by S. K. Lessly
***
Ethan
I watched the sun slowly rise, lighting up the sky with rich colors of reds, purples, oranges, yellows and blues. The heat from the morning sun lit up the beautiful world around me causing a small smile to appear. I was glad to be home. Glad to be with my family and in one piece. But my heart was heavy.
I came home last night with a war of emotions plaguing me. I was ready to get lost in a bottle of Jack, but found my lovely naked wife sprawled on warm sheets waiting for me. I forgot about the Jack and quickly got lost in her instead, burying myself deep inside her and forgetting everything and everyone.
Even though we’d been together for a while now, I still couldn’t get enough of her. I longed for her every second of every day. I ached for her, craved her. I had never in my life wanted anyone or anything more than I wanted my wife, which was saying a lot considering how much I loved to kill. I was grateful for her; thankful she didn’t give up on me and over the moon she married me and made me the happiest man alive.
Unfortunately, the high of being immersed in my woman didn’t last as long as I would’ve liked. There was so much shit swimming in my mind, I could barely stay in control.
I woke just before the sun rose and made my way out of the bedroom. I checked on my kids before I grabbed a bottled water from the fridge and made my way out onto the back patio. I needed to get my head on straight before everyone else woke up.
My kids were active. They kept the both if us on our toes, especially the twins. Those two terrors, damn. I could only imagine how much trouble I had been for my mother. Add that trouble from my one-year olds with my baby girl… and you had three beautiful hellions. My kids were rambunctious, crazy, loud and smart as shit. The best of their parents and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sitting in one of the most comfortable chaise lounge chairs ever made, I closed my eyes, laced my fingers together, and rested my hands on my lap. My mind drifted to what had gone down hours before I made it home. The dread mixed with a bit of hurt and anger from earlier, began to consume me once again. All these years wondering, wishing and I never thought this day would come. I also didn’t think it would turn out to be a clusterfuck.
The sliding glass door to the patio slid opened and I turned to find my wife stepping outside with a sheet wrapped around her body and tucked snuggly under her arm. Her hair was everywhere, gaze searching, body tense. She looked thoroughly fucked and the sight of her almost made my dick hard.
Okay, I’m lying my dick is hard as a rock.
“Hey, babe. You okay?” Her delicate fingers raked through my unruly long hair before moving to my shoulders and kneaded soothingly.
I groaned and relaxed under her touch, so much so that her ministrations turned into a full out massage. I felt my body began to warm under her talented fingers. It was always like that with us. All she had to do was touch me and I was on her. I thought about taking her again, fucking her senseless right here, but I couldn’t, at least not yet anyway. She and I needed to talk. I needed her comfort and her love now more than ever.
I reached behind me and clasped her wrist, stopping her movements.
“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?” she asked, concerned drenched in her voice
“No, baby. I’m fine. Come here.” I tugged her around to face me and guided her on my lap.
“Then why did you stop me?”
“Because, woman, if you kept it up, I would be sliding inside you right now."
She grinned at me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
She leaned in and place a kiss on my lips that promised so much. I kissed her back but moved back slightly before she could deepen it.
She studied my eyes for a long moment and sobered up. She changed positioned, hiking up the sheet to straddle me. She placed serious light brown globes on me and folded her arms across her chest.
“Okay baby. I can see something is really bothering you. What is it? Did everything go well with the op?”
I exhaled a long breath, running my hand down my face. “Yeah, everything went as planned.”
“Okay. You got your man without a fuss?”
“Yup, we did. Thank you for that by the way. It was spot on intelligence as always.”
She smirked at me as if to say, “When have I ever not been spot on.” I couldn’t help the chuckle that sprang from my lips.
“Cocky little minx,” I chortled softly.
“Eh, what can I say? I’m just that good.”
Lexie and her team from the NSA helped us track down a known terrorist, responsible for the mass killing of numerous African tribes all over the continent of Africa, to a remote village in Sierra Leone. We couldn’t find this cell by typical means, bank records, internet sites, email or black web chatter, which made searching for this group a bit of a challenge. But my baby found them. Her team ran this new face rec software called the Mona Lisa. This bad boy ran facial recognition using real-time satellite imagery.
This thing could see and find a tick on a camel’s back and be able to describe said tick and follow it almost anywhere it went. For example, if we were still looking for Osama Bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan, he would’ve been caught the moment the fucker stepped out from the rock he was hiding under.
The technology was new, intrusive, and downright unconstitutional. But fuck that. We were at war. The cells we were hunting, as well as others, were elevating the game. It was high time we did the same.
In my case, the Mona Lisa worked its magic to help locate one member of the cell, a tribal leader named Mustafa. He ran this little band of killers, rapists and all-around assholes. Because they alienated themselves from the world only coming out for food, supplies and to murder and rape others, we went to the NSA for help, mainly my wife. She helped create the Mona Lisa, knew how to maneuver through the software to get results quickly. She scoured the large continent and found him in a week’s time. Once she located the whereabouts of Mustafa, she tagged him, and the face rec program followed him wherever he went in the world.
When he settled in his hiding place, we could have dropped a few AGM-114 Hellfire missiles on their asses. However, we needed to make sure there weren’t any innocent people in his camp. Which, of course, meant a ground assault for my team.
I didn’t mind it one bit. I fucking loved every minute of it too. It was satisfying to see the shock of being found and caught in my prey’s eyes. It was even better seeing the life drain from Mustafa’s eyes when I slit his throat. I had realized, after we cleaned house, just how much I missed the job, missed the hunt, and missed the rush. Yeah, I knew how that sounded, but I didn’t care.
I am who I am. I will not make excuses for it.
Lexie touched my bearded cheek and studied my troubled face. “Talk to me, Ethan. What’s going on?”
I waited a few minutes before I told her what had both anger and pain coursing through me.
“My mother called me the other day.”
She gasped as I knew she would. She and I spoke briefly about my mother over the years. She knew that my mother and I were estranged, had been for more than a decade. What I hadn’t told her was that I went looking for her after the night we shared in her hotel room. The night that changed everything for me.
Hearing that my mom had approached her about a letter I wrote, claiming she thought it was addressed to her, had my bullshit meter spiking like crazy. There was no way my mother thought I wrote her. We didn’t part on good terms. She made it clear she didn’t want me.
Granted, I didn’t think she would stoop so low as to write that hateful ass letter about me. But then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. She had been a vindictive bitch for most of my childhood, and hell, to my knowledge she still was. However, for some reason, I wanted to find her and ask her why.
It didn’t take long for me to locate her. She was living in some beat up apartment building outside of the D.C. area. She didn’t age well at
all; I barely recognized her. She was thinner than before with sad eyes, a gaunt face and age lines signifying just how much life had beat her down. Her hair was combed and looked clean, but it had lost its luster a long ass time ago.
She was shocked as hell to see me standing outside her door. I saw the tears pool; however, I didn’t waver, nor did I give an ounce of my attention on them. I stepped around her still frame and entered her sparsely furnished apartment. She led me to a small kitchen table with two chairs and I got down to business.
I asked her about Lexie, the letters I knew she stole from the Stone’s mailbox and read, and why she approached her. She gave me some sob story about jealousy and being in a bad place when I was a child. Drugs and alcohol had meant more to her than me. I knew that shit but to hear her say it out loud did make me feel slightly better. She then threw apologies at me that fell on deaf ears.
I didn’t care how sorry she was. I just wanted to know why she sent that letter to me. The one that called me useless, said I wouldn’t amount to anything and that Lexie had found someone else better, mainly saying shit to destroy me. So, I asked and she told me.
“I was jealous. It was simple as that.” My birth mother had shrugged indifferently but I could see remorse written all over her face. She took a breath then went on, “The look of happiness in her eyes when she talked about getting letters from you made me envious. Then when I mistakenly received that letter that was meant for her, it was crushing. For a long time, I thought you wrote me. I didn’t open the letter for at least a week, just wanting to bask in the fact that you loved me and thought of me. When I finally opened the letter and read it, I realized I had been mistaken. That’s when I focused on the envelope and realized you didn’t give two shits about me.”
“So, you decided to ruin what I had with Lexie?” I had asked bitterly.
“Yes,” was her only reply.
Needless to say, that conversation had me skating on the edge of control. I had wanted to throttle my so-called mother. The fucked-up shit she said about me in that letter was laced with so much hatred and malice. I didn’t believe her when she told me she didn’t mean the words she wrote. She had to have meant them. They were vicious and hurtful and if her goal had been to break me down, she achieved it.
She started to cry then, but that only pissed me off more. I stood and unleashed all the pain, hatred and loathing on her. I told her just how much of a mother she wasn’t. How I had loved her, and she fucked me over so many times I had nothing left to give her.
She begged for forgiveness, dropping to her knees in front of me and I didn’t give it to her. I left her there, without a word or a fucking thought and I hadn’t looked back since. That was the last I spoke to the woman. So, imagine my surprise when she called me.
“Your mother called you? How?” she blurted, then realized what she said and shook her head. “Sorry, I guess if she called, she used a phone. But when? Okay, you kind of answered that question too. Sorry, it’s early.” Lexie rambled, which despite the mood I was in, made me smile just a bit. I touched her lips with my fingers to get her to stop talking.
“Sorry,” she mumbled under my fingers. I moved my fingers away from her soft lips. “I guess I should ask what did she want? How did she get your number?”
I shrugged. “Probably my stepfather, although that was a bit hard to believe considering he felt she was Satan reincarnated.”
Lexie hummed her agreement. We both knew just how much my stepfather hated my mother. He never wasted a moment to dog her. But he wasn’t a saint either. It wasn’t like he was the father of the year and I had to remind him of that fact every time he went on a rampage about my mother. He didn’t like it, but he took it.
“So, what did she want?” Lexie asked me, bringing me back to the present.
I shifted her little from my lap to rest her ass between my legs, her legs thrown over the sides of my legs.
“She… well, I can’t really call it. Multiple things, I guess. I mean she called me talking about some steps she was taking to change her life. She started off by apologizing again for everything.”
“Wait, again? When did she apologize the first time?”
I cringed slightly then admitted she and I had spoken before. I explained that I confronted her about the her sending me the fucked-up letter and how she confirmed writing it. Lexie was quiet for a spell before she frowned and spat, “That bitch.”
I nodded, agreeing with her. I told her the rest, the shit I said, and how I left her in her apartment and never spoke to her or saw her again.
“And now what, she wants a relationship with you?” Lex questioned.
“I guess so, yeah. She went on and on about her deciding to get clean the day I left her on her knees in her apartment. She realized how much she hurt me and decided she would make amends any way possible. She started by putting herself in a rehab program. She worked on dealing with the issues of her past and forgiving herself for the mistakes she made. After that, she moved out of the area, to North Carolina, and got her life in order. She got a job, found a place to live and crawled her way back.”
“Wow. I’m pissed at what she did. But I’m also glad she finally got her life together.”
“Yeah, apparently she found God and she goes to church now. She said she finally forgave herself. She then called my stepfather and apologized to him.” I chuckled softly. “They’re good friends now.”
An eyebrow rose to her forehead. “Really?”
“Yup.”
“Wow.”
“Yup.”
We fell silent for a few minutes, letting the weight of my words sink in before she asked, “Okay so, she called you and apologized to you as well. And let me guess, she wants to have a relationship with you too and you told her no.”
I ran a hand down my face and breathed out. “No, not exactly. I mean, yeah, she wants to have a relationship or rather work on one. She wants to apologize to you too and your parents. Anyway, my stepfather showed her pictures of Arya and the boys and she wants to get to know her grandkids too.”
“Okay… and you’re upset because she wants to get to know them?” she asked, and I could see the confusion all over her face. I knew I was dragging this on. I needed to just say what I needed to say.
“No. Listen, that’s not… I don’t have a problem with her getting to know her grandkids. If she’s truly sober and has changed her life, we’ll see. I told her it will take some time for me to be comfortable with her coming around my family, but we’ll work something out. She’s married some guy from her church and she’s happy. So again, we’ll see.”
Lexie sighed frowning at me. “Okay so, Ethan, I’m lost. What did she say to make you upset?”
Finally, I admitted, “Baby, my mother called to tell me the name of my father.”
“She did what!” Lexie blurted, her eyes wide her jaw slacked.
I touched her chin with my finger to close her mouth. The side of my mouth curled up in a half smile. “Yeah, picture that, right? She used to tell me over and over again she couldn’t remember who he was and all that time she knew.”
“Oh, my goodness, baby. I’m so sorry. What did she have to say for herself? I mean who is this guy?”
“Well, she told me everything. They met in Ireland. She was there visiting family. She had lost her parents and while going through their things found a book with a weird looking number next to the name Ian. She said her father talked about his brother Ian all the time, but she thought he was incarcerated or something because he never came around or spoke to him. She decided to call the number and when someone answered she told them who she was, how she got the number and about her parent’s death.”
Lexie nodded her head, anticipation all over her face, ears primed and waiting. I felt her comfort immediately. This was what I needed; the love in her eyes and her presence has eased some of the tension I felt as I knew she would.
“So, did she go to Ireland to connect with family?” she pushed sof
tly getting my mind back on my story.
“Yeah and she told me they welcomed her with open arms. She spent months there just connecting. But while she was there, she started noticing weird shit. Like her uncle Ian had serious body guards all over his estate. At first, she thought he was royalty. Most people who came in contact with the family either bowed or they scattered far away. They lived in a huge estate and had servants that waited on them hand and foot. My mom was naïve back then. But she learned quickly that her family wasn’t upstanding citizens or royalty. They were members of the Irish Republic Army.”
“Holy shit, are you serious? Sooo, your family is part of the IRA?”
“So, it would seem. My mother said they kept her out of their business. She wasn’t from the area. She was an American, despite her heritage. But they didn’t push her away. They embraced her. My uncle told her all about her family, showed her around the birthplace of her parents. She loved it there. She thought about staying, making a living there instead of going back to the states. Uncle Ian was thrilled. He paid for her apartment, gave her an allowance, a car and even a bodyguard.”
“Let me guess, she fell in love with her bodyguard.” Lexie rolled her eyes and it made me chuckle.
“Nope, he valued his life. No, she met my father at a pub in her neighborhood she frequented every Friday. He was a bartender. She told me he was new to the area, from Rhode Island, when she met him. They got to talking about missing the states and one thing led to another and they were dating. My mother told me it was love at first sight. Those two were inseparable.”
“Awwww, that’s beautiful. Amazing.”
I harrumphed. “Yeah, it was right up until he betrayed her.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope. It turns out, her prince charming was actually a member of the CIA.”
“Nooooo!” she gasped.
“Yup. From what she told me, he had been using her to get to her family. He made her fall for him in hopes he’d get close to kill her uncle and get information about the IRA to use against them."
She gasped again this time placing her hand over her mouth. I went on.