by S. Ann Cole
“So you could have your revenge.”
Huh? “Huh?”
Bracing up on his forearms, Chad look down at me, his face a picture of sated drowsiness. “She overdrugged you, you forgot?”
Oh. “Ohhhh.”
“Yes, ‘ohhhh’,” he said, scowling. “I didn’t like what she did. I called her to do a job and she made it personal. You were temporarily paralyzed. Believe me, I was tempted to blow a hole through her brain. But I figured a beat down from you would be more lenient.”
“So you called her here for me,” I mused.
“That’s what I said.”
Pushing up to his knees, he backed up from off the table, then drew me up with him.
“Remind me never to cross you,” I said, grinning.
Face still grave, Chad shook his head, as if I wasn’t getting it. “It’s you she crossed, Jhay. You. Only reason she’s still breathing is because I kinda have a thing about killing women.”
“Yeahhh, sure you do…” I dragged, heavy on the sarcasm.
Chad scooped me up in his arms and took off with me down the hall, as if I weighed as much as a puff of cloud. He kicked open his bedroom door and went straight for the en suite bathroom, turned on his rain shower, and deposited me under the stinging streams.
I yelped when the unprepared for stings of heat bit into my skin, but Chad was in the shower in a heartbeat, plunging his tongue down my throat. This primal side of him, I loved it. He was acting starved, possessed, like he wanted to eat me, couldn’t get enough of me.
And I let him have me.
I let him kiss my mouth like an over-horny teenager getting kissed for the first time. Let him push me back against the wet tiles, jack me up, and fuck me wild and crazed like a pussy-starved ex-con fresh out of prison. I turned over my will and let him have me, however he pleased, because I was his. I have always been his.
I just didn’t realize it until now.
FOURTEEN
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail…
One hundred minutes later, I was thoroughly fucked.
By some miracle, the over-virile Chad was flagged, which left us knotted in a tangle of arms and legs in his super-comfy California King.
This place, I wanted to live and die here. In his arms, that is.
His bedroom was, for lack of a more impressive word, huge. Why did one man need this much space, I had no idea. But it was nothing less than what you’d expect of someone dwelling in the affluence of San Francisco. Sparsely decorated in warm shades of brown with earthy tones here and there. He didn’t seem to dig clutter, as every piece of furniture was just necessary, nothing decorative, which explained the sparseness. Weird enough, though, maybe because of the dark woods, the room didn’t feel cold or clinical, but warm and soothingly comfortable.
Entangled in his heat, I was starting to doze off when his chest vibrated against my ear which was pressed against it. “I was fourteen when I was thrown into training.”
I stopped breathing, then blinked once. Hell on earth, he was telling without me asking. He must be in a really good damn mood, or balancing on the verge of sleep, conscious but not exactly.
“But why, though?” I asked, not wasting the opportunity. “Why would your own father force this on you?”
“As punishment,” he offered. “Before now, the leaders’ descendants used to be exempted from enrolling for assassination training. But it could also be used as long-term punishment.”
The hell’s he talking about?
“Leaders?” I asked his chest. “Leaders of what?”
“The Organization.”
“What organization?”
“The organization is called The Organization.” His chest expanded with a breath, then eased back down, my head on his chest moving with the motion. “They’re an international organization which doesn’t answer to anyone but themselves; not even the Government. Americans and Russians have equal and leading standing within the organization, but it consists of a member from every single country around the world, representing their turf.
“For this reason, every member of The Organization has to pledge neutrality where politics are concerned, because whenever world-changing decisions are to be made, there has to be a unanimous agreement before actions are carried out, and sometimes a member has to sit back and watch their country take a hit. Put simply, The Organization is the organization of every organization. Government goes to them, not the other way around. They make decisions that impact the world—negatively. Decisions like man-made earthquakes and tsunamis. Lives lost, countries destroyed.
“But these destructions come years and years apart, which leaves them being a worldwide assassination organization in the interim. And not for petty shit like a wife wanting her cheating husband dead, but governments, politicians, corrupt pastors etc. They are anonymous, known about by only really, really, really important people. And while they pay their assassins, The Organization itself does not take money for assassination requests, they claim they do it for the ‘good’ of the world.” Chad emitted a grunt, as if to say, Yeah, right. “But in my opinion, far too many evilly corrupt members are in The Organization now for it to be any good.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” Chad said. “Very few of The Organization’s assassins are volunteers. The majority are convicted criminals snagged from inside prison walls, homeless bad boys yanked off the street sides, or people like me and you, thrown in as a form of punishment. The forced ones are usually the better killers. Their anger and fear make them sharp, clean, infallible assassins—for them, it’s survival. Volunteers are too eager to please: for them it’s a rush, so half the time they either fail, get caught, or die on the mission.”
Chad and I were forced, which explained why we were still alive. We did it for survival.
“Jhay?” he said, hesitantly. “What you experienced is not how The Organization operates. Do you understand?”
I sighed instead of answering. “I figured. When I was rewarded freedom to walk the grounds, I found I was the only unhappy camper there. Everyone else had luxuries and seemed fine with their situation: they threw parties and sparred with each other. On Fridays a bus would drive on campus and all who lived on my block would pack into it and go wherever.”
“And they trained together, right?”
“Yep.”
“Either my father was trying to give you a slow death, or he wanted to make your life as miserable as possible. That Mr. D you spoke of, The Organization does not operate like that. Everyone trains together, by a set of Chinese mavens who contributes to The Organization—they don’t take ‘payments’ for their services. All this bullshit leads me to believe the Pinnacle had no knowledge of you being thrown into their training system.”
The what? “Pinnacle?”
Chad chuckled a little. “Yes. Your opinion in The Organization matters depending on your position. And there are only seven high leaders who have unlimited opinions: four Heads—the lowest of the seven, two Heights—the highest of the seven, and the Pinnacle—the man with the gavel, the last say, the man who owns The Organization.”
“And what’s Rafail’s position?”
“He’s a Height…” Chad trailed off, paused, before adding, “And he’s the one in charge of the assassins in training and the compound.”
“So that’s how he was able to keep me a secret.”
“No other way he could’ve hidden this from the Pinnacle,” he said. “So, yeah.”
I swallowed. There was just so much shit I hadn’t a clue about.
An overwhelming sadness enveloped me, but I battled the emotion, fighting to keep my head above water.
“What did you do?” I inquired of Chad to prolong the conversation and keep myself from sinking under, losing myself in solemnity. “Why were you punished?”
A full minute ticked off before he answered. “Pavel, my uncle, had a twenty-year-old mistress. Moved her there from the States. Bought her an apartment
, showered her with gifts, bought her love with money. But because he was married, he couldn’t be with her all the time. And she was twenty-one, bored, with no friends or family in the country. My father and I were the only ones who knew about her. So sometimes my uncle would send me over to her apartment to keep her company. Go to the movies with her and stuff, whatever she wanted to do, anything to keep her happy…”—A pause—”She got attached to me. One thing led to another and…”
I tried to sound casual. “You started having sex.”
“Yeah.”
“And you loved her?”
A longer pause. “Yeah. She was my first fuck. It’s natural that I’d be infatuated.”
“You were fourteen,” I reminded him.
“So?”
I bit my lip, because I didn’t know why ‘so’. I only knew I detested that he’d loved some chick who wasn’t me. But then, when he was fourteen, I was six, so… Why was I vexed again?
Okay, this possessive jacket didn’t fit me. At all.
Was this how all heterosexual relationships were? The female becomes attached and obsessed with the male because he has good looks, good height, sexy hands, tattoos, strong arms, defined abs, a big cock and knew precisely how to use it?
Maybe I should go back to being a dyke. Or, hell, I was probably still a dyke but going through a straight-for-you phase.
When I gave no retort to his ‘so’, Chad continued with his recall. “Pavel found out about us. He was infuriated, wanted me punished. So he took the matter to my father. Now, my father had been waiting for the perfect opportunity to decimate me without making his actions appear unjustified. He’d hated me since I was ten. So when Pavel complained to him, he didn’t hesitate in finding the perfect punishment for me. I wasn’t forced to live on the training compound, though. I was pulled out of school and was picked up by the Chinese everyday where I was trained and educated for eight hours before bringing me back home. One kid trained by five psycho-ass, fast-as-light Chinese assassins. You can understand now why I’m so different from every other assassin in The Organization.”
“Wow…and….what?” I tipped my head up to find his face. “What do you mean your father hated you? At ten?”
Brushing his thumb across my left eyebrow, Chad watched me for an adoring moment. “Your eyes are downright unbelievable, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“They’ve gotten brighter, greener. I love having them stare back at me.” Deep inhale. “They ruin me every time.”
“Trying to change the subject?” I asked, brow cocking in suspicion.
“No. I just love your eyes.” When I rolled them, he chuckled and picked up where he left off. “The Niiveuxs are old money. Old, old money. Wealth coming way back from the eighteen hundreds. Passing on from generation to generation, always to the eldest son in the family. The legacy was supposed to be passed on to my father, but I don’t know what went down between Grandad and Rafail, because Grandad broke tradition and bypassed my father and both my uncles, passing the legacy straight to me.
“I was ten when he died. My father was livid. At ten years old, I was fifty-seven billion dollars rich. And just like the legacy was passed on to me, my father’s hate for Grandad was transferred to me. Of course, I was still a minor, so I couldn’t have access to the legacy until I was eighteen. And my father, he couldn’t access it at all. Grandad’s lawyers were paid a serious amount of money to keep that shit under lock and key. Grandad had thought everything through; I guess he knew my father would just control the money anyway if I was still a minor when he died, so he shut my father out completely. The only Niiveux that legacy would ever be available to was me. Some of the smaller family businesses he passed on to Vlad and Pavel.”
With a pause to breathe slow and steady, he rubbed his forehead, as if the memories pained. “He kicked me out of the house to the pool house and treated me like an outcast after that. No love. No care. I might as well have been homeless. It was Pavel who cared for me from time to time, though he was just as pissed about Grandad’s decision.
“At eleven, I met Ricardo. He invited me to his house. I loved it there, because your parents were kind to me. Lot better than at my own home. That’s why I was always at your dinner table, in your bedroom, living like a Byrd. The Byrds were my real family. When I was struggling through training, your mother guessed what was happening, and she used to talk me through it. I told her everything, and she never said a word. I loved that woman.”
Huh, that’s what those long sessions in my mother’s study used to be about.
Who knew it was this bad for him at his own home? Guess I’d been too giddy about having him around all the time to notice.
“How did you get out?” I asked. “How were you set free from assassinating for The Organization?”
“I bought my way out.” His eyes drifted to the ceiling and stayed there. “My father wanted one thing: the money. I wanted one thing: my freedom. Without my freedom, the money meant nothing to me. So when I hit seventeen, and had already executed eleven different assignments, I made a deal with my father: If he gave me my freedom, I would sign the legacy over to him the second it became available to me. That’s what he’d wanted all along, so he gladly agreed. But with one stipulation—to execute one final assignment before I could go…”
My heart stopped. My breathing stopped. Everything stopped. Tears blinding me as I concluded, “My family.”
“I’m so sorry, Jhay,” Chad consoled, his eyes leaving the ceiling and finding mine. “It was after…it was after I realized part of the reason he made me carry out that particular assignment was because he wanted to scar me permanently before letting me go. He knew I loved them. He knew I considered your…father as my own. He could’ve assigned someone else, but he wanted to ruin me.” A shaky inhale. “I hate him.”
For a long, long while, we paused the conversation. Chad’s eyes were vacant, distant, as he stared off at nothing, while I cried silently on his chest. Giving myself the freedom to mourn, suppressing my tears no more. If there were anywhere suitable for me to shed my tears, it was on the chest of the man who pulled the trigger. Even if I was wrongly, irrationally, nonsensically, immorally in love with said man.
When I decided to tuck the grief back inside, Chad apologized again, using his thumb to eliminate the traces of tears from my face.
“What made my mother a target?” This was something I meant to ask a million times before, but held back, not wanting to relive the moment. But if there was ever a time to get over the tragedy of that night, it was now, in this moment of revelations. “What did she do?”
With an agonizing groan, Chad rubbed his eyes, as if he’d rather be doing anything else but talking about my dead mother right now. The one he killed. “I was told she was a mole. Your mother was the top assassin for The Organization. A volunteer. She was treasured and had extremely special privileges, on her way to becoming an actual member of The Organization. But then sensitive info about The Organization started getting leaked. And targets were being rescued hours before their hits could be executed, assassins getting ensnared. Someone pointed the finger at your mother, said she was a double agent with The Organization and The Altrus—The Altrus is another organization that does the opposite of what The Organization does. They help people, save lives, perpetually trying to counteract everything The Organization does. But they are not nearly as advanced or powerful as The Organization, so nine out of ten times, they lose.—Anyway, someone went behind the Pinnacle’s back and ordered the hit on your mother and her entire family.”
What a hard fucking pill to swallow. “Someone as in Rafail Niiveux,” I dripped in bitter, scornful drops.
Chad nodded in the affirmative.
“Do you think she was really a mole?”
A long pause, then, “Until recently, that’s what I was led to believe.”
“Until recently?” I stiffened and peered up at him. “Does that mean it’s possible someone framed
her?”
“Yes.”
That was a very pregnant yes. “She was framed, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
I knew it. “By your father?”
“Yes.”
I sat up now, brown sheets bunching around my waist, and dug my fingernails into my palms to prevent myself from screaming. “That…that heartless piece of…Ohmygod… “ I closed my eyes and counted to ten, lest I took my emerging rage out on Chad. “Why? Why would he do that? What was his fucking motive?”
Chad eyed me carefully as I sat next to his hip fighting rage. “My father has been planning to usurp the Pinnacle for a long time. But in order for the members to pledge him as the Pinnacle, he needed extreme wealth, and incontestable power. To build that kind of power, he needed deeper pockets. My father’s plan to take over The Organization was solid; he even had a few of the members on his side. But then Grandad fucked him over by passing the legacy on to me. His plan got shot to shit. Of course, that plan was revived years later when I made the deal with him.”
Flicking his eyes to mine, he locked our gazes. “This is the real truth: Isabel was collateral damage. She was having an affair with the Pinnacle before she moved to Russia—he was her reason for migrating there. He was madly in love with her. She was his weakness. If my father could frame her for being a mole, other members of The Organization would question the Pinnacle’s judgment. How could he not know his lover was the mole? With quite a few of the members siding with my father, it was possible for them to clandestinely order a hit on Isabel without the Pinnacle’s knowledge.”
“But it wasn’t just her!!” I screamed at him, unable to contain my anger any longer. “It was my whole family!! And then my freedom!”
Chad winced, but cautiously reached for my hand and squeezed. He wouldn’t apologize again. I knew this much about him. “The hit on the entire family was to hurt me as much as it was to hurt the Pinnacle. Killing two birds with one stone.”
“Did he succeed in taking over The Organization?”
His head shook no. “The Pinnacle had bigger, badder guns that the rest of the members knew zilch about. After Isabel’s death, he figured something was up, and pre-emptively set up a stronger defense to protect himself, but made them none the wiser that he knew of the corruptive dissolution among them. He had more wealth and more power than he’d let on, which I guess he kept a secret for instances such as usurpation. Rafail backed off. But knowing how power-hungry that man is, I’m sure he’s still searching for a way to win.”