Chapter 7

FLAMES

“MOTHERFUCKER, you used up all the fucking water!”

“Language man, there are kids here”

Fucker didn’t have kids and if he did well that was as catastrophic as leaving an atomic bomb in the hands of Napoleon.

“Fuck, the kids. The river is a mile away from here”

And the walk to the said river was another fucking problem given the blizzard.

“Hey say hi to Uncle Flames”, Jason spoke and the next thing I heard were puny voices coming from the other end of the line.

Hi, Uncle Flames. They said in unison and I scrubbed a hand over my face.

I hated kids. Tiny evil creatures that were a handful than most of the bullshit people I had met in my life and trust me when you did the work I did, you were bound to cross paths with limp dicks every once in a while.

“Cannon’s got kids, two in fact”

“Jesus Christ”, I exhaled as I trod through the ankle high snow in frustration.

“I know he’s a lucky bastard”

Lucky bastard? I would call it stupid and reckless. With what we did having kids was having weaknesses and God knew enemies preyed on that.

Having too many people around you might as well have been carrying a lot of losses with you and that shit ate you for life.

After Elise I preferred being solo. No people. No losses. No grief and certainly no fucking kids.

I would have rather came on a woman’s tits or her face than came in her pussy, then again, no pussy had been enough to tempt me to come in it. Not without a condom at least. And even that was rare.

I fucked to get the days to go by. I fucked to erase the shit I had seen during the day. Fucking for pleasure was way past me.

“Send my fucking condolences”

I grunted and the fucker laughed.

“You are no fun; you know that right? How’s the girlfriend doing?”

My teeth ground together I could feel my gums start to swell,

“She’s not my fucking girlfriend”

‘Sure, and I’m Santa Claus”

“How’s the Knox case coming along. Any updates?”

Like the fucker was dead, for example. I would take pleasure in knowing he was dead but I would also take pleasure in knowing that I would be the one to gut the sorry motherfucker for what he did to Mia.

“Berkely didn’t give you any deets?”

“I wouldn’t be fucking call you if he did, Jason”

I wouldn’t be calling him in the first place but he didn’t get his nickname for nothing.

He was the loud mouth in B&A, if you wanted to know anything about anyone, Jason fucking Bates was your man.

I would have called Holy but the dude was a geek who’d ramble about the statistics of catching Bryant Knox being next to zero. Plus, he was a major suck up to Berkely. He’d never tell me anything if Berkely told him not to.

Then there was Pindrop. Not much of a talker so that ruled him out.

Blaze on the other hand was somehow Berkely’s right man. You’d have to wring his balls to get him to talk.

And so on and so forth. The only reliable guy in there was the fucker rambling about luck and kids on the other end of the line.

“It’s been quiet. With Cannon back and his shit back, Knox’s gonna have to wait”

Fucking hell.

“I could kill the bastard in a week tops. What’s the fucking hold up?”

“You’ve got his wife, that’s the fucking hold up. We need to strategize before starting a war we may lose”

I couldn’t unhear it.

I might have thought about it. Thought they were fucking or she was his lover but…wife?

Ooh Mia fucking Tonelli had done it now.

I hung up putting the bloody phone in my boot.

The flurry pissed me off adding in the little info I had just learnt and the blood boiling in my veins was enough to warm me up.

Whatever could have possessed her to marry a douche bag? A bigger dick? Charm? Ooh I doubted that sick mother fucker had any charm to him.

He killed women like pigs and if the rumors were true, he treated women like his bloody hounds. Enslaving them, beating them up.

But she was his wife. His esposa, damn it.

Did she like it rough was that the reason-

No, she was not my god damn problem.

I protect her long enough for Berkely to kill Knox and that was it. Whether she wanted to hook up with Trump himself or whatever cow dick she met, that was not my fucking problem.

The coat I had worn did a terrible job at keeping the cold out. My lips were numb and my toes, fuck.

Fuck this shit. Fuck Mia. And fuck Alaska.

The trees up ahead that decreased in number were enough to tell me the river was up ahead. Though the chances of it being frozen up were high and I knew it.

Wading through the snow with no patience whatsoever, my gut told me shit wasn’t right.

I turned around.

I couldn’t see anything except the trees being swayed around by the dastardly wind.

I squinted my eyes to the front.

More fucking snow.

But then I caught it.

White, predatory with golden fucking eyes. I would have missed it because it blended so well with the snow.

I whipped my head to the side. If there was one, then there was fucking more. Six at best.

It growled and I stood still wishing I still had my Glock at the back of my jeans and not in my boot.

Fucking great.

I was going to do this…the hard way.

Probably use the maneuver we used on a Humvee back in Iraq. Take out one soldier and the rest would flee.

I hoped.

But these were fucking arctic wolves. Three so far and there were bound to be more.

Breathing hard, ready to pounce like an irritated tiger, one minute the fucking wolf was eyeing me and the next it was running.

Running towards me.

My feet dug into the ground and I stood rooted on the ground to rip the damn thing with my bare hands.

And I would have. I was ready but leave it to whichever moron behind me to start firing bullets like darts.

Two shots at first and they all missed the first wolf. Another three shots rung in my ear with an uproar and the wolves howled like hurt puppies running the opposite direction where they came from.

Wheezing, not completely sure what had happened I turned around uttering a loud ‘fuck me’ at the five-foot missus holding my fucking gun in my direction.

“Are you okay?” Mia asked, her hands trembling, her eyes watery and her lip quivering like she’d actually killed someone.

“You missed’, I growled.

The sharp sting gracing my neck stole my attention and I turned to eye my shoulder.

Shit.

“Andro? Oh God, you are—you are bleeding”

“No shit”

She’d shot me. She’d fucking shot me.

On the fucking neck.

I heard her cry; I heard her shout but I was too far gone to actually hear what she’d said.

I fucking blacked out.