2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Axel

F uck, Jensen's kid was going to have to pay me double for cleaning this scene. I was used to professionalism. Seeing someone with such an amateur hand was almost enough to make me leave the evidence just so I'd never have to deal with them again.

Almost.

I enjoyed my job security too much for that. If I got sloppy, a lot of killers for hire—a lot of government agents—would end up being discovered for exactly the kind of monsters they were. I knew everyone's secrets, and exactly where the evidence was hidden.

While there was a small part of me that would have enjoyed using this mess of a scene to teach incompetent killers a lesson, I knew better. Not only did I not want to end up on the wrong side of a knife or gun, but if word got out that I let my own petty emotions impede how good of a job I did, no one would call me.

No one would synonymously think of the name Fetterman with crime scene cleanup.

My gaze drifted to the left—to the puddle of blood that had long since turned to brown on a white rug.

Who fucking killed someone on a white rug ? Who didn't at least roll the damn thing up after and take it with them?

Knife.

They'd definitely used a knife. I could tell by the arterial spray splattering across the walls.

My eyes rolled heavenward—not just the walls. It had gotten on the ceiling.

"Amateur." I hissed the word out in disgust. If I thought it would make me feel better, I was mistaken.

It didn't stop me from putting a sheet down to make sure I didn't get my slacks dirty before I got to work.

The first thing I did was roll up the stained rug—whoever came to the house was going to have to wonder what had happened to it, because I wasn't dealing with cleaning it. I wasn't worried about their curiosity.

I was worried about the amount of bleach it would take to get all that white clean after some jackass had waited until the blood had dried to call me.

If I was being honest, it wasn't just the state of the rug that was bothering me. I hated the color of dried blood against stark white. I hated the way it looked. I hated the scent of it flooding my nose, rusty and bitter.

I hated that I could distinctly remember another white floor… the way the blood was cool to the touch when I got there, congealed and sticky.

My father had kept me away, and I knew it was because he was aware I'd do anything to save him.

There was no saving someone who'd been shot so many times. There was no saving someone who had a spread of crimson beneath them that seemed to span the entire floor.

You couldn't save someone whose eyes had already lost their life—bright green turned to flat, nearly gray.

Xavier had been dead for hours when they called me onto the scene, laid out and waiting to deliver a message.

Falling in love with a hitman was never a good idea. Their job was dangerous. Their lives were short.

But…

I'd always been so sure he could take care of himself.

Even after…

Even when …

Even though one of the wounds on his body hadn't been from a gun.

For a moment, my eyes unfocused. I wasn't seeing the rug beneath me—I was seeing skin gone pale and lifeless.

I was seeing the tattoos that littered his body, and how he'd gotten my name across his chest, only to cover it… then get it inked on again.

I shook my head with a low grunt and kicked the white rug.

It had been twenty-two years. I didn't know why I was still seeing him at the oddest times… but apparently all the things people said about grief lessening with time, memories fading with passing moments?

Well, that was all bullshit, wasn't it?

If I closed my eyes, I could still see the way his smile was just a little crooked, the way he had a dimple on his left cheek and a sweet little constellation of freckles across the bridge of his nose that he hated.

If I closed my eyes and held my breath, I could still hear the rhythm of his heart, because mine echoed it.

Twenty-two years.

Fuck whoever said time healed all wounds.

And fuck the stupid white rug.

The first thing I was going to do when I got home was burn it.

It was a damn shame that the catharsis of getting rid of it would do nothing for the ache that still echoed hollow and visceral in my heart at the thought of a man I would never see again this side of Hell.

By the time I was finished scrubbing the scene, the location was spotless. You would never know that a messy, unpracticed murder happened behind the four walls—the only person who was going to know that it was amateur was the client, because I'd already sent through an up charge to make sure he knew the extra hours I put in were going to be paid and paid well.

I was exhausted. I wasn't old, but my forty-year-old body could definitely tell that scrubbing and rearranging for hours was more work than it had been when I was twenty.

Which was why it made perfect sense that as soon as I actually stripped out of my sweaty shirt and made my way toward the shower, there would be a knock at the door. A part of me thought about ignoring it.

A very large part of me thought about finding the gun that I had stashed away and answering with it in hand.

But… I couldn't really shoot solicitors, and it had been a long, long time since someone had knocked on my door past midnight.

If I was being honest, no one had done it since…

Something twisted in my chest before the name could surface, and I threw my shirt to the side and made my way to the living room against my better judgment.

Whoever it was would have to deal with my state of undress. I wasn't putting a clean shirt on until I had a shower.

The impatient rap of knuckles on the door played an odd rhythm against my ribs—it made no sense, but the cadence was familiar. Loud and then soft, a trill of impatience that somehow carried me forward when I really should have turned back around and ignored it altogether.

Glancing through the windows didn't do me any favors. A man stood there, impatient, an expression of irritation on his face. The clothes he wore hung loose from his body, and he looked gaunt. Disheveled.

Desperate.

There was absolutely no reason for me to open my door.

Which was why it made no sense that I moved to flip the lock when he pulled his fist back to pound on it again.

He drew up short before his knuckles landed on my bare chest, and he was already talking before I switched on the living room lights.

"It's about damn time, I thought I was going to bust my knuckles trying to get your atten…" he slowly trailed off, and his eyes widened when he looked at me.

They were soft, sweet. Liquid brown and ringed in pale green.

It was the green that caught me off guard, because I'd only seen that color one other time. But he wasn't…

He couldn't be…

And yet I couldn't shake the familiarity as he crossed his arms over his chest and frowned.

"Fuck. Was all that shit on the computer right? I thought this was—"

"Who are you?" I finally managed the question I should have asked before I fully opened the door. But… the way he glared at me, the way his arms were crossed? The way he leaned back just slightly, but I could see the loose posture of his body, like he was ready to spring into action and fight at the first sign of trouble.

Fuck, he didn't look exactly like him, but the body language had Xavier written all over it. It made something in my chest burn, something in me ache. I'd been thinking of him earlier, and now this?

What was it about today?

"For fuck's sake, Axel. Did the gray hair make you senile?"

It was impossible —completely impossible, for so many reasons. That didn't stop the fissure that I felt opening in my chest, didn't stop the pain that tore through me like I was back in that moment when I'd gotten the call to show up to a scene.

A messy scene.

And…

"Who are you?" I hissed, vehement this time, trying not to let the agony rocking through my chest show in the way I spoke. The man in front of me glared again, raking his fingers through curly brown hair…

Then shoved past me to walk into the house.

I'd been trained for things like this. I didn't enjoy it, but I was completely capable of killing someone in a few quick movements. For the most part, my job didn't entail that kind of danger. For the most part, people were already dead by the time I got to them.

But I still knew how to incapacitate someone, and the man who walked past me was skinny, small. He looked like he'd been sick . It would have been so simple to reach out and grab him by the shoulder, to twist his arm behind his back and break it. It would probably be easier still to throw him to the ground, walk to any of the weapons I had stashed around the house, and just take him out.

I'd been trained to do this.

Instead, my eyes drifted helplessly across the shiny pink scarring of burn marks that trailed along the back of his neck as he pushed past me without invitation … and I just let him.

"Maybe my head is more fucked up than I thought." My brows knit together. What was he talking about? Then again, anyone who would walk into a stranger's house like this did have to be a little fucked in the head, didn't they?

"Excuse me?"

He dropped onto my couch, the ghost of those green eyes fixed on me with a sardonic expression that shouldn't have existed anymore. "Do you just let anyone wander into your house, Axel?" Then, without missing a beat, he turned his head toward my fireplace and frowned. "Is that a… rug?"

I stared at him like I was seeing a ghost, because that seemed to be exactly what he was. The posture, the stance, the way he talked to me and lounged on my couch like he'd done it a thousand times before.

But…

It was impossible.

And even if it was possible, he was impossible. He couldn't have been any older than Xavier had been when he'd died.

And…

"Who are you?" I felt like a fucking broken record, but I didn't know what else to do. I wasn't sure if I wanted to take a few steps back and grab one of the weapons I had stashed by the door or take the steps forward that would close the gap between us, so I could kneel in front of him and look at his face.

Look into his eyes.

Look at those rings of green that I'd never seen outside of Xavier's stare. His eyes had been so unique, the color so vibrant it was almost yellow. Like grass in the summer sun, or a cat's eyes. Maybe I'd never seen anything like it since he'd died because I'd stopped bothering to really look at people, to really see them.

Or maybe Xavier was just one of a kind.

Except…

The man on my couch leaned forward, his elbows propped on his knees as he looked up at me. "Trust me, this is just as weird for me as it is for you." I highly doubted that. There was a stranger lounging on my couch… and, for some reason, I didn't want to kill him.

I wasn't trying to make him leave.

I was just… staring at him.

I seemed incapable of doing anything else.

When I didn't say anything, he finally stood and stepped toward me; his eyes roamed across my bare chest, taking me in slowly before lifting back to my face. It was the strangest sensation, wanting to recoil, wanting to step back. After Xavier died, everything in my world had turned cold. I wasn't a psychopath or a sociopath like so many of the people I'd worked with, but I'd been around enough of them to learn how to shut off my emotions. I'd been through enough to realize that it was easier not to feel anything than to feel the pain that refused to fade no matter how many years went by.

But watching him walk toward me, it was like I had double vision. I could see the slender man with wild curls, and I could see a taller body… all lean muscles and dark brown hair pulled back in a tail. I could see bright green eyes and a galaxy of freckles across his nose that I used to count while he slept, used to make constellations from—a map to infinity. Late at night, when I stared at him, I thought I knew what forever looked like.

When he'd laid dead at my feet, I'd made a new map that led straight to limbo from the spattering of blood that painted his freckles red.

He didn't stop until he was standing in front of me, and the wide-eyed expression on his face was one I recognized.

It was the way he looked up at me the first time I'd seen him, when he was bleeding out. He'd said one word to me then.

Just one.

And he was saying it again now, the ghost of my heart, living and breathing and impossible .

"Please?" His expression was lost, wrecked… broken and just a little afraid. "Axel… I didn't know where else to go."