Page 8 of Not Taken

“Yeah you fucking do,” I growled as I used his ass, dragging him onto me so fast that the thud of our hips slamming together vibrated through my body. He shouted so loudly my ears rang as he fell forward, his whole weight pressing me down until he was all mine.

I never gave anything of myself to anyone but I’d give Eli exactly what he deserved.

CHAPTER THREE

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.

---