Empire (Eagle Elite Book 7) (32 page)

“You’re gone.” There, I said it out loud. “You’re not coming back.”

I closed my eyes as rain poured over my face mingling with the hot tears. I didn’t know what to do or how to fix things.

So I found myself asking. What would Andi do?

Life was beautiful.

Death was beautiful.

She’d be pissed I was wasting away.

Her note said she released me.

What I hadn’t realized, was I’d never needed her permission.

Because first, you need to release yourself.

AN HOUR LATER
, I returned to the house. I caught a glimpse of one of the girls dressed in all black, with a pink bandana around her head. I parked the car and got out when I saw Phoenix pop out from behind a bush, face smeared with camo war paint. I barely had any time to run for cover when a paintball hit me in the stomach causing me to double over with a curse.

“Got ya!” Tex yelled thrusting his gun into the air.

“Bastard!” I hissed. “Do I look like I can defend myself?” I held out my hands and waited.

He shot me again.

“That’s it!” I charged him but it was dark, and I couldn’t locate him fast enough before he ducked behind a tree.

“Need someone to save your sorry ass?” Nixon ran up to me and tossed a paintball gun, I caught it midair with one hand. “Also, if you could take out one of the girls, that would be super helpful, we’re losing.”

“The hell!” I yelled. “We haven’t lost in five years!”

“So you see the seriousness of this situation?”

“I’ll take care of it.” I found myself smiling despite the fact that I’d had one of the worst nights of my life since Andi’s death.

“Good man.” He jogged off and called over his shoulder. “By the way, your girl took out Chase.”

My footsteps faltered. “Seriously?” Chase was one of the best, bastard knew how to sneak up on a person, which should be surprising knowing his loud personality, so the fact that she got him was more than slightly impressive.

“Her aim was a bit low, he didn’t cry, but his eyes watered.”

Pride swelled in my chest as I ran after Nixon and hid behind the first tree. I had enough land that it was easy to set up a paint ball field. It was professional to say the least.

We had several trees strategically planted around the house for protection. The field to the left near the garage was usually empty unless we pulled out all of our obstacles for paintball, creating a huge competition field for Capture the Flag that ended up making most professional fields you paid money for look like a cheap ass circus.

I didn’t have time to change.

We were losing, and Abandonatos were competitive by nature.

So I quickly tossed my jacket to the side and started moving stealthily through the trees leading to our group’s flag. We always had two base camps, one for the other team, one for us; the flag was always visible. Getting there was the problem.

“I will cut a bitch!” Phoenix roared as a paintball sailed past his ear. “They’re taking head shots!”

“Then duck,” I offered in a dry tone. “Be the bigger man, Phoenix.”

He flipped me off then jogged to the left while I made a beeline toward the girls’ camp.

It was about eight hundred feet away, visible, with a spotlight in the window that ran across the landscape back and forth over the course of twenty seconds.

I ducked behind a tree as it landed near me and passed.

Exhaling, I moved again, careful to keep my eyes peeled for pink.

A flash of color moved to my right and then, behind me, as leaves crunched.

With a sigh, I pointed the gun behind me without looking and shot two rounds.

“Son of a mother fu—”

“You got Mo!” Tex shouted just as I turned and gave Mo a little wave. She shook her head and marched toward our base camp while Tex gave me a nod and pointed forward with his fingers.

I was already ahead of him.

I moved to the right while he went wide left.

A shot went off.

Another girl yelled.

I waited in the crisp night air as the wind picked up around me, but nothing. She didn’t scream again, which begged the question, was she down? Or was it fake?

Two more steps.

Tex let out a loud curse as rapid fire sounded.

“I hit you first!” he yelled.

“Bull shit!” Mil tossed back. “I got
you
first.”

Glaring daggers, he stepped backward shaking his head toward me, just as I fired at her side.

“Aw, bummer Mil, that sucks balls. Guess you just got hit too.”

Her eyes narrowed in on Tex while she gave me the finger and slunk off.

“Get the flag, man.” Tex’s eyes were like laser beams. “The only girl left is Val.”

I didn’t want to insult her by asking how out loud. But still. How the hell was she the last girl standing up against mob bosses and their wives?

Maybe she’d hidden after hitting Chase.

Not that she seemed like the type.

I took a cautious step toward their base camp and then hid behind a tree when I heard the sound of someone breathing.

My started to race as the breathing got louder and louder.

The minute I realized where the breathing was coming from, was a minute too late, as a gun was pointed at my back, I dropped my hands to my sides and turned around, right pointer finger still on the trigger. “Val.”

“Sergio.” Her cheeks were flushed, her face dirty like she’d been crawling through the mud.

“Did you trip?” I mocked, because really, playing nice with her would just be suspicious at this point. I left because it was her birthday and she’d rather shoot me in the dick then look at me for another two minutes.

Val’s eyes narrowed into tiny slits. “I was army crawling.”

“Through the poison ivy?” I nodded my head toward the leaves. No chance in hell was she going to fall for it, but I had to try.

Her eyes flashed, and for a brief moment she glanced down at her arm, just as I held up my gun and pointed it at her chest.

“Oldest trick in the book.” I shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Wow, I don’t hear that word often from you.”

“It’s hard to pronounce.”

“Maybe for you…”

I held back my smile. At least she was talking to me, even if every single word was dripping with insults and sarcasm. “Hands up, Val, I’m taking your flag.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls before you pull the trigger.”

“You have to admit, it does relax them a bit before they meet their maker.” I gripped her with my free hand and pushed her toward the base camp where the flag was held. Once we were inside the tiny fort, I pushed her to the side, not hard enough to hurt her, but so she knew I wasn’t going to play nice just because she was my wife.

Or just because I’d forgotten her birthday.

Or pissed her off.

Holy shit, I was a jackass.

I grabbed the flag and turned just in time to see her holding another paintball gun and aiming it at my face.

“Surprise.” She grinned cheerfully. “I stole Trace’s gun before she got taken out.”

“But—”

“The rules never said I couldn’t take someone else’s gun. They just said we had to have an equal amount of weapons.”

“Now, Val.” I held out my hand, the one containing the flag, just as she fired rapid shots at my chest. Seven.

Not that I was counting.

And when she was done.

And pain seared me from the inside out.

She fired one last shot.

“Son of a bitch!” I yelled, falling to my knees. “I don’t have gear on!”

“Sorry.” She shrugged. “It’s really dark in here.”

“Yeah, amazing how that works, you hit me square in the chest, in nearly…” I exhaled shakily. “…the same damn spot, and you did it blind. Impressive. I thought you couldn’t shoot.”

“I’ve had some free time.”

“Remind me to send you to boarding school.” With great effort, I rose to my knees just as she shot me again in the leg. “What the hell, Val! Fuck!”

“Boarding school? I’m not your damn child!”

“Then stop acting like one and shooting me just because you’re pissed!”

“Of course I’m pissed!” Val yelled. “You’re an asshole! I don’t deserve to be talked down to or ignored or just—” Her face twisted with hurt. “You could say hi. You could at least say hi once. Just once a day Sergio, what’s so horrible about hi?”

I stood for the second time and hung my head. “What’s so hard about hi?” I rubbed the back of my neck. “It’s the start of something. You say hi when you open a conversation, it’s a simple greeting with thousands of meanings behind it. Hi… always leads to how are you, how are you leads to what are you doing today, and that leads to do you want to hang out? Do you have plans? And honestly Val, if I say
hi
, I’m going to follow through on the rest, I’m going to ask how you are, I’m going to want to die inside when you say you’re sad. And when I ask if you want to hang out, you’re going to say yes, and when I ask about plans, we’ll make them. And if we make plans—” My voice hitched. “If we make plans. I won’t have the energy to keep myself from taking you. From stripping you bare. From demanding every part of your body, your soul. I won’t stop. I’ll keep going, and I’ll lose myself, and if I lose the only part of myself that contains her — I lose her too. All because of hi.”

Val slowly lowered her gun to her side. “So this is it.” Her lower lip wobbled. “It’s a little ironic, right?”

“What?” I stood and took a cautious step toward her. Damn it, I was drawn to her even though I didn’t want to be.

She backed up, away from my touch. “You said goodbye to one wife, the hardest word in the human language to utter. Because of that ending, you’ve refused a beginning. You’ve done that. Goodbye was hard, but why is it, do you think, that Hi is harder?”

I opened my mouth to answer her, but nothing came out.

“Sergio.” This time Val walked slowly toward me, her paintball gun fell to the ground out of trembling fingers. “When you move on with your life, when you find that person, whoever she may be, she isn’t going to remove every last remnant of Andi from your heart. She isn’t going to take over and squeeze out memories. She’s going to fit with them. Live with them. Laugh with them. It’s not a matter of
replacing
, it’s a matter of joining.”

It looked like she was going to hug me.

But she must have thought better of it, because she stepped backward again, picked up her gun, and ran out of the fort.

Five minutes later I heard cheering.

The girls won.

And I was still frozen in place.

Because my young, innocent wife. Was absolutely startlingly.

Right.

….and maidens call it love-in-idleness. –A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Frank

I DIDN’T WANT
to meet Xavier any more than I wanted to cut out my own heart and slam it onto the table, but he needed to be contained.

And I needed to be the one to do it.

Not Dante.

Not Sergio.

Not Tex.

Wisdom told me that if I were to die, they would be just fine, but if they were to pass on? It would be tragic. They had so much life yet to live, and I knew that my time was slowly coming to an end, not that I wanted it to. I wanted to see great grandchildren; I wanted to see my family back on the right path.

There were many things I wanted to see.

But that didn’t mean I deserved to see them.

I knew that more than anyone.

Mistakes have a way of jarring your sense of reality, of right and wrong, because in making mistakes, or choices, your constant companion is the need to justify the rocky path you’re on in hopes that at the end of the day you’ll be able to close your eyes against your soft pillow and sleep.

I have not truly slept in over thirty years.

I wasn’t about to any time soon.

Sal fidgeted next to me. “This… this will not work.”

“It will work.” It might not work, but we could try.

Papi and Gio were on my left, each of them with guns trained on the door just in case Xavier made things difficult.

One knock sounded at the door.

My associate, Joe, answered and paused.

Joe rarely paused.