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Chapter 3

ELI

Ilifted my gaze from my coffee as the door to the diner dinged, and they finally arrived.

I'd found a booth near the back, as far away from the windows as possible. The place was busy, with enough people to block the view. It was an hour's drive to the diner, but the Donelli family's reach was far.

I'd grown used to pretence since I began training for this mission, and it was necessary for Agents Jones and Chalmers to inflict it upon themselves too. Jones, the younger of the two, dressed himself in a baggy purple tracksuit, his fingers and neck hung with ridiculous gold and silver chains, lolloping in front of Agent Chalmers, who wore nothing but a strip of denim over her hips, a see-through wife beater and scuffed red heels. I was meant to be playing the part of a horny mafia grunt, and she was pushing forty and all three of us felt awkward about her breasts on display.

Most of the customers were truckers, and were happy to get an eyeful. If they were staring at her tits, they were less likely to remember her face.

The older of the two, Chalmers had been running narcotics gigs for over ten years, whereas Jones was still a cocky little shit. Since the op started, we'd kept up the pretence that I was travelling all the way out here to see my favourite whore, accompanied by her pimp. We usually met at a motel and spent time talking about the operation, but I didn't have time today.

My friend Harley used to play the pimp. He helped me craft the task force, he gathered the initial intel and came up with steps we could take to gather solid evidence to put the entire Donelli family in jail. I suspected he had an idea of what I wanted to do to Wyatt, Bruno and the others, and why I was really running the operation, but he never let on. When the first Donelli was brutally murdered he gave me questioning looks, but he never asked. We had been through too much together to stop.

After Martha's murder, Harley was the one who pulled me through my grief. It had been six months since her passing, and we were drinking, reminiscing about her, when he kissed me. And I hadn't realised how much I needed comfort, how dead I was inside. All throughout, we kept our boundaries and only went to each other when we needed a release. No sex, just physical relief.

Then the mission started, and, after four months of supporting me behind the scenes, he went north to Phoenix to investigate Carlos, and came back in a bodybag.

And, just like that, I lost another person I loved to the Donelli's. A year later, and I'd finally killed the person responsible for his death. And it was like Sam didn't even fucking care.

The agents were used to suits and cool offices, both were incredibly uncomfortable every time we met, despite having kept this up for over a year.

"Knightly," Agent Chalmers nodded as she slid into the booth across from me.

"You're late," I said carefully, my eyes flicking to the large clock over the kitchen counter, yellowed from years of oily smoke.

"It's only five minutes. Don't get fussy." Agent Jones brushed me off as he jumped in beside her.

I pursed my lips, assessing them both. On a hot day, with the kitchen fryers on full, during the lunchtime rush, along with a broken air conditioner, they were already sweating. And it was why Agent Chalmers shifted against the red leather seats, her skirt riding so high, her bare skin peeled from the seat with a squelch, like flypaper on her skin.

It was the same for me. Though, instead of a tiny skirt and cheap earrings, I kept myself in my leathers. It was better to take my motorbike when I visited them. Sometimes the Donelli's put a tail on me, but they couldn't follow me as easily when I swerved through gaps in traffic. If I didn't have a tail, we could meet at the diner instead of having to go to a motel and stay stuck in a room with each other for two hours. Plus the leathers hid the bite marks littering my neck and shoulders.

"I don't have time for jokes today," I said as I leaned back, my lighter clicking between us as I played with it. "I called because Carlos Donelli has been hit, and I need to know what happened."

Or, rather, I needed to know if the Bureau knew anything. I should have left it another week, but the Donelli's weren't doing anything about the murder, and I was on edge. When I took out Bruno there was an uproar, and Sam vowed to murder every person in the prison until they found out who it was. I used a fake name, prosthetics, killed the cameras and got him when he was in solitary confinement. Blood was demanded for Bruno's death, yet there hadn't been a single move for Carlos's.

Chalmers shifted in her seat. "We had a report, yes, but the most we know is that he was lured out to a location and tortured for at least three hours. Though that's simply based on the police and autopsy report. Our other sources haven't given us any more information."

It was four hours, but I wasn't exactly going to tell them that.

I knew they had agents working undercover tracking other areas of the Donelli empire, and, even though this was my operation, they didn't show us the big picture. They said it was in case our covers were blown and they tortured us, which made sense, but it didn't stop it being bullshit.

Working for the FBI was a contingency plan. It gave me better protection, though there were times I was tempted to cut all ties with them and just focus on the Donelli's without all the paperwork.

But would it really ease the pain inside me? FBI or the Donelli's, both were sides I was forced to choose to complete my revenge, neither were sides I wanted to be on.

My eyes shuttered closed as Martha's screams rang clear in my ear; her blood-stained face, the bright sunlight shining through the Velux windows of our attic, the crunch of her wrist as she fought to escape Wyatt's weight. Them demanding to know, over and over again, how much we knew about their fucking shipping routes. That's what Martha died for, for information that made no difference to anyone. And, as far as I was aware, Wyatt never used the information he tortured out of us. Absolutely nothing changed, and she died for nothing.

I could just storm into Sam Donelli's office and shoot him square between the brows. But I wanted him to watch everyone he loved vanish until he was running scared. Then I could kill him slowly, and make sure I died fast.

" I need more movement upstate," I said. "I can't operate blind. The Donelli's will end up putting more security in place." I didn't know if Sam suspected it was one person targeting his family, or if I'd spaced the deaths far enough apart that they looked random. And maybe they didn't connect Carlos's overdose to the others, but I couldn't let my guard down.

"Well, we can't give you anything." Jones folded his arms, looking smug.

I snapped my lighter shut, a ping ringing between us. "Excuse me?" I replied, my voice dripping with contempt.

"Captain wants another check-in." Jones shrugged casually, the heavy chains around his neck clinking as he moved. "He's worried about the lack of reports. So we're only sharing once you give us the intel we requested on the Marshall deal."

My brows hitched as I took him in. The Marshall deal wasn't even important, it was just a purchase of illegal diamonds that barely reached $100,000.

A year out of the academy and no field experience, and he was acting as if he was the captain.

"Are you a fucking child?" I asked, genuinely curious. "This isn't like we're sharing each other's crushes on the playground. Please tell me that after a year you at least know what I'm trying to do here? Or are you really that dumb?"

Chalmers at least had the decency to appear embarrassed. Jones was just pissed.

I'd chosen Chalmers to run background operations because of her experience, and Jones came recommended by the captain. I suspected he was the son of someone important, especially because he was staring at me as if I was the one acting out of line.

"I send reports as often as I can. And the Marshall deal was two weeks ago. It's already done," I said bluntly. And I couldn't be sure the Donelli's weren't tracking my emails whenever I did send reports. My laptop was heavily encrypted, but no system was impenetrable.

Jones scoffed. "Yeah, but see, those reports don't mean shit when you don't actually give us information. It's all bullshit figures and arrival and departure times of trucks. What the fuck are we meant to do with that?" Jones replied, glaring at me.

I schooled my expression, giving away none of my irritation, though I did fling a look at Chalmers, who stared at me pointedly. I guess she was on the kids' side this time.

"We do need more detailed reports," she said. "They aren't satisfied with the success of the operation."

"I'm the one who's out there risking his neck." I clicked my tongue against my teeth, trying not to get angry at how fucking immature this was. "If the Captain wants more reports he can come down here and get them himself."

Jones shook his head, leaning back against the red plastic seat of the booth. "It's not good enough. We didn't train you this long for you to fuck about."

My nostrils flared and I forced myself to take a deep breath. The last time I felt like this was four days ago when I duct-taped Carlos to a chair.

I had a pistol on my hip. We might be in public and we might be federal agents but if Jones pushed me any harder I'd take the risk of dragging him around the back of the diner and shooting him in the fucking head.

He was younger than Caleb, yet he was talking to me like a superior. Like he was directly involved in everything I had done to get this far. All the pain, all the training, all the years to even be having this conversation with them. He really had no idea what it meant to me, or even what it meant to be an agent.

"And I didn't train for this long to fuck it up just because you want quick results," I growled.

It had taken months of putting everything in place to kill Wyatt, another seven months before I could get to Bruno. I had the patience to plan my attacks. Jones had no clue about the long game.

"We expected more from you than information on where certain goods are stored and family dynamics," Chalmers said. "Don't you have anything about the actual goods they are running? If we could do more than stop and search their trucks then we could make a dent, at least."

I grit my jaw, a slow breath through my nose to keep myself calm and enjoy the bite of pain left from Caleb's kisses that kept me from laying into both of them. It was the same every time.

No matter how much I stressed that the best approach was patience; their captain, and the major, and everyone above them wanted to report to the next that the operation was doing well. For them, it wasn't about addressing the actual damage and terror caused by the Donelli family. It was all about scoring points with the higher-ups.

I was the one that first proposed the operation. Even though it had only been a year since they killed Martha, the payoff had the higher-ups salivating enough to approve it, even considering my history with them. The Donelli's had been operating for three generations, with only minor arrests and charges. They were a high priority case and they were always searching for agents to go in, but they didn't have the balls to take responsibility for going against the Donelli's themselves. Which was why they were happy to ‘delegate' the task to me and my team, even ignoring Harley's recommendation for them to carry out a psychological evaluation. I promised the higher-ups long-term results, and now I had to deal with this shit.

I leaned forward, elbows on the table, scowling at them both. The longer the seconds stretched by, the darker Chalmer's expression grew, while Jones' grin widened. There were times I was tempted to push a knife into his stomach to make it clear this wasn't a fucking joke. We weren't playing games here, and a stab wound would be kind compared to what else Sam Donelli might do to us.

"You give us what we want. We give you what you want," Chalmers said, staring me down.

"This isn't a negotiation. You're here to do a job," I replied to both of them, and Jones' bright eyes glinted at the challenge. Except it wasn't about getting one up on each other. We were meant to be working together.

I cocked a brow, shaking my head. "I'm not budging here."

There was a pause between us before Jones swung his gaze to Chalmers. She gave him a quick nod, and he reached inside his jacket pocket, picking out a thin brown envelope the size of a postcard.

"Two pictures of Lacey," she said, as Jones waved it in front of me like a treat for a dog. "One last month during your mother's birthday party. Another from a week ago. Your father bought her a new dress."

The lighter froze in my hand as I eyed up the envelope, my breath stolen, vanished amongst the tension flaring up in my body. I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth to stop myself from leaping for the envelope. There were two things that truly meant anything to me apart from my revenge: my daughter, and Caleb.

And they were the only things that could make me snap.

"Wow, I cannot fucking believe this," I sneered. "Is this how low you'll go? You must want those trucking inventories real bad, eh?"

Chalmers sighed, completely serious as she replied. "You're paid to do a job, Eli. And you're not doing what we've asked you to."

I slammed my palm on the table and shot up. People in the surrounding booths took notice. There were too many people in the diner to do anything else to draw attention, but I was so fucking tempted.

Jones' grin faltered as I reared over them both. I leaned forward, snatching the envelope from his hand, enjoying how he flinched.

"We're done here," I said, my tone flat and cold. "If you ever try to use my daughter to get information out of me again I'll make sure you don't see another sunrise. Understood?" I glared at them both, tucking the envelope in my jacket as I stepped out of the booth.

I sighed, disappointed we even needed to have that conversation.

"Don't forget, I'm the reason you have this job," I said, adjusting my jacket as I turned my back on them and walked off.

We were meant to be civil to each other in public in case any Donelli's were watching, but they crossed a fucking line. They could collect their own intel this month, see how well they do without my help. Then maybe they'd pay me some respect and I'd lose the urge to slit Jones' throat.

I'd made sure to park around the side of the diner so I was hidden from the main road. I straddled my bike, lighting a cigarette, opening my jacket and swapping my lighter out for the envelope and taking a deep drag.

Even in the shade, the dry heat scraped against my throat and dust spiralled around the parking lot from trucks coming in and out. Their squeaky-clean Bureau-assigned BMW stuck out like a beacon among all the second-hand pick ups.

I craned my neck, gazing at the cloudless bright blue sky that seemed to grow bigger with every passing day. Hopefully, I'd be whisked away after I was done.

Though, I was kidding myself if I ever thought I was going any other direction but down.

I looked at the envelope, sighing before I took another drag of my cigarette.

Even if it was just a brown rectangle of paper, it was the potential it held. The pictures made everything worse. The happier Lacey was, the more determined I was to make life safe for her. Her smile pushed me towards Caleb, towards my final act; killing him and his father so no one could ever touch her.

I had been running this operation for so long that my baby girl was growing up without me.

My vision blurred as the memories hit me again.

Martha was dead, Bruno was crushing my back under his foot, and the front door opened. The second I heard Mom call our names, I shot into action, grabbing Bruno's ankle, trying to bring him down, kill him if I had to. I'd never killed a person back then; though I expected to one day. Wyatt went downstairs, and Bruno got so sick of my struggle he smashed his gun into my face, breaking my nose and jaw. I'd nearly passed out, but I heard them talking to Lacey, asking her her name and where she went to school. After that, Mom told me they had said if I tried to go after them, they'd kill my little girl. I asked her not to tell the police the truth, that it would be more dangerous and expose us. I reported the incident to the Bureau, and they put them into Witness Protection. She was only five.

I still didn't know if it was the best choice. From what Jones and Chalmers implied, she was safe, and that was what really mattered. As long as I wasn't in their lives, my parents wouldn't have to worry either.

A deep sadness clawed at my throat, the same sadness which tracked my every movement since the day I lost them. Because I had to cut myself off from Lacey as well. She didn't just lose her mother, she lost us both.

I didn't want to forget what I was doing here.

If I could find at least half an hour to myself before I returned to the Donelli compound and became Eli Jensen instead of Agent Knightly I might actually sleep tonight. The only time I was ever free was when Caleb buried himself inside me, and I couldn't call that freedom.

But freedom wasn't what I was looking for when I went to him.

I wanted to be caged, trapped by him, pushed so hard I didn't have to think or breathe, so all I was was his.

And that was more dangerous than my mission. Because each step I took towards him was another step away from my real goal: revenge.

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