CANNON
KILL HIM FOR A SECOND TIME.
I felt like killing that piece of shit for a second time as I glanced at her sleeping in my bed like a fucking princess and not the spoilt brat I knew of.
I had fucked up the mission but I didn’t give a shit because Giovanni Vincenzo was six feet under. Taking down the sixteen guards at his compound was like a piece of fucking cake.
Giovanni was a fool by hiring rookies who couldn’t hold their damn rifles well. Once I got a clear shot, I had shot him. I didn’t give a fuck if Flames wanted to be the one to end the damn bastard’s life or not.
The minute I saw his dirty as fuck hands on her, my anger flared and I did the one thing I had come to do in his compound. Shoot his ass.
My phone rang and I hesitantly picked it up leaving the bedroom.
“What?”
“How’s she?”
Bad. Worse. Still unconscious.
“Fucker didn’t do much damage to her”, I said scrubbing a hand over my face.
“Got some bad news, Cannon”
When was there not bad news?
“One guard escaped. Berkely is yet to tell me how but you know what this means”
That I was fucked?
“He saw me shoot?” I asked a question I dead well knew the answer to.
“You fucking kidding? Everyone saw you shoot; you blew his brains out like you were squashing a bug which wasn’t the plan”
Right, the stupid motherfucking plan. I was against it the very instant Berkely said ‘don’t kill the fucker’.
If I didn’t kill him, I knew Flames would. Ain’t no way Giovanni Vincenzo was walking out alive from this. I knew this. Flames knew this and Berkely suspected it too.
“Let him come at me, I don’t fucking care”
“it’s not the stupid guard I’m worried about. It’s Vincenzo’s partners I’m more worried about. They’ll put a bounty on your fucking head and I’m not sure the Montenegro girl you want to fuck should be around you when fucking assassins come after you”
Fucking hell.
“You planning to take over the joint when Berkely retires?” I mused and Blaze grunted from the other end.
He sounded like Berkely giving us one of those fucking lectures that made you feel shitty and moved. And one thing Berkely was, was being right.
Blaze was right and I hated it.
“Fuck you. I’m being serious, Cannon. Her dad died, she survived a raid, she shouldn’t be thrust into our world. Twenty minutes”
“NO!” I said like the stupid fucking asshole I was.
“If I don’t come get her, Berkely will come sooner or later. Remember the code Marine, you are a bodyguard now and we don’t let emotions get in the way of protecting the client”
And I hung up, pissed off as fuck.
Maybe I was being a selfish dick but when she had stared at me before she fainted, I knew right there and then she needed me.
And fuck, the feeling was tremendous. Having a woman stare at you like that even after you’d fucking failed her. Blaze, that fucker had a point.
I had to skip town, lay low and maybe wait out until the guard who’d escaped to be killed before he ran his mouth about who’d killed Giovanni Vincenzo.
“Cannon?”
Her voice came frail behind me and I spun seeing her eyes almost lifeless and her black hair all over the place.
“Hey Montenegro. How you feeling?” I asked resisting a damn urge to haul her to my chest and wrap my hands around her till she got better.
I didn’t hug. Damn, I didn’t kiss no chick but with her, I wanted to do that and a whole lot more.
As perverse as I was, the thought of having her hair in my fists, her back arched to me, her ass in the air and me fucking her bareback stirred my dick.
I was an asshole. Always had been an asshole but that hadn’t matter to me years until now. I wasn’t falling for her, God knew I didn’t do such shit but I wanted her, bad.
I wanted to take her and erase any bad thing fucking Vincenzo had done to her.
Her lips chapped, her hand scratching her hair confusedly, she asked,
“What time is it?”
She’d been unconscious for almost a day but she didn’t need to know.
“Time for you to eat something”, I said curtly pulling out a red vinyl stool for her to sit in. walking slowly, her body sunk in my shirt, she passed me ignoring my presence and seating down on the stool without a word.
I hated it.
I hated how she looked and how she talked. The Nicole I knew spew attitude at me like she hated me and I accepted that.
The woman seated in front of me however looked at me as if she didn’t care whether I died or existed. She was fucking lost in limbo.
“How’d you sleep?” I asked walking past the kitchen counter and getting bacon and eggs out.
Pulling out the pans, I placed one of them on the heat smearing some butter on it as I turned on the damn thing.
She didn’t answer me. She didn’t say shit except look out my small kitchen window that showed a glorified view of Miami. I fucking hated Miami, the only reason I’d brought her to this side of the city was because she needed some sense of familiarity and possibly a place to hide from the paparazzi who’d flock her the very second she stepped foot on the soil.
“How’s Nance?”
Fuck.
“Alive”, I uttered hoping she would drop the subject.
“How’s Sy?”
“With his dad”
And I still wasn’t cool with it.
“You hate his dad. Gunner was it?”
I did and I didn’t want to talk about it. I knew women, I’d fucked them, I’d interacted with them more times than their own mothers.
I knew what was going through her mind and she was right to think so. She was to blame for Nance getting shot but I was the main fucking reason Nance was lying in a hospital bed somewhere in Daytona.
“Where are we going with this?” I asked, my back turned to her, my hand on the metallic tongs turning the sizzling bacon.
“I want to go home”
“Not fucking possible, princess”
I wasn’t letting her go to the world like this. She was fucking broken, if she learnt about her father’s death, she’d OD with opium or acid or whatever she took when she was stressed.
She wasn’t a junkie, I figured that out but she wanted to be for the sake of it.
“I wasn’t asking”, she retorted an I turned down the heat turning around to face her which was the wrong fucking move.
She looked so pale like she wanted to fall on her knees and cry. Her eyes carried withheld resentment and I knew that look.
It was the look I had when my Humvee back in the Marines got hit and my brothers died. It was anger and it was revenge.
She wanted revenge but I had already done that for her. I killed Giovanni for her.
“No”
She scoffed before a sarcastic smile formed on her lips.
“You know why I hate you? Because you fucking think you are right all the time and the rest of the people are dumb”, she thrashed.
I knew I was always right that wouldn’t change but I couldn’t accept was the fact that she thought she was dumb.
“Y-Your job is done soldier. You killed the bloody bad men-“
“Marine, soldiers are for the army”, I corrected and she spared me a sharp gaze.
I was no god damn soldier.
“Who fucking cares? Army? Marine? Sailor? I don’t give an eff. We are done. You can cut the whole pity bullshit on me and take me back home”
Her chest heaved up and down and her hands balled into fists at both her sides. Standing in front of me, she looked like that angry chick from Sy’s favorite show. Fucking Tinkerbelle.
“I don’t feel pity on you”
I didn’t. Pity was for the Marines who got purple hearts after they gave their whole lives to serve the country. Those I pitied but her? No, I didn’t.
“Right. You feel like a hero after saving me from being raped? Should I buy you a gift basket and maybe some fucking matching bracelets to go with it?”
Her tears were at the verge of falling and now I fucking understood it. She was trying to cover up her fears by laying all her insults on me. By trying to seem like she was okay but she wasn’t.
No one fucking felt okay after seeing blood for the first time. Just like war in Afghan changed me, her seeing a dead man spooked her a whole lot.
“Nicole”, I murmured walking around the kitchen island and standing in front of her.
If she wanted a fucking punching bag, I was right in front of her to get her over that shit. I’d never let anyone hit me but her? She’d hit me if that made her feel better.
“He had his hands on me. He wanted to- “
“I know”
And I would unbury him and kill him again if that was possible.
“I wanted to kill him. I wanted to squeeze the life out of him just like he made me feel”
“I know”
“And when you shot him and his body fell on my feet, I regreted thinking those things. He was a fucking human being and y-you took his life away”, she uttered, her glassy doe eyes on me.
If she expected a sorry from me then she was standing in the wrong fucking house. I killed to protect people and maybe for sport too but only the guys who didn’t deserve it. She’d said it herself; Giovanni was going to fucking rape her.
Any hesitation from my side would have led to me getting shot or her dying. I didn’t fucking regret anything.
I knew who I was and there was no God damn thing I would change about myself.
“Your point?”
I asked dryly.
“I did all this. Your sister, your nephew and now your hands are tainted with blood”
I laughed. I fucking laughed.
“You think this is funny?”
“No but you are. I didn’t start killing people fucking yesterday, I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember”
I laid it out for her, if she didn’t like the truth, the door was fucking wide for her to leave.
“You didn’t have to kill Uncle Giovanni; the cops would have dealt with him”
Uncle Giovanni? Was she seriously calling him that after everything. The cops wouldn’t have done a damn thing because they hadn’t done so in years.
“I’d kill him again if I had to”
“Why?” so fucking innocent and beautiful as hell at the same time.
“Because he made the mistake of touching you”