Darling Wildfire (Red Rabbit #2)

8

THERON

I called Nyx back the minute I settled into the Aston and took off towards the house my team used as a home base, or how we referred to it—Alpha One.

“He made contact,”

Nyx said as soon as the line connected. “A recording was found by the night guard at NorTac.”

“On my way.”

I gripped the wheel tightly, preparing myself to hear Vetticus’ voice again after so long. Even though we’d been preparing for this, it still felt strange to finally be drawing him out. Our attempts to track him over the years had varying degrees of success. Years after we escaped, we’d sent a drone into the mountains and found the estate where he’d kept us but it was abandoned and run down. The nearby maps were all disassembled, gone, like they’d never existed but in our minds.

It took us years to relocate Atrox headquarters and once we did, I took my time planting people within his supply lines. Sleepers waiting for the time when I was ready to strike. Like us, it seemed as though Vetticus was licking his wounds and regrouping. He did everything in the shadows, or by proxy and even if we’d wanted to simply assassinate him, it would have been nearly impossible to get to him.

Twenty minutes later I pulled through the gates of the house. It was more like a compound with guards and state of the art security on sprawling acreage. There was a gun range, training room and I’d converted the basement into an interrogation room complete with a few holding cells. There were also rooms for all of the men on my team if they chose to live there, which most of them did. Northern Tactical had teams around the world, but these men were my inner circle and personal crew. Any operation I went on or anything that I oversaw myself, they were who I called.

I walked into the house and saw the glow of computer monitors in the war room. It was really just a living room we’d converted into a debriefing space. A big butcher block table took up the center of the room with one wall full of computer monitors. The wall across from it was a floor to ceiling pane of glass that was also a touch screen where we pulled up our electronic evidence boards. When not in use, it looked into an enclosed and private atrium in the center of the house.

At this time of night, the place was quiet. Only West and Nyx were at the table sitting in front of West’s computer. West Lockwood was my tech genius and resident hacker. He was also an amazing tactician and sniper although these days he rarely saw the field because I needed him behind the computer. He’d been around since the beginning. He was one of Nyx’s Navy buddies and soon after our escape, Nyx contacted him asking if he wanted in on a job we had planned—the first job, Austria. After that, he decided to stay.

“Show me,”

I said, not bothering with a greeting as I walked in the room.

West nodded and threw his laptop screen up on a monitor. He pulled up an audio file and hit play.

“Kraven, Kraven, Kraven—”

A voice I hadn’t heard in over a decade came through the surround sound speakers filling the room. I gripped the chair back in front of me until my knuckles were white. “My fearless hunter…look at you. Look at what you’ve become!”

He chuckled. “I’m quite proud of you, my friend, honestly.”

There was a long pause and then he sighed dramatically. “But everything must come to an end. Remember when I told you once that I knew you’d run? Do you remember what I said after that?” Another pause. “I said, our reunion would be extra sweet. Being away from you for this long has killed me, but I knew we’d find each other again, eventually.”

He chuckled. “You’ve run from me for long enough—I’m coming for you—I’m coming for it all. And when everything has crumbled to dust and you’re kneeling in front of me in the ruins, I’ll remind you, again, who you belong to.”

The pause was so long, I thought he was done but then his dark laugh whispered through the room. “I can’t wait to meet your new playthings—and say hello to Phantom and Reaper for me. Their deaths will be your punishment for ever thinking you could leave me.”

The recording ended, and no one spoke. I took several deep breaths trying to control my visceral reaction to hearing him again. Having him threaten Atlas and Nyx took me back in time to the room I still visited in my nightmares.

“You can imagine how upset it makes me when I think about losing you.”

Vetticus tilted his head at me, looking annoyed that I wasn’t speaking to him, even though I rarely did. The cuffs bit into my wrists restrained behind my back and I stared off at a point across the room.

“Do you even know where we are?”

He asked. “Do you have any idea?”

I turned my head to look at him then, my lip curling in displeasure. “Does it matter?”

He chuckled. “No, I suppose it doesn’t. You’re going to try it, regardless. Every time you take out a camera, I wonder to myself if this is it—is this when I’m going to have to kill you?”

He walked over to where I sat in a chair across from him and ran his hand across my face. I leaned away from him in disgust and looked anywhere but up at him.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that. You know how to keep me on my toes and it surprisingly is something I love about you,”

he murmured. “I’m actually looking forward to hunting you down though. Our reunion will be extra sweet.”

He leaned closer and his grip tightened on my jaw, turning my head towards him and forcing me to meet his eyes.

“And just so you know. When I catch you—and I will—I’m going to take great pleasure in torturing Phantom and Reaper in front of you and then killing them slowly…”

“North,”

Nyx sounded like he’d been trying to get my attention.

“Call the team in,” I said.

The team would assemble in the morning, until then I knew I would never be able to sleep with his voice in my head and the memories thrashing to the surface, so I did the one thing that always settled my nerves—I went downstairs to the shooting range. It was a large soundproofed, industrial space under the house with five lanes. I grabbed a few boxes of ammo and my .45s.

“Who are you?”

“I go by Vetticus—recruiter, trainer, sponsor…I wear many hats.”

My memories were running wild as I loaded up a few clips. Nyx appeared and leaned back against the partition, shoving his hands into his pockets, he watched me quietly.

“You good?”

I asked him, glancing up briefly before resuming my loading.

“Yeah, I showed Atlas,”

he said before falling quiet again. I finished loading and pinned up a target before sending it out into the range. I shoved a clip into the gun but still felt him staring at me.

“Spit it out, Nyx,”

I grumbled.

“I saw your face out there—and you had the ‘North is going to do something stupid’ look.”

I frowned at him before throwing on protective eyes, then tossed him a set of noise canceling ears before donning my own. They allowed us to hear each other clearly but muffled the gunfire.

“A recruiter for what?”

“Atrox Gaming,” he said.

“Never heard of it.”

“That’s intentional,”

he smirked. “One of those private, invitation only things.”

“Well, I decline whatever this is,” I said.

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.”

“I’m going to follow the plan.”

Sometimes I hated how well Nyx and Atlas knew me. None of us could hide from the other—but then again, that was my fault because when we’d started to descend into the madness of the nightmare, I’d made it very clear that hiding wasn’t an option. We would face it all head on, together. They’d taken the order seriously and to this day it was something we held each other accountable for.

“That’s what you say now, but hearing his voice after all this—”

I cut him off by unloading the entire clip rapid fire at the target, my anger surging. I ejected the clip and turned to him.

“I’ll do what I need to do,”

I growled. “This has been over a decade in the making—you really think I’ll do something reckless to endanger that?”

I shoved another clip aggressively into the gun.

Nyx shrugged. “And Kaelin?”

“Nothing changes,”

I snapped, still irritated.

“Are you ever going to tell her how you feel at least?”

Nyx asked.

He looked like he was trying to hide a smile which just pissed me off more. I unloaded the clip again, unable to hold back. When I ejected the clip this time, I slammed it down on the table.

“Can you be brave for me, baby?”

“I love you…”

“I don’t do love,”

I said harshly.

Nyx raised his eyebrows and scoffed. “That’s not what I see.”

I rounded on him angrily and he just raised his hands in surrender but still looked amused. I turned back and started reloading the two clips, trying to center my thoughts.

“Have you heard from Deathwing recently?”

“No,”

I said flatly.

Now was not the time to think about the fact I hadn’t heard from Deathwing in months. If I thought about that situation now…no, I told him I’d trust him to execute and while it was the hardest thing I’d ever done, I’d honor my word. I pushed all of that away for now.

“I’m just saying, shits about to get heavy and she’s involved—”

he said, giving me a pointed look. “You need to tell her what she’s getting into or you need to leave.”

I slammed the gun down. “Nothing is going to stop me from finishing this,”

I said in a deathly calm tone. “Nothing. I warned you all in the beginning and by staying you understood the sacrifices I would make if it came to that.”

I didn’t want it to come to that. But they all had to understand there were no lines I wouldn't cross and no corner of hell too deep that would stop me from killing the man who had ruined my life and taken everything from me.

“Don’t you think you should give her that choice too?”

Nyx asked. “Who knows, maybe she can actually help us. I’m just saying, if you plan to keep her, she should know what you’re willing to sacrifice to end this.”

When I didn’t answer right away, he shook his head and turned to go.

“Honestly, I hope you grow a pair and tell her because I’ve never seen you this way with a woman,”

he nudged me with his shoulder and smirked. “I kind of like it. She and Graham are good for you.”

Once he left, I unloaded clip after clip at the target until it was a shredded mess. But I wasn’t seeing the paper outline, I was seeing Vetticus and his lust filled eyes and the smirk that always set my teeth on edge. His voice cut through the gunfire and it was his hands I was shooting as they reached for me, or Nyx or Atlas—I knew what I was getting into and yet I still wasn’t prepared for what it actually felt like to hear him stake a claim on our lives again.

But this wasn’t his game anymore. It was mine.

And I knew it was only going to get a whole lot worse before the end.