The injuries I’d sustained during the night of that brutal mission had nearly killed me and ended any chance I’d had of continuing on in the same career path. I’d been shot straight through my dominant hand. The one I dealt out the most damage with, my shooting hand. Then there’d been the bullet that’d plunged into my left side. It’d compromised my ability to move as fluidly and agilely as I once had, to react without hesitation and hinderance. The burns hadn’t helped either, some second-degree, some third-degree. They’d covered forty-percent of my body, the parts I hadn’t been able to protect with the human shield I’d used in order to survive the brutal blast that’d ripped through the building where I’d buried the traitorous, dangerous bastards alive.
Bastards that had once been the closest people to me.
I’d been a fool.
I had the skills to read people extremely well, yet I hadn’t seen the evil in them, the brutal betrayal coming. I’d let the glory and excitement of becoming part of such a distinguished black ops team dull my senses. I hadn’t wanted anything to be wrong. I’d been too obsessed with the job to see straight when it came to them.
Our Commander, Drew Hammer, had been a practiced deceiver. He’d seemed idealistic, hopeful and on the right side of things. But he’d had his own agenda. Money and power. Gradually, he’d turned the other twelve members of our team, Nemesis. It’d been named after the Greek Goddess of retribution. Talk about fitting. When he’d realized he couldn’t turn me, he’d led me into a trap during a supposed mission to apprehend a shipment of military-grade weapons that were set to fall into the wrong hands. The mission had been nothing but a front for their attempted hit on me. I’d managed to take out four of them before they’d realized I’d been lost to the monster in me and was on a non-stop rampage to punish their betrayal. That was when they’d blown the building and the remaining nine of them had later gone to ground before I could end it.
It’d taken me months to recover.
I’d suffered some brutal hits in my time, but nothing compared to that.
Well, it wasn’t like I hadn’t deserved it.
I had a fuckload of blood on my hands. The stains would never wash out.
I’d been a monster and with the way things were going, it looked like that darkest part of me was going to come roaring back in full force.
Thinking otherwise had just been an extreme case of wishful thinking.
Dumbass.
There was no peace for a man like me.
As if the universe intended on proving that point, my phone buzzed on the coffee table.
Eyeing the call display, I tensed.
He either had good news that’d reassure me, or extremely bad news that’d take the normal level of paranoia that came with operating as a ghost to intense new heights.
I braced myself and snatched up my phone, swiping it quickly to answer. “Yeah?”
I knew better than to answer with my real name, or any aliases. Just because the caller ID claimed it was someone I knew, I had no way of knowing for sure who was going to be on the other end. I’d lived a dangerous existence. Unfortunately, retiring hadn’t changed that as much as I would have liked. I still had enemies; I still had a lot of people gunning for me. If they knew I was alive, I’d never be able to stop running. I couldn’t fucking kill them all. Not without risking exposure. Hell, every fight I fought, every kill I made, risked me being outed as alive and fucking kicking.
“It’s me,” his familiar voice answered.
Okay. All clear. The line was secure, so there was no more worry on that front.
Names could be exchanged. Details could be relayed.
“How did it go?” I asked, my fingers of my free hand tightening to a white-knuckle grip around my bottle of bourbon, just shy of shattering the thing.
“It’s done,” he confirmed.
A shitload of tension left my body. Thank fuck.
“Good.”
“You all right?” he asked.
I frowned. “Yeah. Why?”
“I thought you didn’t do this sort of thing anymore.”
“I explained the situation. You know what’s between me and Scott and—”
“I’m not talking about the actual acts. I meant the way you ended them.”
I chugged back some more of my bourbon. “I did what had to be done to protect my client.”
“Bullshit.”
“We’re not talking about this, Jesse.”
Jesse Silver had been the voice in my ear on several intense black ops missions, my guide, basically. When I’d discovered the twisted turn the team had taken, he’d been with me on it, defected too. And since then, he continued to be invaluable to me. The guy was ex Special Forces like me and when he’d left the craziness of field missions, his hardcore computer background had him becoming a priceless overseer for guys like me. He was the one who’d helped to erase all traces of my existence so I’d been able to disappear. And with shit like this happening, me killing two guys in broad daylight in a public place, he was my go-to for the fallout too, my cleanup guy. I paid him a goddamn mint to get it done, but it was worth it to have it taken care of by the best.
“Watch yourself, all right?” he went on. “You know better than anyone that you can’t just switch that shit on and off. It’ll take you over. Whatever your reasons—overcompensating because you’re no longer at your best due to those wounds you sustained, personal attachment to the client, or whatever the fuck—ease up.”
Goddamn him. As usual he was right on the money. I could deny it all I wanted, but it’d do nothing. He could read things far too well for that to be a viable option. All I could do was redirect. Clearing my throat, I said in a light tone, “Be careful.
