Chapter 2

There are two kinds of people in this world. People with guns, like me. And people with stupid, smug faces. Like you.

-Rafe to Janie’s ex

Rafe

I was going to die if I had to sit next to Janie another goddamn second.

She smelled like sunshine and flowers, and I wanted nothing more to haul her into my lap and devour her mouth.

But, a dirty old man like me couldn’t be seen kissing the young daughter of a friend.

Why?

Because I valued my last surviving ball, that’s why.

Twelve years ago, I’d been shot in the upper thigh. That shot hadn’t taken out my ball. What it had taken out was the blood supply to my testicles. Unfortunately, when blood supply was restored, my favorite testicle was struggling. And, two days into my recovery, it was discovered that my left testicle had given up the ghost. Meaning, I’d gone back into surgery to have it removed.

I’d been asked at the time if I had any desire for a fake ball to be placed in my sac, but at the time, I hadn’t given a fuck. That fuck had changed when I got my first good look at it after surgery—then I had to have it fixed. Swear to God, it looked awful, and the moment my prosthetic ball was in, I felt immensely better.

“Are you okay?” Janie asked, drawing me out of my ball contemplation.

“Fine,” I answered. “Your parents change the gate code lately?”

Janie nodded. “Once a month like clockwork.”

I sighed. “Are they going to make me jump through hoops to get it this time?”

Because, if I was an honest man, that really pissed me off.

I’d proven myself time and time again with them, and time and time again they made me prove myself all over again.

I should be used to it by now, but honestly, it was annoying.

I’d been loyal to them for over ten years now. I’d done everything they’d ever asked me to do, and yet they continued to treat me like the unknown. As if I was the man they always suspected me to be.

See, when I was a child—twelve or thirteen at most—my father had done something to a few people.

And one of those few people had been someone that the men of Free had known. An old Army captain of theirs that had just been starting out in life. One who’d invested in my father’s Ponzi scheme and had lost his entire life savings—right when his wife was due to give birth to their first child.

From there, my father had just moved on to another unsuspecting soul. While Jerrod Teeterman, later known as Captain Teeterman, had struggled to keep up with what life had thrown him—which had been a wife who died shortly after giving birth to their very sick little boy. A very sick little boy who had struggled to live for four years before passing away when I’d just turned sixteen.

At sixteen, I hadn’t realized that a man was losing his world a thousand miles away from me. What I had known was that in my own personal hell, life sucked. It was my sister and me, struggling to not get on my father’s bad side.

If we got on that bad side? There would be hell to pay—there was hell to pay. I’d also found that out the hard way.

Lucky for me, after receiving the beating that put me in jeopardy of losing my life, my father had been taken into police custody.

It was then that they’d discovered not just the sins that had brought him under police scrutiny, but they also uncovered schemes he’d been a part of when his mug shot was plastered all over the news for his part in nearly beating me to death. They found over three hundred poor souls whom he’d cleaned out of their life savings and left floundering.

But life didn’t get better after my father was in jail. Nope. Not for me, and certainly not for Raven, my baby sister.

How could it get worse?

Going from the devil that you knew to the one that you didn’t.

Raven and I? We weren’t strangers to bad situations. We’d spent years in fucked up situations.

After our mother’s overdose, they’d placed Raven and I both in foster care. I had six months to realize that the life with the foster care family we’d been placed with was no better than the house we’d come from.

The judge that was the foster care father from hell was well known in the community. So well known, in fact, that he was always going to be believed over some delinquent boy insisting that something was wrong.

Raven had been subjected to the same treatment, but on a much smaller scale than me.

And the day that I turned eighteen, I tried to get her out. I’d made it to the next county over when I’d been pulled over by the sheriff of the county.

Then I was charged with kidnapping a minor.

After being thrown in jail on that bogus charge, Judge Paul Pearlman, the man who had ruined my life for the previous six months, informed me I had two choices. One, try to take my sister—his property—again and go to jail for some of the ugliest crimes I’d only ever heard about. Or, two, I could get the hell out and not come back.

He’d allowed me one concession: Raven’s safety.

I’d held onto that promise as I packed my bags, and then walked out on my sister, not looking back as I became the newest soldier in the United States Army.

Life didn’t get better after that.

Not even a little bit.

Raven thought I betrayed her and refused to talk to me. I was sure that Judge Pearlman fed her lie after lie.

What I didn’t know was how bad it really was for her—something that I still wasn’t sure I had the full story on.

Then there was the fact that my father’s shenanigans hadn’t just stopped at our small town. Nope. They’d extended into the military where he’d screwed over about fifteen different men just like Teeterman.

And, wouldn’t you know it, but I somehow found myself with Drill Sergeant Teeterman as my personal torturer throughout my first six weeks in the Army.

But, it didn’t stop there.

Every step I took, I encountered another man my father had screwed over.

At one point, I’d thought about giving up. Especially when I was deployed the first time. Then the second. And the third.

When I was finally able to come home, I realized that things would never be better.

After being skipped over for promotion after promotion, screwed over, nearly killed, and basically treated like a piece of dog shit, I’d decided that was it.

I was getting out.

It’d been years of continuous torture.

The icing on the cake, however, had been when I was shot in the leg.

I’d found out that my doctor was yet another man who my father had screwed over.

I couldn’t prove it, but it was just too damn convenient that he had the chance to fix what was wrong with my testicle and my leg, but conveniently didn’t do his goddamn job?

No, I was far from stupid.

That was when I took the medical discharge that the US Army offered me and then found someone who would help me exact my own revenge.

From that day forward, I was just as involved in the Army—as well as the Navy, Marines and Air Force—as I was before I’d left it, but this time as a private consultant. One who worked with the military to uncover situations exactly like the one I’d been in during my four years in the Army.

Trace and me? We’d both been fucked over. We’d been treated like low lives—battered, bruised, hazed, fucked over and forced to do many things that we’re not proud of today.

But, we’d gotten our men—and one woman.

We’d made the US military a better place to be, and in doing so, I’d found my calling in life.

Shortly after our first few years together, we’d branched out even farther into more global investigations, like the one that led me to Hostel.

After wrapping up the job overseas, I was heading straight to a town that was apparently the central hub of stolen military surplus.

But, while I was down there, I had a few other plans. Plans that centered around the fucking man who had purposefully held off on my surgery and nearly killed me in the process.

Over the years, I’d let go of a lot of my anger.

I’d taken Captain Teeterman’s torture tactics. I’d taken the shit deployments. I’d done just about anything that was ever asked of me.

But, the one time that my life had been in danger for real, a certain Army doc had played God with my life.

And he wasn’t even discreet about it. He’d taunted me for years with it—he still taunted me with it.

I wanted him to know that I was there, and I was watching.

I also knew he had a daughter around Janie’s age, and she was completely clueless to the fact that her father was a total piece of shit.

I was going to love uncovering the lies and deceit of Layton Trammel. I would also fucking love informing Elspeth Trammel that her father violated his medical oath to do no harm and purposely botched my surgery. And once I’d taken Trammel down, I’d be blowing that popsicle stand, hopefully never to look at that scum bag’s face again.

“The code is 9191933,” Janie said softly, pulling me out of my contemplation of how life was going to go for me for the next few months. “And all you have to do next time is text me, and I’ll give you the code. My dad and uncles should know better.”

I snorted. “Life doesn’t work like that, Janie. Never has, never will.”

Janie didn’t have anything to say to that.

Twenty minutes later, when we parted ways—her going to her office, which was new, in the Free office building and me going to the conference room with Sam—I realized that Janie was still getting under my skin.

Only now, it was even worse than it once had been.

Staying away from her was going to be an impossible task.

Her ass in those jeans was the entire reason for it, too.