A Mad Reed Security Christmas

by Lagomarsino, Giulia

  “Just make sure you take care of them.”

  “Fuck you-”

  “Gotta go,” I said, hanging up as he started yelling at me. I found a nearby motel and checked in for the night. I had no idea how long it would take me to take care of this, but I wasn’t leaving until this guy was buried in the fucking ground.

  Usually, I gave myself a few days to scope out a target and figure out the best way to take him out without leaving any evidence. This would be harder. A senator meant extra security. I called a taxi, not wanting my motorcycle to be seen anywhere around the house. After paying in cash, I walked the half mile to his house, slipping in and out between houses and hiding anywhere I could. By the time I was to his property, I had a good idea of how I wanted to handle this.

  For the next week I kept my phone off and spent all of my nights watching his house. I would drive past during the day, checking for any changes, but the Senator seemed to be a creature of habit. As I sat outside his house, waiting for the shift change of the guards, I thought about Kate and my kids. I couldn’t fuck this up. I had another baby on the way and I had to be there to meet it. But this guy was a threat to Reid, a kid that I barely knew. But he meant something to Alec and Florrie, and he had fucked up majorly by getting involved with Marks, the asshole that had pushed for me to be sent to prison.

  When the shift change started, I hacked into the system and reset all the alarms and set the cameras as I needed them. I slipped in through the back gate and hid in the shadows until the guard in the back yard moved to the side of the house. Peering in through the window by the back door, I saw that the coast was clear and slipped inside. The alarms didn’t sound, just like I expected. I made my way through the dark hallways until I made it to the Senator’s study on the side of the house. I figured I had about fifteen minutes to get in and out. I slid into a dark corner of his study, waiting for him to arrive. He always came into his study at six o’clock and got on the phone. He wouldn’t be doing that tonight. As expected, the door opened and Senator Brantley walked in, except tonight, his doting wife was with him.

  “George, we need to find Reid. It’s been two months. He could be dead!”

  Brantley spun around and got in his wife’s face. “Good,” he said in a cold voice. “He wasn’t going to amount to anything anyway.”

  “George-”

  She screamed as she felt to the ground after a backhand from her dear husband. I stepped out of the shadows just as he was about to kick her.

  “Step away from her.”

  His eyes flicked up to mine and the gun in my hand.

  “Who are you?”

  “You don’t remember me?” I said, my voice dripping with menace.

  He squinted in thought and then his eyes widened. He glanced to the phone on his desk, but a slight shake of my head had him changing his mind.

  “Knight,” he said after a minute. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that.”

  “I’ve got security-”

  “You’re security has shit for brains,” I spat. “No one’s coming to save you.”

  His eyes flicked to the gun for just a moment. “Why? It’s been years.”

  “And yet I’m still fucking pissed.”

  “You got your revenge. I barely played a part in that.”

  “You used your influence to make others turn a blind eye to what my superiors were doing. You allowed it to happen.”

  “If you kill me, there’s nothing that will stop them from putting you in jail. You’ll rot in prison.”

  “Only if they catch me,” I said, just before I fired and shot him in the chest. I wished it could have been more drawn out, more painful. But I had a family now. Before, it wouldn’t have mattered if I risked getting caught. I couldn’t take that chance now. I watched as he struggled for breath. Slowly, I walked over and placed my shoe right on his windpipe. I stomped down in one brutal crush, watching as his eyes went wide and his body stilled.

  “Where does he keep his secrets?”

  The woman on the ground just stared at me. I walked over to her and hauled her up roughly by the arm. “Tell me what I want to know or you’ll end up the same way.”

  Her eyes glittered with tears, but she just shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Would you do it for your son?”

  “You know where he is?”

  “Answer me,” I ground out.

  “You don’t know what they’ll do to me,” she whimpered. “I can’t.”

  I shoved her back and pressed my gun to her head. “Tell me now and I’ll get you out of here. If not, I’ll take you out myself.”

  Her whole body shook, but her eyes dashed to the wall on the opposite side of the room. I yanked on her arm and dragged her over to the wall.

  “Open it.”

  She fumbled along the wall until she came to a hollow panel and pressed. A small section of the wall opened and a safe sat just waiting for me. I jerked my head at it and she pressed some numbers, opening the door for me. She pulled out a thick stack of papers and set it on the table for me. I pulled out a pair of gloves and slid them on, then shuffled through the paperwork, deciding what should be left in the open and what I should take for leverage. He had enough evidence on other senators and congressmen that would be useful to me if I ever had the need for it. That stuff I took with me, but there was one damning piece of evidence that I left behind. It would be the perfect thing to plant on him, that would make it seem like someone else came for him because he was blackmailing them.

  I grabbed the woman by the arm after planting the evidence, and led her down the dark hallways, back to the back door. Hiding in the shadows of the house, I waited for my opportunity.

  “When I say, we’re going to run for the back gate. If you make any fucking noise, I’ll fucking shoot you. You got it?”

  She nodded quickly and ran with me, not making a word. We made it safely to the back gate and were just slipping through when I heard the commotion in the house. I pulled her along the path I had taken to get here and back to the motel. She was on the verge of freaking out, but held it together for the most part. When we were back in the motel, she flopped on the bed, staring at the wall.

  “We need to leave,” I said urgently, grabbing my bag that was already packed. “Now.”

  “I’m not going,” she said quietly.

  “What are you talking about? You’re free. You can see your son again.”

  “Is he safe?”

  “The safest he’s ever been.”

  She smiled as tears slipped down her face. “Good.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “I’m not going.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “What the fuck are you talking about? He’s waiting for you.”

  That wasn’t technically true since he didn’t know what I had planned, but I needed to knock her out of her stupor.

  “I can’t. I’ve made the worst decisions in the world for him. I didn’t stop George when he did all those terrible things. I let him…”

  “You can make it better. You can fucking try.”

  She shook her head sadly. “It was so much worse than just beatings. That, I might have been able to beg forgiveness for. But the rest of it…There’s no making up for what I allowed to happen.” She seemed to be in a daze, but then shook her head and looked at me pleadingly. “Do you promise that he’s safe? That he’s being taken care of?”

  I looked at her, trying to figure out what to do from here. Chris’s wife, Ali, came to mind. She had been in a similar situation. She had escaped with her son and come to us for help. The difference between her and this woman was that she never gave up. She kept trying to get Axel away from Slasher. She took beatings that were meant for her son. This woman had basically washed her hands of her son until he ran away. And I had a really fucking hard time feeling anything for her. So, I gave her what she needed. One last small comfort before I left her.

  “Yes,” I finally said
.

  “That’s all I need to know. Take care of him.”

  “What are you going to do? They’ll kill you. You know they’ll come after you, and they’re going to think that you were involved.”

  “Take care of him,” she said before laying down on the bed and turning away from me. I wanted to snatch her and take her with me for the sake of her son, but she wasn’t my responsibility, and frankly, she didn’t stand up for her son when he needed her. I just couldn’t feel sorry for a woman like that.

  I turned and walked out the door, hopping on my motorcycle after stashing my bag. I had a family to get back to. All I could think about on the way back was what Kate would think when I walked through that door. She wasn’t naive. I had made a promise to her, and I just broke that promise. But the thrill of taking that asshole out was too strong and I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about what I had done. I had taken out someone terrible tonight, and I had the urge to do it again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Cap

  “Did you see the news?” Alec asked as he stormed into my office.

  “What?”

  “The news. Did you see it?”

  I shook my head as he walked over to the TV and flipped on the news. My eyes widened in surprise when I saw the report of the senator being gunned down in his own home. Police cars were everywhere. His staffers were demanding justice. But the thing that caught my attention was the fact that another senator was implicated in his murder.

  “Well, I guess your problems are solved,” I said, wondering if he was thinking the same thing I was, that it wasn’t a senator that had taken this guy out.

  “This wasn’t another fucking senator that did this,” he growled. “Where is he?”

  I sighed and pushed back my chair, walking over to the TV to watch the newscast. “I don’t know.”

  “He’s been gone for a fucking week,” Alec spat. “This isn’t how we handle this shit.”

  “I know,” I snapped. “I don’t know where the fuck he is.”

  “Reid’s mother isn’t at the house. Did he kill her too?”

  “Look, let’s just wait before we jump to conclusions. We don’t-”

  I stopped talking when I saw her picture fill the screen and then more police tape at a different location. It was a motel outside of town.

  “Melanie Brantley was found dead about an hour ago at this motel about a mile from her home. There’s no word yet on her cause of death,” the reporter said.

  I shut off the tv and sighed. “Look, let’s just wait for him to get back and-”

  “Wait for who to get back?”

  I spun around to see Knight leaning against my door frame. “Get in here and shut the door.”

  He did as I asked, but didn’t move any closer. His eyes were dark and his posture rigid, ready for a fight. This was the Knight I met a long time ago; a version of this man I had hoped to never see again.

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you fucking do. Don’t pull that shit with me. We had a deal.”

  “So fucking fire me.”

  Alec walked over to him, getting in his face. “You killed the mother too?”

  He shrugged. “Believe what you want.”

  “He doesn’t need that kind of guilt,” Alec shouted. “I wanted the fucker dead too, but I was going to blackmail him instead, because the minute Reid finds out about this, he’s gonna think it’s his fault. I told him I would take care of it. How the fuck am I supposed to get him to trust me now? I’m supposed to expect him to go from an abusive home to one where people just go around killing anyone they want?”

  “Maybe he’ll be grateful,” Knight growled.

  “And his mother?” I asked.

  “Maybe she didn’t want to leave her husband,” he said, as if he had no clue about any of it.

  “Knight, what the fuck am I supposed to do now? You swore that you wouldn’t go on any more revenge killings. You swore to Kate!”

  “I’ll deal with Kate.”

  “You really think she’s going to stay with you after this?”

  He was right in front of me in a flash, grabbing me by the collar and snarling at me. I wasn’t scared though. I had seen Knight at his worst before. He didn’t go around killing innocent people. And even though he wanted to make me think he would kill me right now, he just didn’t have it in him.

  “You stay the fuck out of my life with Kate. I’ll deal with this on my own.”

  He shoved me back and turned, storming out of the room. I straightened my shirt and sat back down in my chair. I wasn’t worried about a dead senator. As far as I was concerned, the bastard had it coming. But Alec was right. Reid would take this as his fault. And then he might leave and end up in an even worse position than he was in when Alec found him.

  “I have to tell him. I can’t lie to him.”

  I stood again and walked past him. “Come on.”

  I walked ahead of Alec, headed for the panic room. Alec wasn’t going to be the one to handle this. If Reid trusted him even a little, Alec couldn’t risk breaking that trust. Besides, this was my company, and my employee had gone rogue. I spotted Florrie on the way and jerked my head for her to follow.

  When we got to Alec’s suite, he shoved the door open and knocked on Reid’s door. Florrie moved into the room, eyeing me warily. I made myself comfortable as Reid and Alec talked for a moment, and then came over to sit down and talk.

  “Reid, your step-father is dead.” I waited for a response, but he just stared at me, as if he didn’t even care. “I want you to understand that someone here is responsible for his death.” His eyes flicked immediately to Alec, so I continued. “It wasn’t Alec. It’s important that you know that we had every intention of making your step-father pay for what he did. We just didn’t anticipate someone beating us to it.”

  “I don’t care. I’m glad he’s dead.”

  That made this part even more difficult. “Your mother is also dead. We’re not sure how she died yet.”

  He looked down, fidgeting with his fingers for a moment. “She hasn’t really been my mom in years. Does it make me a bad son that I don’t really feel anything?”

  “No,” I said fiercely.

  Alec got up and moved over to him, placing his hand on Reid’s shoulder in a tight grip. “None of this is your fault. Your step-father got what he deserved. As for your mother, I hope she’s in a better place now. I think she wanted to give you what you needed, but went to the wrong man. That doesn’t make her a bad person.”

  “But staying does,” he spat. “She wouldn’t be dead if she had just left him.”

  “Reid, what she did was wrong, but neither of us were in her position. Just give it some time to adjust to what happened.”

  He didn’t look too happy about that. “So, now that they’re dead, what’s going to happen to me? Do I go stay with someone else?”

  Florrie sat down on the other side of Reid, eyeing Alec before she spoke. “We have to tell the police that you’re here.” Reid’s eyes went wide in panic. “But we’d like you to stay.”

  “If you want me to stay, then why do you have to contact the police?”

  I watched as Florrie looked to Alec, pleading to him with her eyes. Alec shook his head and I was glad he was taking my advice.

  Florrie gripped Reid’s hand. “There could be other people out there looking for you. As much as I want you to stay, I can’t just keep you for myself. If we can’t find anyone, and you want to stay, we would love that.”

  “Why don’t you have your own kids?” Reid said harshly. “Am I just a project for you?”

  Florrie sat back, a little shocked by his attitude. “I can’t have kids.” Reid flushed red, refusing to look at Florrie. “But I’m not trying to make you my kid and you’re not a project. Alec and I saw a kid on the streets, struggling to survive. We just want to help you and be there for you with whatever you need. We’ll
contact Sean and he can help us with this discreetly. In the meantime, you can stay with us. If you don’t want to, Sean will find someplace else for you to stay.”

  Reid sat there, not looking at any of us, and not saying a word. My heart hurt for the kid, but also for Florrie and Alec. I could see how much they wanted this kid to stay with them, and I really hoped he chose to.

  “Why don’t you think on it,” Alec suggested. “You don’t have to make any decisions today, but you should decide soon.”

  Reid nodded and walked out of the suite. I sighed, frustrated that this shit was getting all fucked up. “I wish that would have gone differently.”

  “That makes two of us,” Alec grumbled.

  “I have to go figure out what to do with Knight.”

  “You don’t do anything,” Florrie said. “Knight never does anything unless he feels it’s necessary. I have a feeling that Reid wasn’t the only reason that he went after the senator.”

  “That makes it worse,” I pointed out. “The last thing I need is Knight going rogue again.” I headed for the door, but turned back to them. “I hope he stays.”

  Alec nodded and I headed out the door and back to my office. I groaned when I saw Sean storm across the lobby and into my office, glaring at me all the way. Shit. I shut the door behind me and waited for it.

  “How long have you known?”

  “Known what?”

  “Don’t pull that shit with me. You have a senator’s son stashed here. How long have you fucking known?”

  “About a week.”

  “And you didn’t think that was something you should tell me? Christ, with the senator’s death, everyone’s fucking looking for him now. Do you know what kind of heat that’ll bring down on you?”

  “What do you want me to do? Send him back out there to deal with all the shit going on?”

  “He should be with his family,” Sean said angrily.

  “You mean the family that beat the shit out of him since he was a kid?”

  “He has other family.”

  “Look, if the kid wants to stay here, I’m not telling him to leave.”

  Sean threw his hands in the air as he turned away from me. “Un-fucking-believable.” He turned back to me with an accusing finger. “I told you, no more fucking trouble. It’s not even Christmas and you’re stepping in shit everywhere! I’ll give you this, the kid is fucking lucky that he was with you and not at home. The way the senator was murdered, and then his wife…”