Chapter 38: Chapter 38

JACE ‘JR’ ASHER/ TRIGGER

PRESENT DAY

“CANNON?” Jason Bates spoke into the phone.

“Mommy…mommy said she’s right behind me. I can’t see them”, the five-year-old me quipped, head shot to the back at the warehouse behind me.

I was crying so hard than I had in my entire life. They told me to run but they weren’t running. They weren’t behind me.

“Connor? Jr?”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me do it.

“Fuck! Fuck Cannon! Okay, here’s what we are gonna do buddy. I need you to run, okay? Don’t look back just run, I’m coming to get both of you. Are you hurt? Is your brother hurt?”

Brother? When the warehouse holding my parents hostage detonated with angry flames behind me, that moment, right there, I didn’t have a brother.

I was alone. A kid staring at the flames consume the very people who brought me into this world. A kid all alone on a deserted island with the ashes of my parents wafting through the air like they were nothing.

My parents died that day. The old Jr died that day and my brother might as well have joined Hades because he was dead to me.

“GHOST”, the chief barked.

The little punk standing next to me gave his bros a fucking handshake. Two weeks, the little fucker joined B&A two weeks ago and he was getting a fucking promotion.

I had been dying to get on the Kowalski mission for a fucking year yet in a few days, a new Hollywood pretty boy had snagged the damn thing off my hands like it was just some random job.

God, I would do the whole mission with my eyes fucking closed and the chief knew it. I was good in the field, good at pyrotechnics, had all the info needed to swindle Kowalski into helping the Feds, this was bullshit and the chief knew it.

Ghost was sloppy. Had no training, a mediocre, a joke a fucking ninny—

“Asher, a word?”

Everyone else dismissed, I stood my ground the scowl on my face being unhide-able.

Taller, a few grey hairs in his beard, he barely looked a day over sixty. Then again, he was always the top dog in B & A, the brute they called him.

Alessandro ‘Flames’ Petrakis. The chief.

“You know what I fucking want? A vacation with Mia. Climb a yacht and set sails for the Caribbean but that’s not possible, is it? Never mind the five teenagers at home, I have to fucking babysit grown ass men at work too. Point is soldier, we don’t get what we want all the time”

“I worked for that mission; you know it”

His callous hand landed on my polo shirt and I fucking hated it.

I’d been around long enough to know how the chief treated rookies. I fucking treated rookies the way he was doing at this very second.

Hand to the shoulder, eyes locked, probably utter some shit ‘about not being good enough and needing more training’.

“Ghost is sloppy we know that but he’s also a psychopath. He wouldn’t hesitate to pull the damn trigger if it came to that and that’s what we need in that mission. The Kowalski mission is personal to you but it’s been twenty years boy. Move the fuck on”

“Chief I can—”

“You are on another mission, Trigger”

I bloody hated that nickname.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tapping my comm, I glanced at the bullshit club I had had the displeasure of being assigned to. Apparently, a few words to get me on the good graces of Nicolas Amato had led to this.

A fucking babysitting job.

And not just any job but the big fucking white whale. Mission, infiltrate Nicolas Amato on the inside. Take him down under the ruse of being his daughter’s bodyguard.

The job sounded easy. I never did easy. I never liked this shit side of New York and I especially couldn’t handle a fucking client.

I was the dude at B & A in charge of cleaning messes, in charge of rescue missions like saving people from an IED struck building, disarming bombs and when I was lucky pulling the damn trigger on a few shit people.

Not this. Babysitting some mafia princess just to get some info from her father like a cowardly spy.

“I don’t fucking see her”, I grunted. Hundredth time for the night.

Different city, different club, different chicks, damn even the booze was different. Paving through the drunk trust fund babies on heels that were either high or just jumping like clowns for the fuck of it, I tipped my chin at Tequila who was by the VIP lounge.

He nodded his head sideways.

A clear fucking indication that our client was somewhere inside here but no one had laid an eye on her.

“If you’d tone down the rage a little, maybe you would. It’s not that fuckin bad, Trigger”, Maverick’s voice soared into the communication device in my ear, I didn’t give a shit whether everyone could sniff my rage from a mile away or not.

“Do you have your eye on her or not, asshole?” I thundered; Maverick laughed.

I knew I should have brought a different team on this and not the usual fucks I knew at work. Maverick and Tequila were the best guys I knew who could handle shit when it went sideways.

Tequila was the silent killer. Never said a word but he had the keen eye of a hawk, had skills that if fallen to the wrong hands, the whole country would be in danger and if you needed a guy to get rid of a body, he was the sort to do it. No questions, no judgement.

Then there was Maverick who like me had taken over his father’s job. After Holy took an early retirement, his son Maverick took over after him. Maverick learnt coding and all that shit since he was twelve. While the lot of us struggled with calculus as teens, he’d already sold his skills to the TEAMs before our boss Flames salvaged his skills for B&A.

“Now, now children, daddy Flames wouldn’t like it if you fought”, another voice joined in through the comm and I sauntered into the neon light colored room towards the first row near the DJ booth.

It sucked to even ask it but I asked nonetheless.

“Who the hell invited Ontario?”

Ontario. Most annoying little fucker in B&A. The kind of guy that associated humor with killing. The type that chopped someone’s fingers while making jokes. The kind of guy I didn’t want messing my A-game.

I might have hated the job but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t see through this mission like my life depended on it and no sarcastic socio path was going to stop from doing so.

“Trigger, is that anyway to treat the man who’s only here to help?”

“Your solution to everything is shooting everyone. I don’t need fucking help, I’m good”

Where the hell was, she?

“True, I can’t help it. Though Mavey here explained you were caught in a pickle. She escaped daddy’s mansion, clear message she’s never been to this kind of party before or any party whatsoever so where do you think she’d hide?”

Hide? It was not like she knew her father had hired us to look for her. Had hired me to be her bodyguard.

Perhaps I’d heard of her. Lucia Sofia Amato. A fine gem they called her. It was not my first time encountering a million-dollar trust fund baby.

I might not have protected one but I sure as hell had fucked a dozen to know they were the same chip off the old block.

Concerned with makeup, clothes of the latest season, the six and more zeroes in their bank accounts that gave them a sense of belief they were better than everyone.

And please. Lucia fucking Amato wasn’t some caged princess but a wild overly pampered princess that wanted to give her father a heart attack with her shenanigans.

And I didn’t even need to gloss over her data once again to know the type of woman she was.

“Jesus Christ, Trigger. You have a sister; I’ve seen you fuck females before. How is it that you wouldn’t have figured it out by now? Women are women, and went shit goes south like a little smudge of their lipsticks or a guy pisses them off in a party they run to the only place they feel safe”

“Washroom”, Tequila clipped.

I was still hung over the fact that Ontario had mentioned Cass from his fucking mouth. We never spoke about my sister. Ever.

Wouldn’t allow it and maybe because she was the only fucking woman on the planet, I was afraid of.

I had hurt her and I was too caught in my own bullshit to grow the balls to apologize. She was in New York too. Had been in New York for two years and by now, she must have already gotten the memo from Jason that I was here.

Something she wouldn’t like.

“What do you mean you’ve seen Trigger fuck females before? Wait did you guys have an orgy without us?” Maverick joked; I ditched the nonsense heading to the east side of the club.

I would rather sit on a cactus buck ass naked than entertain an orgy…with anyone.

“Funny story actually—”, Ontario started.

“Maverick, cut the fucking line”, I ordered heading to the bloody bathrooms.

Swiping my card against the reader, I pushed through the door harder than I should have.

Dark hair, dark eyes, red lips and curves for days met me on my way in.

Jesus Christ she was beautiful.

She blinked, wiping the tears staining her cheeks in a hurry. No botched make up, no mascara running down her cheeks just her.

With those big black eyes that gazed at me faster than the full tits she was stacking on.

Fuck, I didn’t sign up for this crap.

This woman wasn’t Lucia Amato.

The Lucia Amato in my phone didn’t look like a fucking innocent goddess but a spoilt brat with pink streaks in her hair.

How long ago was that picture taken? Because it fucking didn’t do justice to the woman standing in front of me looking at me like I hadn’t just barged into the ladies’ washroom.

“Trigger? You found her yet? Tequila’s coming in”, Maverick’s voice assaulted my ear drums.

“No! Found her, I’ll request back up when I need it”

The missus lifted a brow at me and I mentally shook myself out of whatever limbo I had tossed myself in,

“Lucia Amato, we have to leave”

LUCIA AMATO

Flustered, jittery, harboring a sensation between my legs no man but Kade Hawkins had ever elicited, I gazed at the six two feet of muscles feeling cornered.

The only reason I was here was because Kade hung out around this bar a lot and I wanted to see him. He was my fiancé and possibly the only man who’d ever showed enough interest in me to ask for my hand in marriage.

Disappointment washed over me when I had arrived in Club Deluxe. No Kade. No friends. And all alone I had been shoved across the dance floor like a sack of nothing.

I didn’t belong here and Papa had been right in warning me against leaving the mansion. I was an Amato. A prized gem that needed to be isolated from the real world and I hated my life as the thought crossed my mind.

“Lucia Amato, we have to leave”, the man in all black said. His deep voice a heavy timber that made the bathroom colder and goosebumps pepper my skin.

He was tall, stern and all muscles and I struggled to understand what it was he was saying with those eyes.

Eyes that looked like they had seen so much than my twenty-two-year-old body had.

“I’m sorry?”

He knew my name?

He crossed the distance between us, his presence washing over me like a hot Florida summer. Whipping something from his dark jeans, he waved some sort of badge in front of my face.

“Name’s Trigger. Your security detail”

“I don’t have nor have I ever needed a security detail”, I found my voice, he didn’t as much as back away knocking the little strength I had in continuing this conversation from my body.

“You didn’t have one but now you do. You ran away from home”, he accused, I took a step back.

“I did not…run away from home. I came to see my fiancé, it’s a free country, I’m allowed to move freely am I not, Trigger?”

What sort of name was Trigger?

His stoic mask got replaced with a hooded expression as he raked his eyes over the skimpy black dress I had on.

“Fiancé? There was no mention of a fiancé. Is he here with you? I’d love to educate him on better places to take a woman out for a date”

My toes pointed in my high heels, my calves flexed, my back straight, my shoulders proud, I held my head high walking past him like he hadn’t made me feel ten times worser than I did when I got here.

It was pathetic really.

This wasn’t a date; this was me looking for a man I had only talked to once and saying talk was a bit of a stretch since I had only managed to squeak two words.

Hi, Kade.

And he’d merely replied with, ‘Hi princess’. That being enough for me to accept his marriage proposal when he showed up at our mansion two weeks later.

“Ms. Amato”, the mocking security detail called behind me.

Meandering through the crowd of rowdy people drunk to the point of delirium, I clutched my purse tight to the side of my hip convincing myself I wouldn’t cry.

I wouldn’t cry.

I wouldn’t---

A hand snaked around my hip---tight. Trepidation licked my insides; bile rose up my gut making me feel dizzy as I whipped my head to the man next to me.

A scrawny and unkempt moustache, a gold tooth shining on his upper jaw against the poor lighting, his eyes lingered on me as he pressed his weapon next to my waist.

“Well, well look what we have here. Lucia Amato in the bloody flesh. Don’t even think about it, you scream and I swear I’ll blow your brains out. Here’s what’s going to happen. We’ll walk out of here; you’ll act natural or else someone will get hurt and it sure as hell won’t be me”

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t—

Whatever tears I held back rushed out of my eyes with a stinging force. We were walking and fear laced my blood so much I couldn’t say a thing.

My only hope was that the six-foot man clad with black boots, black polo shirt and dark jeans was somehow still looking for me.

I should have screamed but I was weak because I had been chaperoned all my life. The lurid man ushered me out of the bar to his getaway beat up truck hidden in the alley.

“Almost there. Almost there then everything we’ll be alright”, he groaned with excitement, the sickening feel of the gun sinking into my skin made me want to hurl.

I shouldn’t have come here. I should have left with Trigger.

I should have never left the mansion. And I was going to die because of my own—

“That’s not a fucking way to treat a lady”

My captor stood in his tracks. I gazed ahead at the man leaning against the pickup with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Trigger.

Surprised, the scrawny man holding me at gun point held his gun out to Trigger, I swallowed hard.

“Move along buddy, none of this is your business”

Trigger threw his half-lit cigarette to the ground crushing it underfoot.

“Thing is, she is my business”

He took one step closer.

My kidnapper trembled, his finger on the trigger. Ironical, my new bodyguard wasn’t going to be alive any much sooner.

“You don’t know how to use that thing do you?”

“I know how to fucking shoot and I’ll shoot you if you don’t move in five seconds”

Trigger’s eyes landed on mine and he barked a command,

“Close your eyes princess”

I closed my eyes, I trusted him. The sound of a gunshot echoed; I opened my eyes seeing the form of a man sprawled across the ground next to me.

Scared. Not thinking straight, I ran to the man in front of me sobbing on his chest.

Xxxxxxxx

JR ---- Her sweet body melted into mine as she sobbed and possessive shit I’d never entertained took over my body. Debaucherous shit ran through my head about what I wanted to do to her body and that short as hell dress.

The mission had changed. I would destroy Nicolas Amato but I would get to keep the princess to myself. Whether she had a fucking fiancé or not.

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Thanks for reading, don't forget to vote and leave your thoughts on it.

Also Flames' book is out. It's titled 'Submitting to my Alpha Bodyguard'. Though I don't want to spoil it, I can absolutely say for sure the male character and the female character won't die but brace yourself for everything they go through together as they navigate their love.