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.”
“Why don’t the Pinnacle just boot him from The Organization?”
“Because Rafail’s seat is inherited. His uncle was a part of The Organization, and he named Rafail as the inheritor of his seat for when he died. If your seat in The Organization is inherited, you can’t be booted or voted out. You’re a lifetime member. Matters in The Organization are very sensitive, and remember they answer to no one but themselves. There are no laws to adhere to but their own.”
My shoulders slumped as a sigh breezed out. “What a stupid ass organization. Those dumb laws need to change. If I knew where to find Rafail, I’d kill him my fucking self.”
I made that comment without thinking. The man was Chad’s father, after all.
Taking no umbrage, he merely chuckled. “Get in line.”
I studied his hand on mine. His fingers were long and masculine, but delicate at the same time. They weren’t crooked from too much knuckle cracking, and he had square nail beds with clean, filed fingernails. Nice hands, he had really nice hands. Oh, but the dirty, dirty deeds those nice hands did…
“Why does he want you dead?”
As if tired of answering questions, he let out a loud, obnoxious sigh, and dropped back on the bed, eyes drifting back to the ceiling, probably wishing he hadn’t started talking about this.
“I had no idea who was ordering hits on me, or why, until yesterday. Now it all makes sense. My life here has been pretty peaceful, until roughly two years ago when my aunt and her husband got murdered in their home, and I became sole guardian for their daughter, my cousin, Alina. This aunt was from my mother’s side, and much like the Niiveuxs, they are from old money, and the mothers passed their legacy down to their eldest daughters. My aunt was the oldest between her and my mother, so the legacy went to her. When my aunt died, because Alina is an only child, the legacy went to her—”
“And because Alina’s under your care, Rafail wants you dead so she will end up under your mother’s care, hence his care. Then he’ll do the same thing he did to you to manipulate her into signing over her family’s legacy to him in exchange for her freedom,” I summed up, my voice hollow, my blood alternating between cold and hot, indecisive of how it really wanted to flow. Oxygenated or deoxygenated?
Oh. God.
I’m so afraid. I’m so afraid to tell him.
“Yep,” Chad said. “That’s my summation, too. Can’t see any other reason why he’d want me dead.”
Maybe I shouldn’t tell him. What good would it do?
“How much is she worth?”
“Twelve.”
“Billion?”
“Jhay?”
“Yeah?”
“Whenever I’m talking figures to you, always assume I’m talking billions.”
“Mhmhm,” I absently responded, too busy warring in my head with my decision. To tell him or not to tell him?
No, I have to tell him. He told me everything tonight. Held nothing back, even when it hurt. If we were going to forgive each other and move forward, there needed to be no secrets. None.
“She has eyes like yours and hair like mine,” I whispered, so tremblingly soft I could hardly hear myself. “She’s beautiful.”
Chad’s whole body went still, and I could feel his questioning eyes on me, but I avoided them at all costs. “What?”
“She was so scared,” I said, voice getting even lower. “Her dark eyes were wet, pleading, as she begged me not to kill her. But I was ordered to keep her alive, so I did the same thing you did to me and told the in-training assassin assigned to me for that hit to duct tape her and lock her in her closet.”
Bracing up on his forearms, drawing himself away from me and further to the headboard, he shook his head once. “No.”
I nodded yes. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know who they were. But everything matches up. Two years ago, plus that name, Alina…I remembered her name. I remember it so well because ‘Alina’ was the last thing her mother whispered before she took her last breath. I remember her because when I looked at her, I saw myself at ten years old. I saw me.”
Vision blurred with tears, I stopped hiding and looked at Chad. His face was ashen, black eyes so glossy I could see my reflection in them. This was hurting him. It was clear he had a special love for this particular aunt. Of course, they had to have had a close relationship for her to leave her only daughter in his care.
“Why?” I cried. “Why would he order me to kill them? His wife’s only sister?!”
In a cold, gruff voice, he said, “You said it: my mother would get guardianship of Alina and she would automatically be under his care.”
“And what does—”
“You need to go.”
“What?”
Detached, hard, devoid of warmth, he reiterated. “You need to go. Go to your room.”
“Why?” I demanded.
He pinned me with that unfriendly black glare. “That aunt, I loved her. And it’s taking every bit of strength in me right now not to reach out and break your fucking neck. So just…go.”
Incensed with resentment, I eased up onto my knees and intrepidly leaned into his face. “How fortunate of you to have aunts and uncles and fucking cousins. I only had a mother, a father and a fucking brother, and you took them from me. All of them, gone! And now you want to whine like a bitch because you lost one fucking aunt? At least when I was killing her, I was killing a complete stranger. You, you knew who my—our family was and you still pulled the goddamn trigger.”
“Get out, Jhay,” he said, his warning deadlier now.
“Fuck you,” I venomously spewed.
He lunged for me, but I was quick in shifting and rolling off the bed, landing soundly on my back. I ignored the pain, and when he leaped off the bed and came at me, I pressed my palms flat on the ground to keep firm, brought my feet together in anticipation of his descent, so when he reached for me I drove my feet upward and slammed them to his chest, the force knocking him backward.
That gave me enough time to frog jump back to my feet and assume a defensive stance. Chad was standing upright by then.
Making the first move, I swung a punch at him, but he ducked so easily and slightly, my hand swinging through thin air, hitting nothing.
Chad’s eyes lit up with a mixture of rancor and humor. “You’ve got to do better than that if you want to take me down, Tweety Byrd.”
Gloriously, fantastically, gratifyingly naked, he was standing so calm and tall, imperturbable, like I was no match for him, and my nude jumping around was some form of entertainment. This pissed me off, and with an unwomanly growl I charged forward in thoughtless rage.
Chad moved in a blur, and before I knew what was going down, he was pressed up against me, his chest to my back, both my wrists held tightly behind me by one of his strong hands, and his other hand hooked around my neck.
Hot, peppermint breath down my ear made my stomach flip and the butterflies inside whistle. “You really think you can fight me, Tweety Byrd?”
I felt weak. Stupid. Vulnerable. Powerless. “Go fuck yourself.”
“You want to know why I’m always so calm, Jhay?” The question was rhetorical. “Because it’s easier not to get pissed off than it is to control myself after I get pissed off. Rage kills, it consumes you and makes you do impulsive shit. Calmness allows you to think clearly, which prevents you from making stupid decisions.” His lips were touching my ears now, his voice but a breath as he said, “Like engaging a fight you know you can’t win.”
“I. Hate. You.”
Keeping my hands in a firm hold behind me, he unhooked his other arm from around my neck, and slow and deliberate, he dragged it down the front of my body, before dipping said hand between my thighs.
I closed my eyes and cursed, because I knew my vagina was doing anything but hating him right then.
“These lips down here are singing a different song,” he breathed down my neck.
“You sicken me,” I hissed.
“If you get this amazingly wet for someone who sickens you…”—he slipped a finger inside—”I’d pay any amount to see what happens for someone who…turns you on.”
As his finger slid in and out of me, in and out, in and out, I lost all sensible thoughts, my body giving up the fight and sagging into him, soft moans floating from my lips.
I felt his mouth on my neck as he moved backwards with me, in the opposite direction of the bed. Maybe I should have been paying attention, but with his tongue on my neck and his finger inside me, I chose the overpowering sensations instead of cognition.
Then that thrusting finger was gone, my hands were released, and Chad was in front of me instead of behind. Too late, I semi-consciously realized we were at his bedroom door, and before I could think to react, he pushed me across the threshold and slammed the door in my face.
The sharp snap of the lock came next, and I cursed myself. I was such a clown. Letting my fucking vagina control me.
Pounding my fists on the door, I yelled, “Open the goddamn door, you shithead!”
Nothing.
I pounded it, I kicked it, I kneed it.
Still nothing.
Then I resorted to begging, because he finger-fucked me right out of his room and left me hanging on the edge, the weight between my legs like a frigging kettlebell. Resting my forehead to the door, I begged, “Please, Chad, you can’t leave me like this. I need you.”
Nothing.
Then I got mad all over again and banged and kicked until I was tired. “Shithead psycho killer on crack! I hate you!” BangBangBang. “You’re gay and you suck big black dicks.” BangBangBang. “I hate you.” Bang.
Then I went back to begging and pleading. “Open the door, Chad. I’m sorry. I meant none of it…”
After fifteen minutes of alternating between hating him and needing him, I finally resigned to the fact that he wasn’t going to drag me back in and fuck me ten shades of purple. So I hauled my pathetic ass off to my room, flung myself on the bed, buried my fingers inside me, and finished what he started.