Page 72 of Scar

CHAPTER17

ELEVEN YEARS AGO

In some ways, the surgeries were worse than the torture. Decisions were made without his consent, all under the guise of being ‘life saving’ procedures. Had any of them asked if Julianwantedto live?

Commander Arik was by his side every step of the way. The torment in the older man’s eyes grew worse with each passing day. He was never able to fully meet Julian’s eyes, yet he was constantly taking Julian’s hand and speaking what he believed were Julian’s wishes.

Commander Arik even tried to help him figure out what was next, after he got his discharge papers.

Like Julian had the option of a future.

Like parts of him weren’t still back in that fucking cave.

The only time his Commander left his bedside was when he was either going in for another surgery or he had a visitor—and Julian only ever had two.

José came to see him. Time had lost its relevance for Julian. He had no idea how long he’d been in the hospital for before José arrived. The emotions Julian felt at seeing his last surviving brother were indescribable. José stayed with him for as long as he could before Uncle Sam called him back to duty. It fucking sucked watching his brother walk out that door, knowing he was heading off to danger and Julian was stuck in that fucking hospital bed.

The sedations were the worst. Being forced to sleep and wake up at their discretion and whim. Knowing that anything could happen to him while he was unconscious and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

Through it all, he never spoke, never said a goddamn word. They sent in therapists and psychologists while the military questioned him over and over again about what had happened. They wanted to know what hadfucking happened? They wanted him tospeakand tell them that seven of their soldiers died for someone’s selfish reason to sell out their country? They wanted him toreliveevery fucking moment inside those caves so they could fill out their fucking forms and feel better that at leasttheyhad done everything within the bare minimum of their power to have saved his life.

Since Julian’s team fell under national security, there was no media coverage and the military was able to redact everything and hide it away in a file room to collect dust. Like it never happened. Like seven of the best fucking men Julian had ever known weren’t dead.

Per Commander Arik, their families were informed that they’d died in the initial ambush.

When the surgeries finally stopped and the United States Army decided Julian would be better off at a hospital stateside, his second visitor arrived at his hospital room.

“Good evening, Solo. My name is Alpha and I have a business opportunity I think you’ll find quite beneficial…”

* * *

They died.All of them. All the terrorists that had survived the raid that had rescued Julian from those fucking caves, they all died. Slow. Bloody. Screaming.

Alpha had offered to simply destroy the mountain, but Julian wantedhisface to be the last one any of the depraved men saw before they left this existence. Then he let Alpha obliterate the mountain off of the surface of the Earth.

For a long time, so long that Julian purposefully stopped keeping track, he was nothing more than a mindless weapon. Alpha pointed him in a direction and fired. Julian ended a lot of lives, never asking a goddamn question.

It wasn’t until Julian overheard a conversation between Alpha’s second-in-command, Beta, and another man Julian had never met before that it all came crashing down. For the first time in years, Julian felt something. A burning inside him that overtook everything.

If what he heard was true…

The puppet strings snapped and Julian attacked without directive. He snapped Beta’s neck but was blindsided by the dagger that came down at him. Julian moved too slow. The blade sliced him from temple to jaw, carving a ragged arc down his left cheek.

Julian didn’t even flinch. He broke the hand of the man who wielded the weapon before gutting him with his own blade.

Julian walked out of Primis, never to look back. He had an old superior to see.

* * *

Commander Wallace Arikawoke with a start when Julian flipped on the man’s bedroom light. A woman who was not the man’s wife screamed at the sight of the bloody-faced man standing before them. The dagger still gripped in his hand silenced her a moment later, flung with accurate precision from across the room.

Commander Arik’s pale face went even whiter. His uneven breath made his words shake. “I wondered when I would see you. I always knew you’d come for answers, eventually.”

Julian stood in the man’s doorway, waiting like a volcano before eruption.

“I was ordered not to say anything, Solo. And you have to believe me, I fought long and hard with them about it. I swear, I was against it from the beginning too. I always thought you deserved to know the truth, but they threatened to court-martial me and I had to think of my own career, my family.”

Julian stared unblinkingly at his Commander, not pointing out the obvious question of whether the man was still thinking about hisfamilywhen he was fucking a woman thirty years his junior who wasn’t his wife.

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