A_Dom_Is_Forever

by Lexi Blake

  “And you will have lost your chance,” Alex said, speaking for the first time since the revelation. “Li, do you trust us? I’ll do what it takes to find the truth, but you’re going to have to choose between revenge and her. I doubt if you walk away that she will ever let you back in.”

  But Liam knew something about Avery that the rest of the team didn’t. He knew how forgiving she was. She would eventually forgive him, and he could have both. He could find the truth. He’d waited years to discover the truth. He dreamed of it every night—except for those few days with Avery when all he’d dreamed about was her.

  She would forgive him, but he would prove that he’d learned absolutely nothing. The past was done. He couldn’t bring his brother back, and he couldn’t fool himself any longer into believing that his brother had been a good man. Nelson would have needed one of them.

  And Rory had been the one to buy the pints. He’d been the one to convince Liam to just have one before they turned in.

  Fuck. His brother had very likely slipped him a roofie. He’d been drugged by his own brother and then saved by Nelson. Nelson had known the house was going to blow, but Rory had been the expert in explosives.

  None of it made sense unless they were working together, but then why the hell had Nelson saved Liam? The answers were here.

  And he was going to walk away from them because he loved a girl. Because she mattered more than anything, and he wasn’t going to trust her safety to anyone else. He could get her out tomorrow. He could make sure she was safe. That was his real mission in life. “Tell Eve to get at least two different passports and then send us somewhere warm.”

  “Will do,” Ian replied. “Go pick up Avery and batten down the hatches for tonight. The rest of you get your asses to the club. We have to figure out what this fucker wants.”

  Liam took a long breath. He was walking away from everything he’d held close for years. For years, all that had mattered was figuring out what had happened to him, but now he had a future. He was going to grab it with both hands and never let it go. Avery would forgive him. She had to because he was going to prove he could be worthy of her.

  He pulled the radio off and packed up his gear and left the key card on the bed. He needed to get to her as fast as possible. He’d rather take her away tonight, but Ian was right. There were issues to be settled, and they didn’t want to tip Nelson off. Or Molina.

  Liam opened the door and out of his peripheral vision caught a flash of metal. He leapt back, shoving his bag up and catching the gun just as it went off with a quiet little ping. Silencer.

  Fuck. He’d been followed, and he hadn’t even known it. He was losing his edge.

  Adrenaline flooded his body. His opponent was caught off guard, and Liam reached out, grabbing the arm that held the gun before the man could aim again. He pulled his attacker inside. The last thing he needed was to get Scotland Yard involved. He brought his knee up, catching the man in the gut while he twisted the hand with the gun. It fell neatly to the floor while his opponent tried to fight back.

  Liam let his instincts take over, forgetting everything but the fight. He brought his fist up in a neat uppercut that caught his opponent right on the jaw. A nice crack split the air as the bone broke and blood started to flow. The man fell to the floor but not before Liam managed to get his gun in hand. It was time for a little torture. Fuck. He hoped the guy could still talk. Liam looked down at him. Maybe he could just write down all the pertinent information. Liam hadn’t broken his hands. Yet.

  It was turning out to be a terrible day, but a little interrogation was just what the doctor called for. His inner sadist nearly stood up and cheered.

  Until the second bastard invaded.

  “Mr. Molina says hello, Mr. Donnelly. He wants you to stay away from his lady friend. Permanently.” The second guy was dressed in an immaculate suit and had come equipped for a gunfight.

  Liam put a foot on the unconscious, hopefully-wasn’t-dead-yet man, though he might have used a little too much force because the bloke wasn’t moving. Liam had to admit he might have sent pieces of bone straight up into the git’s brain. He could be a little forceful at times, but he wasn’t going to tell his current attacker that his partner might be dead already. “How about you put the gun down, and I don’t kill your friend here.”

  The new guy fired once, and Liam was no longer worried that he’d killed the first attacker. The bloke on the floor now had a bullet in his brain. His new opponent simply smiled. “I never liked him much anyway.”

  Liam got off a shot before he rolled away behind the big four-poster bed. It wouldn’t provide much cover, but it was all he had. This bloke wasn’t playing, and he was far better trained than the idiot he’d sent in as his first line of fire.

  “You aren’t what you say you are, Mr. Donnelly. I thought I was shooting a guy who was unlucky enough to be fucking the woman my boss wants, but you’re here for something else, aren’t you? Who sent you? You’re not a bloody construction worker.”

  And now this guy had to die, too. He couldn’t just get away. Liam huddled behind the bed, catching sight of the man moving in the mirror over the dresser on the opposite wall. He stepped over his dead compatriot and had the deeply bland look of a man who had killed hundreds of times.

  Liam flattened his body to the carpet and took the only shot he had, splitting the guy’s ankle and sending him to the floor, where he promptly proved what a pro he was. There was the briefest glimpse of his body falling and then a shot that went straight under the bed and across Liam’s left bicep. Pain flared, fire running over his skin.

  And there was not a second to consider the pain. He got to his knees as a second shot grazed his hip. He rolled to the side and let everything but the fight fall away. There was nothing past this moment and this man. He would live or die and everything crystalized. Time seemed to slow down, his vision getting sharper as though he could laser focus.

  Breathe in. Move to the side.

  Breathe out. See the target, a little spot right between his opponent’s eyes. Lift the gun.

  Breathe in. Fire.

  The man’s head jerked back, blood splattering behind him, but on his forehead there was only a neat little hole.

  Ian was going to kill him. Liam slumped down, his back to the wall. His left arm ached, but it looked like it had only grazed him. He sighed. He’d fared far better than his opponents. MI6 was going to ream him a new bloody asshole for those corpses.

  But Molina didn’t know who he was or at least he wasn’t telling his people. The would-be killer had called him Lee Donnelly, and he’d done it with the arrogance of a man who thought he was holding all the cards. Either Molina was hiding it from them or Nelson hadn’t let Molina in on the fact that they were here.

  Very interesting.

  Liam forced himself to move, getting to his feet so he could rifle through the dead guy’s wallet. Malcolm Glass. Citizen of England. He had a couple of tenners and a bunch of credit cards in several names. Nothing that really told him a damn thing.

  Liam picked through his bag. He found his phone and dialed the one person he didn’t want to talk to.

  “Yeah, you on your way to pick up your package?” It was a cell line. Ian would talk in vague language.

  And so would Liam. “Ran into a bit of a problem, boss.”

  There was a low growl. “The kind we can still ask questions of?”

  “Nope. I would say all the questioning is over.”

  “Fuck. I’m sending someone to you. How bad is it?”

  “Just a little. But we might need to call our friends and get the name of a good cleaner.” Because someone was going to have to deal with the bodies.

  The cursing began, and Liam let himself slide to the floor again. Ian would handle it from here. A sense of peace came over him. Sure it was fighting with the adrenaline that came from being shot at, but it was there all the same. He wasn’t alone. He’d fooled himself. He hadn’t been alone for a long time. The mom
ent he’d woken up, filthy dock water in his lungs and a blank space in his memory, had been the moment he’d been reborn. For the first time, he understood a little tiny bit of the spark that kept Avery going despite everything she’d been through.

  A man wasn’t his past. A man was his future, and it was something he had to fight for. And family wasn’t necessarily blood. The bonds of friendship could form tight family ties.

  Adam pushed through the door. He must have been closer than anyone else, and it was obvious he’d run his ass off. “Holy hell. Jeez, what did you do to these guys? And that’s my shirt. Motherfucker. You got blood on my shirt.”

  Brothers. They could be hell on a man, but he was damn glad to have them.

  * * * *

  “Why didn’t you tell me my brother is alive and well and fucking my secretary?” Molina only waited long enough for the waitress to walk away before he started in on Nelson.

  “I didn’t realize it myself until about a year ago. I found myself working with his team on the operation that led to my early retirement from the Agency.” Nelson leaned over, his face very serious in the gloom of the pub. Unlike the last place Nelson had insisted on, this pub was dark and on a quiet street. The restaurant before had been in the open. “Are you telling me Liam O’Donnell is here in London?”

  “Are you telling me you didn’t know, ya bloody bastard?”

  “Careful, Thomas.” Nelson placed emphasis on Thomas. “People might wonder why an American millionaire talks like he should be standing on the docks of Dublin with a pint in his hand.”

  Molina tried to rein in his emotions. They seemed to be running rampant ever since the moment he’d realized dear Liam was still alive. “How did he get out of that house? I set it to blow the morning after I left. Early. He should have still been metabolizing the drugs I gave him.”

  Nelson shrugged, a negligent gesture. “He must have had a stronger constitution than you guessed. You never told me why you didn’t just kill him like you did the rest of them. Why did you feel the need to kill those kids?”

  “I liked it. It was fun.” And he’d needed a place to blow up. “I had to be able to disappear, and it had to look good. And I couldn’t be completely certain the explosives would go off. Anything can happen. Those dead kids were my backup plan to deal with Liam in case it all went wrong.”

  “Why not just stab your brother, too? He couldn’t come looking for you if he was dead.”

  It had been a moment of weakness. His brother had fallen into the girl’s bed. He’d been so drugged out of his mind that he hadn’t noticed when Rory raped the girl and strangled her. That had been a bit of fun. He’d fucked her and killed her, and big brother just slept right on beside them. But when Rory had gone to shove a knife through his gut, his eyes had opened. A stupid smile had come over his face.

  We’re doing good now, Rory. We’re doing good, you and me.

  And Rory had stood up and walked out telling himself it was enough to make it out with the bonds. Liam wouldn’t live. He wouldn’t even wake up. He would never know.

  “That was obviously a mistake, but one that’s being taken care of as we speak.”

  Nelson’s eyes tightened, his whole body losing its previous casual air. “You’re taking out your brother?”

  “I sent my two best men to do it.” Any minute now Malcolm would text him with the word that his brother was dead and they were safe. “Do you think he was working with MI6?”

  “I know he was working with a man named Ian Taggart who still works for the Agency from time to time. They’re hunting me, not you, and if you only sent two men to take him down then my guess is your men are dead and Liam now knows you’re on to him. You should have talked to me before you pulled a stunt like this.”

  Rory felt his spine straighten. He didn’t like the way Nelson was talking to him. “Since when are you my boss?”

  Nelson leaned forward, his voice a low rumble. “Since the day I pulled you out of the SAS and gave you the kind of life you had always longed for. If it weren’t for me, you would have ended up getting kicked out of the Army. How long would it have been before your brother found out about your criminal connections? How long before he discovered all the secrets you sold? Do you think he would have helped you out the way I did? No. He would have handed you straight over to the government, and you would be rotting in prison.”

  The waitress came back smiling a gap-toothed smile. She put two pints in front of them, but Rory wouldn’t touch his. He would fiddle with it, but he never drank anymore. He wouldn’t allow himself to be out of control for even a minute. But when he was finally able to shed the Thomas Molina guise, he would be himself once more. He would drink and fuck and kill whenever he wanted.

  And Avery could watch it all. It would be the perfect punishment for fucking his brother when she’d avoided touching him. She’d treated him like a bloody infant, but she spread her legs as fast as she could once Liam had walked in the door.

  The waitress walked away, and Nelson sat back. “I think I should take over setting up the Middle Eastern end of the business. You’ve done quite well in Africa, but my contacts are better in Asia than yours.”

  So that was his game. A savage anger started to take hold. Everyone seemed to be trying to get their greedy hands on his property. It was starting to grate on his last nerve, but then he’d been doing a slow burn since he’d come back to England. “No. This is my business. I’ve been giving you a cut since day one, but that’s all you’ll ever get.”

  He didn’t owe Nelson more than that. Hell, he didn’t really owe Nelson a bloody thing. Now that he thought about it, he was the one who’d gotten the bonds. He was the one who had set the charges. He was the one who had set everything up so no one had looked for him.

  Nelson was the one who hadn’t even noticed that Liam had survived, and apparently Nelson was the one who had brought dear brother down on his head.

  Maybe it was time to get rid of his mentor.

  Nelson frowned but his eyes remained cold. “So you don’t need my contacts? You’re going to be able to move into the Pakistani and Afghan markets without me?”

  He would once the Lachlan Bates deal went through. The terrorist cell in Sudan was his way to move into Islamist extremist groups. If he could make sure they were stocked, they would come to him. There were millions to be made and power to be had. And he didn’t intend to share a bit of it with Nelson, but he couldn’t let the man know that. It would be like announcing he was planning on assassinating him.

  “I’m sorry. Of course I need your contacts.” Molina hoped he looked sincere. He wasn’t. He was thinking about how fast he could put the bastard in the ground. Nelson had been helpful, but his time was done.

  Nelson seemed to relax a bit. “I know I can help you. Like I said, you’ve done a great job with the African markets, but you’ll see how much money we can make once you let me in. Have you handled your MI6 problem?”

  He wasn’t worried about MI6. He was worried about his brother. “They haven’t figured out the codes yet.” He’d developed them himself, so not even Nelson could get access to his accounts and clients without the cipher, which was in his safe at home. “They won’t. They don’t even understand that there is a code yet. They’ve got some weird weigh ins at various ports of call. I just need to find the right people to bribe.”

  He’d had a couple of breakdowns, but he was getting it cleared up.

  “So Weston isn’t a problem?”

  Molina rolled his eyes. He wasn’t worried about that idiot at all. “Weston is an aristocrat playing at being a spy. He’s been utterly ineffective, and once I leave London, he won’t have a chance to even stumble across something. After the ball is over and the coffers are full, I’ll move everything to Dubai. I have a very private compound. Only the most trusted will gain access. I’ll run the business from there.”

  “And Miss Charles will be with you?”

  He wasn’t so sure about Avery anymore. He wasn’t
sure he wanted his brother’s leavings. It was just a shame that his brother wouldn’t know he’d gotten the bitch killed. His brother had always been so moral. His brother had believed in sin and honor when nothing of their childhood should have taught him values. Liam had been stupid. “I think not. I think it’s time I found another assistant. This one feels a bit used, if you know what I mean.”

  She’d been so innocent, but she’d shown her true face. She was a whore like the rest of them, and he’d still have her. He would fuck her and then he’d get his hands around her throat. Then she’d know who her god was. He’d make her pay.

  What was taking so long? Malcolm should have texted him by now. He looked down at his phone.

  “Something wrong?” Nelson asked.

  “I thought Malcolm would message me by now. He should have taken out Liam. He followed him.”

  Nelson shook his head. “Malcolm is dead. Liam and his crew killed him. I assure you, there’s no way you took O’Donnell out with two men. He’s been trained by Ian Taggart. Whatever you think of your brother, know that he’s a well-trained killer now. He’ll be tougher than you imagine. Taggart is not someone you should underestimate.”

  He dialed Malcolm’s number. Nothing. It went straight to voice mail. Fuck. Malcolm had never not answered. What the hell had happened? Was Liam still out there? Did Liam even know he was alive?

  “You need help, Rory. I can deal with this for you.” Nelson used the same smooth tones that he’d used all those years ago when Rory had made his deal with the CIA’s version of Mephistopheles.

  “How?” He didn’t want to owe Nelson anything, but maybe he should use him one last time.

  Nelson leaned in. “I’ll tell you.”

  Nelson started to talk. Yes. This was even better. This way his brother could watch as Rory raped his woman.

  And Rory could be the one to kill him. As it should be.

  After all, they were brothers.

  Chapter Eighteen