Chapter 22: Chapter 22

CANNON

STITCHED UP KNIFE WOUNDS, bullet holes were fucking child’s play compared to the shit that unfolded in front of my eyes.

And this one, motherfucking damn it, hurt as hell.

I had a kid. Jesus Christ, I had two. Two boys that looked like shit because their pussy as fuck mother couldn’t tell me about them.

She’d tried to run.

Like a fucking pussy, she’d tried to run and for the fuck of it, I was ready to shoot. I was ready to shoot her brains the minute my two kids called her their mother.

One of them looked like me while the other had inherited her caramel hair. Fuck!

Whipping out my cell, I made a call angry as fuck at the turn of events.

He answered on the first ring.

“I don’t care whether she’s your responsibility or not. We land, I’m taking out my shit on her”

“By killing her?” Berkely countered and the thought of it didn’t sound too bad.

It didn’t matter whether she was the mother of my kids. Falling for those gravy-like eyes and an angelic face was way past my MO.

She was still fucking beautiful. A bitch for keeping such secret away from me but so so fucking beautiful, I’d paused the minute I’d heard her voice.

“Doesn’t sound too bad to me”

“You’ve been away, soldier. Things changed; Nicole Montenegro stays under my protection till I say otherwise”

Motherfucker.

“I guess I’ll have to fight my way through B&A then”

Six years and I hadn’t spoken to the fucker. Berkely laughed.

“I’m too old to take care you on, Asher. Don’t be stupid, think of your kids. Congratulations are in order, huh? See you back in Miami, son”

He hung up.

My jaw ticking, my gun burning hot in my holster I gazed at the woman seated so far away from me we might as well have been light years away.

Too thin, yet too damn beautiful, my anger resurfaced at her demeanor.

Shit didn’t look right with her. Her eyes popped but at the same time they carried an inherent fear and it fucked with my head.

Jason had helped her clean up but anyone with God damn eyes could see the redness of her skin and the burn marks visibly fresh on her arms.

It was none of my business but the minute I’d found out about my two five-year-olds, everything of hers had been my business.

“What do you want?”

I asked Jason who’d sat by me the entire time. Everyone was fucking stunned.

Me, a father? That’s was some whack shit I’d never thought I’d experience yet here we were.

“Would you have taken the shot?”

I would have.

Hundred percent without any doubts.

Seeing those kids so helpless, so scared, under the mercy of fucking pandejo gangs had stirred weird shit in me.

When my bullshit of a father had been anything but to me and Nance, I’d sworn I’d be there for my kids.

That I’d protect them with my life from the shit that was the universe. Looking at Connor and Jr now, no one had been there to shield them from such dangers.

Their fucking mother included.

That was why when we landed, I’d take a paternity test with the kids. I’d need it if I was going to take my kids away from their reckless mother.

“I would have, had you not taken my damn gun”

I laid out the truth.

I’d never been one to do things without thinking yet at that moment in time, the anger coursing through my veins was enough to wish Nicole Montenegro was six feet under with maggots taking what remained of her corpse.

“Shit got real, Cannon. You were angry, I would have been too but we both know you wouldn’t lay a finger on that woman. She messed up and something’s obviously fucked up here. Hear her out, tone down the rage”

“You her lackey now?”

I’d seen how the motherfucker had acted towards her. As if he were her knight in shining armor or something.

“Why you pissed she wanted my help and not yours?”

YES.

“I don’t give a damn what you do with Montenegro. The kids are the only reason I’m in this damn plane heading to Miami”

“Thanks for the get go. Damn she still hot, I wonder if she’ll let me-“

“You finish that statement and I’ll fucking gut your insides and feed them to you”

Raising his hands, he chuckled as if we were talking about some stupid as fuck tea party.

“Relax, Romeo. She’s all yours”

The minute he left; I uncapped the bottle of scotch eyeing the woman by the plane’s window for the hundredth time.

Years ago, I’d imagined this and failed to admit it.

Nicole on some rock chair with our children reading them a book about Mickey Mouse and shit but the reality that doused in was different.

She was seated with my kids alright but she was someone else’s and not mine.

The ring on her finger proved it and it ate up my six like it did years ago.

I hated her and I wanted her.

I wanted to shoot her yet I wanted to be her savior because she really looked like she needed one.

As for my kids, they’d turned on me the minute I threatened their mother and I fucking loved that.

They had loyalty.

And they were responsible enough to know that no one dared to touch their mother.

Jr had given me the silent treatment as soon as we got to the plane. Connor wouldn’t even look at me let alone leave his mother’s side and that altogether bothered me.

Up until hours ago I was ready to die in Mexico in the hands of amateur gunmen and now?

I had kids.

It didn’t make any sense.

Three hours later, Blaze and Holy were touching down on one of Berkely’s private hangars and the sight that was Miami skylights permeated through the fucking windows.

“Gentlemen, sounds like you had a hoot in Mehico”, Snakes was the first to greet us the minute we set our feet on Miami soil. His gaze turning to me and the woman with the two kids backing her up, he smiled and I wanted to clip his molars out.

“Cannon. Never thought I’d see the day you’d father sons”, he joked and fucking Jason mouthed ‘me too’ giving him a bro hug.

Eyeing the SUV behind me, I leveled him with a question,

“Berkley send you here?”

“Yap, said you won’t like his order”

“Which is?”

“Take them to B&A, you morons hitch your own rides”

“Jesus, he is still mad we took a mission without his permission”, Blaze asked.

Holy couldn’t care less while Jason? Fucker was just glad to be caught up in my drama.

“I’m taking them to B&A”, I growled.

“Like hell you are”

“I don’t give a fuck what Berkely said. He wants her, I’ll take her there but under my own conditions”

Damn right I’d get all the answers I wanted from her. And that would be far away from their company.

“You guys want to go at it?” Holy barked, “if my ass freezes a minute more in this damn weather, I swear someone’s eating a bullet and I won’t miss just because we fucking work together”

In another life maybe.

I’d take them on if it even came to that, which was highly unlikely.

“We’ll go with him”

The woman we’d barely gave attention spoke up and I turned around facing her for a moment.

With eyes that looked too damn well innocent, she stared at me like I was her damn savior just like years ago and I wanted to rebuff her instead.

“Well, that’s settled. See you folks at HQ”, Jason said.

Snakes not at all happy at the outcome, threw me the keys and I opened the door for Nicole and my kids.

The silence fucking palpable I could taste it; I kept my eyes fixed at the road afraid that if I spoke my anger would outmatch the soft spot, I had for the woman seated at the back seat. As if she could sense the tension, her voice came out stronger and more like I remembered than when she spoke in Mexico.

“I’m sorry”

“For which part exactly Nicole? Keeping them from me, huh?”

I kept my voice in check but God knew I wanted to motherfucking yell at her till my lungs gave out.

“I never should have done that. I wasn’t even sure they were-“

“Mine? Why? Because you were fucking your fiancé the same time you were fucking me?”

The kids were asleep, I’d made sure they were before I said something to Nicole I might have regretted.

“You are mad, I get that but that is not an excuse to treat me like this. I made a mistake. I—I made the wrong choices for me, for my kids, for…us”

Us. There was no us, as much as I had wanted that in the past.

After all the shit that had escalated, there was no fucking us.

“Do they know I’m their father?”

If she said yes then I would at least reconsider my decision. I’d try to resettle our differences.

If my kids knew I was there for them and I loved them and I would have protected them, had I known they existed then I would find it in my cold heart to forgive her.

“Lucas is their father”, she whispered and my fingers dug into the steering wheel-hard.

“Not anymore, he isn’t. I’m taking a paternity test and the minute the results are out, I want my kids”