,” Sullivan said quickly. “Levi is priority.”
Priority. Levi had been the center of Van’s universe. He’d been it. Then he’d disappeared, and Van had spiraled because Dutch told him his husband—his family—had died. Showed him the wrecked car, wrapped around a pole. Shredded. No one could have survived. Van had mourned. Tried to follow his man into that grave. Because that’s who Levi was. His. Except Levi had lived, and Van learned just how much he’d survived by chance. Back undercover doing Dutch’s dirty work, he’d followed a man from New York to Philly, and watched that man walk into his dead husband’s arms.
He’d stood under a window, in the pouring rain, listened as another man touched his husband. The man he’d grieved for. He’d listened as Levi moaned and cried out for someone else, laughed and talked with someone else. So close to happy. He’d sounded happy. Van had stepped all the way into madness then.
“We need an exit strategy,” Sullivan told him.
Van scoffed silently. They didn’t need anything. “I got it handled.” He stood and pretended to stretch. “Where is he, Sullivan? Where is my husband?”
“New York. Brooklyn. I have him stashed in a safe house loaned by—”
“Let me guess. Pablo fucking Castillo.” It shouldn’t surprise him that Levi and Castillo were still fucking. Levi had always been the type to be loyal. Until he wasn’t. Until Van pushed him to be someone else. Still, it hurt something indescribable, knowing his husband was with someone else.
“You knew about them?”
He’d known for sure. He’d also confronted Dutch about it, got that fucker on his knees and the knife at his throat. “Oh, yeah. I know.” The lies he’d been fed. He’d had enough. “I gotta go.”
“Call me if you need anything. Anything.”
Van strode off without acknowledging Sullivan’s parting words or looking back.
The day he spotted Levi in Philly, he’d went straight to Dutch. The man who was supposed to be his friend, boss and mentor told Van his husband had wanted it that way. That Levi didn’t want Van to know he was alive, didn’t want him to know where he was. He wanted to be free, Dutch told Van.
His husband wanted to be free.
So Van made himself take one more trip to Philly. Took one last long look through the window, but the house had been empty. Abandoned. He’d wanted to give chase, but after what he’d done to them, he couldn’t blame Levi for wanting nothing to do with him. After all they’d been through, Van decided t
o keep moving. To not look back.
It was supposed to be the right thing. Better for everyone—not Van, but he’d done it.
He let Levi go. He stopped wishing for what could never be. He stopped hoping. What he did do was start killing himself all over again. Slower. Much more thoroughly, with the booze and the drugs. The danger he courted every night he threw on the black hoodie and baseball cap and picked up strangers to fuck and get fucked.
He existed, waiting for it to all suddenly…stop.
But once again here he was, faced with a choice. The job, or the only man who could ever thaw the coldness that encased his bones.
He stopped running abruptly. Hands on his waist, he tilted his face up to the sky and gulped in air.
Unlike the last time when he’d done what the fuck ever was necessary to avoid the messy fallout, this time the choice would be a different one.
This time he welcomed the massacre.
The blue notification light on the phone he used to contact Dutch flashed when Van stepped out of the shower fifteen minutes later. He debated whether or not he should answer. He couldn’t talk with Dutch, not yet when he was still neck-deep in regrets for not gutting him the last time he had the chance. But Dutch never got in contact unless he absolutely had to, so in the end Van answered.
“Better be a fucking good reason why you’re breaking protocol.”
“Get to Iowa. Now.”
“What—”
“That’s an order.”
Van bristled at that, but Dutch was already off the line. What the hell was in Iowa? Dutch knew Van couldn’t break out, not with Wyatt all over his ass. He was about to hit redial when the text came through.