“Oh, and that is your call to make?”
“Fuck, yes it is,” Gabe roared at me, “the morale of this team is at an all-time low. We have never been hit this badly. Deke dying, Kodah unravelling and the brass up our arse. Team FIVE is being hit from all angles. I made a judgement call to leave any outside bullshit and influences until this mission is complete.”
“Bullshit! My fucking heart disappearing, quitting her job and fighting with my mum constitutes as bullshit to you?”
“If it has the outcome of compromising the safety of my men? Then yes.”
Gabe didn’t see my fist coming until the sound of cracking bones echoed in the room. Pain radiated from my knuckles and up my hand to my wrist, blood … Gabe’s blood dripping from my swelling knuckles.
“Fucking hell!” I bellowed, drowning out Gabe’s pained hiss. Blood pissing out between his fingers as he held onto his nose.
“Err, excuse me, sirs.” A voice came from the door to the hut. “I have a Creed Stephens waiting on the line for you, Lt.”
“Go tell him to wait for a few minutes, make sure you don’t lose the connection,” Gabe ordered, dismissing the private. His gaze not leaving mine.
Regretting my lack of control, I looked around me and found a towel and snatched it up, tossing it to Gabe.
“Tank, I’m—”
“I will let you have that one, Ghost, but just that one. Next time you decide to hit me, it will be as your captain and not your cousin. Now piss off and go talk to your dad,” he ordered, wiping the blood from his nose.
Feeling lower than a snake, I offered Gabe a tight smile in an apology.
“It won’t happen again, I promise you that.”
Shaking his head at me, Gabe let out a nasal chuckle.
“Well, I won’t promise you Devon won’t kick your arse if this doesn’t heal properly before the wedding photos,” he said, pointing to his busted and bloody nose.
“In fact, I can assure you of that.”
“Copy that. Warranted and welcomed,” I laughed before sobering.
“We good, cousin?” I asked, holding out a hand to him, then sighed in relief when he gripped it firmly, accepting my olive branch.
“Never better, brother. Never better. Now get going and find out what is going on with your girl.”
“What do you mean you can’t find her, Dad?”
“Exactly what I just said, son,” my father fired back at me on a crackling line. “Her employment declaration states her grandparents as her next of kin. And they are on a cruise ship presently docked in Greece. Ford located them, but I stopped him from contacting them. It isn’t fair to worry them when they are too far away to do anything.”
“Her parents?”
“Whereabouts unknown. Your mum said Oaklee didn’t go into too much detail about them, not even their first names.”
“Pete and Carla. They’re not married, and Carla’s last name is Moore.”
“You know her parent’s names?” Dad asked quietly. Deliberately.
“I know everything about my girlfriend, except where the fuck she is!” I growled back, not in the mood for my father’s special brand of questioning. One thing about my dad, he did things his way, and you really didn’t get a choice in the matter.
Gritting my teeth, I prepared myself for an onslaught, a Creed Stephen’s interrogation.
“Had I known she was your girlfriend, I would know more information so I could find her, son.”
Dad’s dry tone indicated he knew more than he was letting on, and that only pissed me off more. What the hell was his problem?
“You knew, old man, what I don’t understand is why the warning off speech?”
“I think you know why, Cole.”
“Jesus Christ, Dad! You think that I am that much of an arsehole I wouldn’t be able to handle her eating disorder?” I growled out, understanding immediately why he warned me off Oaklee.
“I didn’t say that, so watch the tone. I knew about Oaklee when your mum hired her, and your mum is the most important person in my life, along with you kids. I wasn’t risking anyone being around my wife without knowing as much about them as possible.”
“Digging into her background from the small amount of intel I had, Ford discovered her hospital records. They didn’t paint a pretty picture, Cole. What I read told me a story of a young girl, spending her entire life struggling to feel accepted by her own family.”
I was hearing him, but I wasn’t fucking understanding him. Oaklee already told me all about her younger days. Going back and forth to her grandparents, her many stays in hospital. I knew all this, so why was he wasting valuable time that could be spent finding Oaklee.
“Are you picking up what I am saying, Cole?”
It took no less than a few seconds to comprehend my father’s message, and when it did, it hit me with an anger I never thought could ever be directed at the man I admired and respected the most. I wished that the private had managed to get my father on Skype, just so I could see the truth on his face when he accused me of not being good enough for Oaklee, that being with me would just be like her fucked up parents. That my darkness would touch her, fuck her up, and send her spiralling again.
For the first time in my life, for the very first time, my father was not my hero.
And fuck did that hurt, but not as much as him thinking the absolute worst of me. The very notion that I would ever hurt Oaklee … fuck the thought made me fucking sick.
I loved Oaklee.
I was going to marry Oaklee.
Have babies with Oaklee … if I could only find her!
My knuckles turned white around the phone receiver, my blood thumped through my veins at the speed of a freight train, my ears roaring with the sound.
“Find my girl,” I growled darkly.
“Cole—” Dad began, but I was done with the conversation and
