“Mel—”
“And you might think that he isn’t ready. I mean, he did care about Olivia, but the quickest way to get over someone is to get under someone else. She—”
He was up and on his feet before I could blink. His lips crashed into mine as he tightly gripped my hair.
“Will you please stop motherfucking interrupting me so I tell you that I agree with your plan?” he said only inches from my lips. I knew that look in his eyes. They were glazed over and full of lust.
“We aren’t going to finish eating, are we?” I asked him as I dropped my sandwich onto the plate without breaking eye contact.
“Having someone to love makes me feel better, Melody. It isn’t just your body. When I’m inside you, when you’re moaning out my name, I’m happy because I’m as close to you as possible.”
Rriiiipppp
My poor shirt was torn off of me, and with no bra on, my nipples grew hard. His mouth was on my neck; his hands cupped my ass as he lifted me up, and moved us from the kitchen into the living room. I knew that it was going to be rough, just the way I liked it, but in that moment, I mentally wished that I’d had the time to stretch first.
LIAM
The moment I laid her on to the couch, her legs wrapped around me like a snake and she flipped us over onto the ground. Taking my hands, she placed them over my head.
“If you move then I’m going to have to hurt you, husband,” she whispered at me, and I grinned as I moved my hands onto her breasts. She stared at them for a moment before slapping me across the face.
“Fuck,” I hissed, as I felt the burn spread across my cheek, but she didn’t stop there. Leaning back, she grabbed hold of me, causing me to jump in her hands.
“Hands up,” she snapped. And this time I listened. Shimmying down to my pajama pants, she pulled the string until it came loose and she then used it to tie my hands together.
“Mel—”
“No talking,” she snapped at me once more.
She kissed me hard before moving to my neck. Then she rubbed herself on me as her feverish kisses became bites. I hissed in both pleasure and pain. She slowly worked her way downwards, trailing light kisses across my chest. I knew where she was going with this—she was hell bent on driving me insane with her tongue. I bucked forward when she took me in her hands again and kissed my navel.
“I wonder how long you can hold out.”
“Mel, don’t—”
But there was no stopping her as she licked from the base of my shaft to the tip over and over again. Biting my lip, I breathed in deeply through my nose.
“Fuck,” I hissed when she finally took me into her warm mouth. I crunched forward and watched her as she took all of me in. She was enjoying the way I shivered at her every touch, and at the way my teeth clenched together.
She sucked harder as her teeth lightly grazed my shaft, but I refused to give her the satisfaction. Stopping, she wiggled out of her shorts and underwear before she ground herself against me.
“God fucking damn, Mel, take these things off of me,” I snapped as I lift my wrists to touch her, but she smacked them away with a smile.
“Ahh…” I moaned as she slowly eased her way onto me.
Twisting the bounds at my wrists, I brought them down to my teeth and pulled with all my might until they finally broke. Once freed, I grabbed her waist and held her tightly as I flipped her over onto her back.
“Took you long enough—”
Her legs wrapped around my waist as I kissed her hard, but I held on to her thighs.
Pulling out of her slowly, her back arched upwards off the floor.
Slam.
“Fuck,” she moaned.
Taking one of her nipples into my mouth, I bit down while I used my other hand to pull on her other one.
Slam.
“Liam, please just fuck me,” she begged.
Again, I pulled out slowly and she bit back.
“Damn it—”
Slam.
She glared at me in frustration and all I could do was smile. Forcing herself to rock against me, I gave in to her needs. Gripping her thighs, I pounded into her hard and fast.
“Yes. Oh fuck, I—I…” Her breasts jiggled so much that she was forced to hold onto them.
“That’s right baby, come,” I whispered to her. “Come for me.”
“Liam!” she answered my call.
But if she thought I was done, she was kidding herself.
“Get on your knees.” I commanded.
Without question, she did as told, allowing me a perfect view of her ass. Rubbing myself against her she moaned.
SMACK.
“Fuck!” I screamed, as her ass jiggled and my hand imprinted itself unto her ass.
SMACK.
She was dripping for me and I licked it all up as she shivered.
SMACK.
One of her knees went weak.
SMACK.
“Ah!” She came for me, and I once more relished in the taste of her.
“You shouldn’t tempt me like this, wife. I enjoy watching you shiver and moan far too much,” I whispered.
SMACK.
Her ass was so red, my cock throbbed from the sight of it. I needed her now. Grabbing hold of her I slammed right into her.
“Jesus, fuck…!”
“Not Jesus, just me.” I grinned as I grabbed a fistful of her hair and fucked her.
“So close,” I hissed as the sweat from my forehead dripped onto her back. “Mel!”
I came so hard that my body shook. Without any strength left, I fell beside her.
“Fuck.” I inhaled deeply as I tried to catch my breath.
“Fuck,” she replied as she curled up beside me.
Wrapping my arms around her, I pulled her even closer to me, and we both rested in the dark without saying another word. The only sound that could be heard was the sound of our labored breathing until…
BEEP.
BEEP.
“What’s that?” I asked as she sat up quickly.
BEEP.
At the third one, she jumped up and ran back into the office. With a groan, I followed her to the computer screens. Everything looked the same, there were files upon files of useless information.
“Holy shit,” she whispered, clicking away.
“What is it?” I asked, unable to look at her face because I was beyond captivated with the rest of her.
“I knew it,” she muttered with her hand on her lip.
That got my attention, and as I moved closer, I saw pictures, taxes, files, companies…and all of them were about us.
“What is this?”
“I set up a sniffer in Avian’s computers. I’ve been sifting through data trying to find anything and everything he has on us. This is it, a timeline of everything we’ve ever done, and evidence he’s buried for the Valero, along with us. It’s all here.”
“Can you delete it? Are there copies somewhere else?” If we had this now, we could kill the son of a bitch.
She didn’t speak, and all of a sudden a timer popped up for the next twenty-four hours.
“Mel, what’s going on? Why did we just find this now?” I had to snap my fingers in front of her face to grab her attention.
“This is the only copy.”
“Good, so delete it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have the ability to hack it, I need to delete it directly from one of his computers. I just need to know which one it is. It will take me days to delete this.”
“Okay, so then we wait—”
Again she shook her head and pointed to the ticking clock. “He plans on releasing all of this information in the next twenty-four hours.”
“That’s suicide!”
As we stared at each other not knowing what to say, there was a ring at our gate, and as Mel switched over to the security feed, I saw him standing outside with a cigar in one hand, and a cane in the other. He had on his very best suit.
“Avian,” I
said over the intercom.
“Good, you’re awake,” he said looking up into the camera. “Open up the door so we can all die together.”
It was then that it hit me. Here we were pretending to be terrorists, knowing full well that we would never blow ourselves up to get to Avian. However, he’d gone and done the exact opposite of that. He knew couldn’t beat us, so he was taking us all down with him. He was going to expose us all.
He was the suicide bomber.
THIRTY-TWO
“If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it will hunt you down and kill you.”
—Flannery O'Connor
LIAM
“So let me get this straight, he just walked in here and said he wanted to die?” Neal asked as Mel and I stared at a strapped down Avian from behind a one-way mirror.
The room he was in was smaller than the rooms we had back home. However, our Washington home hadn’t been designed with the same functions. It was a plain gray room with no outlets for natural lighting. There was just a single door and the glass panel that allowed us to look in. This make-shift jail was the only security we had invested in in this home. But it would get the job done.
He wasn’t struggling. He sat as comfortably as someone who was strapped, almost naked, to a chair could sit. All he had on was his underwear, and a tight bandage around his kneecap. The blood was already starting to bleed though it. Obviously, he hadn’t bothered with a doctor…however he didn’t look to be in pain. Which was odd seeing as how both Declan and Neal had beaten the living shit out of him before they dragged his ass in here. His lip was busted, his eye was bruised, and he had a few cuts all over his arms, neck and face.
“Does anyone else think this is insane?” Neal went on. “This cannot be this guy’s last move. He wouldn’t just destroy everything he’s spent a lifetime building.”
“I agree. This is fucked up, even for him. But I’m going through all of this and it’s all-real. It’s our real bank accounts, even the offshore ones, our trade partners, factory sights; he wanted us to see he knew it all. And we have twenty-two hours left before this goes to every lead broadcasting outlet in the world,” Declan snapped typing away on his computer screen. “He even has the names and emails of all the journalists he wants these files to go to lined up and ready to go.”
Proving that he even wanted to control his own downfall.
I glanced to Mel and found her staring intensely at Avian. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was thinking what I was thinking. How fast could we outrun this? Could we even out run this? We would have to run not only from our lives but we’d also have to change our faces. We would be on the top of the list for the FBI, CIA, and every other damn abbreviation in the book. We would be the most wanted people in the world. How could we run with Ethan? His face would be all over the media just like ours. They’d freeze all of our assets and tear down our operations both legal and illegal. The more I thought about running, the less and less likely it seemed to be an option. Which left us with two choices: stay and win, or stay and die—because they weren’t going to be able to take us alive.
“You should talk to him,” I said to her. Because if I did I might’ve actually skipped the talking part and immediately start beating his face.
She turned to Neal. “Bring Monte here as fast as you can, he’s at the rehab center.”
He nodded and hurried out of the room.
“I’ll be right back,” Mel said to the both of us as she walked out.
What the fuck? We didn’t have time for this!
“Am I the only one aware of the doomsday clock that’s ticking away right now?!” Declan asked as he slammed his hands on the table. “We aren’t going to be able to hack this. Should I get Fedel and have the family meet us? We have to go now and get a head start on all this.”
“We aren’t running,” I said to him as Mel returned with a bottle of whiskey, a first aid kit, and small duffle bag.
She said nothing to either of us before she headed inside the room and closed the door with her foot.
“Liam—”
“Declan, I will not fucking tell you again. We are not running. Shut up. Sit down, and wait. He wants to throw us off again, and you’re letting him fuck with your head. Now focus!” I yelled at him, when in all honesty, I was speaking to myself.
Focusing on her, I watched as she undid his bandage, and exposed his knee’s flesh, bone, blood, and skin. She took the whiskey and poured it on his wound, his leg twitched, but he didn’t scream or even flinch for that matter. Noticing that, she shot me a quick look before she took the new bandage and wrapped it around his knee. If he didn’t respond to this, then torturing the information out of him wasn’t going to be possible. In fact, he would want us to waste even more of our time on him while the clock continued to tick.
When she was done, she grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen from her kit, tilted his head back and pinched under his jaw to force his mouth open. Dropping the pills in, she flushed it down with the whiskey.
“At least he’s human,” I muttered to myself as he coughed and sputtered.
We all had the ability to control pain, but some things were just human nature, like coughing up a liquid that had been forced down our throats.
Slowly, she packed up everything.
“You’re wasting time,” he spoke for the first time since getting here.
“I have all the time in the world,” she replied.
“You’re lying,” he snickered. “I can see the fear in your eyes. You’re thinking about how far you could make it if you run.”
“You surprised me, Avian, I have to give you that. I never thought you would give up so easily.”
He laughed. He laughed like a madman, and I wondered if this was where Aviela had gotten her insanity from.
“I haven’t given up, Melody. I’ve won.” He grinned, “Your husband made me see that with his little massacre yesterday. My name is already tarnished is the public’s eye. And for some reason it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. Thank you all for that wonderful revelation, it feels as though a burden has been lifted off my shoulders. You took away the only thing that I thought mattered to me. The only thing left that can satisfy me now is knowing that I destroyed you.
“Your world is over. I did that, and never again will any person rise to the same status as this family. You will spend the rest of your lives running like dogs until someone puts you down. You thought you were ruthless. You thought you were untouchable. You were wrong. There is only one. There is only me. So tell me, how does it feel to know that you’ve been under my foot this entire time?”
“Don’t bleed out when this is over. I’m sure Liam would like to properly repay you for his father,” she replied as she stepped out.
“Tick-tock!” he yelled before his manic laughter broke out once more. Mel made no reply as she shut the door behind her.
“If I ever lose my mind, you have permission to put me down,” she said to me as she dropped the bag onto the table.
“Noted,” I replied as she handed two watches to Declan and I, before she placed one around her own wrist.
“We’re going to break into Avian’s office, and I’m going to hack into his computer,” she said.
“How do you know that’s the right computer this program is from?” Declan asked her.
She shook her head. “I don’t. You and Monte will be hacking all of these reporters. Just like when you were trying to hide my mother from me. Even when the timer goes off, I want to make sure that they aren’t able to access any of this information.”
“Why don’t you attach a virus to it? That way if they open any of the files, it will destroy their hard drive,” I suggested and they both froze.
“And this is why you're the fucking boss!” Declan clapped.
Mel moved beside him and looked over his screen.
“We don’t have time to build one from scratch, do you already have one in your system?” she asked.
“As
a matter of fact, I do—” He grinned. However, as he clicked on a folder, his whole system shut down.
“What the fuck just happened?!” I yelled at him, I could feel my heart in my throat, as Mel pushed him out of the way and reset everything only to have the clock pop back up. It spun out of control, until finally, it stopped.
“Damn-it!” Mel screamed as she grabbed the first aid kit and flung it at the one-way mirror.
I couldn’t even speak. What was once twenty-two hours, was now down to eleven. Eleven motherfucking hours.
“Did you try to attach something to my program? Tsk-tsk. Didn’t I tell you that that would cut your time in half? That was a little surprise your mother added for me when she set up the program. At least she was good for something.” Avian laughed.
I couldn't stop myself from grabbing my brass knuckles. I stormed into the room, all but kicking down the door. As I grabbed onto his collar, I smashed into his face.
“You stupid son of a bitch!”
I punched him and his cheekbone cracked under the force of my blow.
“If you think I’m going to go down like this, you’re mistaken!”
I punched into his nose, enjoying the way it felt as it broke in two places.
“Liam,” Mel called behind me.
Gripping onto his throat while my other fist hung in the air, I said, “You better pray, old man.”
He smiled and the blood in his mouth poured out like a waterfall along with a few of his teeth. “I don’t fear death. I don’t fear exposure. You have no control here. Tick-tock.”
“Liam,” Mel called again.
Letting go of him, I kicked into his chest with so much force that he and the chair fell backward.
Stepping out again I pulled the brass from my knuckles.
“What the bloody fuck happened?” Neal yelled as he entered the room and his eyes zeroed in on the clock.
He wheeled in Monte who was dressed in a pair of shorts and T-shirt. His left leg was gone and he had a cast on his right one. Thank God he still had his hands.