by Maia Dylan
Marshall opened the door of the truck and, despite his own injuries, wouldn’t move until Aaron climbed up into the cab, but when he went to shut the door, Aaron placed his hand on the frame to stop it.
“Will getting this vengeance change that past, or make up for whatever you think it is you have to live with?” Aaron asked.
Marshall stared at him for a while, this time his expression was curiously blank. He exhaled slowly then pushed the door once more, and this time Aaron allowed it to close, but not before he heard Marshall mutter, “No.”
Chapter Three
“How much longer till we get to wherever the hell it is we’re going?”
Marshall looked over at Aaron who had been so still and quiet up to that point, he had assumed he’d fallen asleep. On the way out of the city, they paid a visit to a friend of his. Marshall knew Aaron had questions about why someone wouldn’t ask any questions or bat an eye when he was presented with a couple of gunshot wounds, but he held his tongue. Now they were both stitched up, had been given some morphine and a broad-spectrum antibiotic and were on their way out of the city.
“About another half hour.” Now that he knew Aaron was awake, he had a question he had been dying to ask. “What was the fake grenade that you threw?”
“A paper bag,” from the embarrassed tone he caught in Aaron’s voice he knew there was more to it than that.
“And what was in it? It didn’t land with too much noise, and from its lack of trajectory and distance, it wasn’t heavy.” Aaron remained silent and Marshall’s curiosity was piqued even further. “It looked like a fairly nondescript brown paper bag.”
Aaron’s gaze jerked to him. “It was just a bag, leave it alone”
Marshall quirked a brow in his direction. “I know we’ve been apart for a few years, Aaron, but you have to remember what I am like when I want to know something.”
Aaron swallowed so hard. “You’re like a damn dog with a bone. Harping on and on until you drive me so damn crazy I tell you, just so you’ll leave me alone.”
Marshall nodded. “Ding ding ding! Right answer. And need I remind you that I know when you are lying, too.”
Aaron growled. “Maybe I’ve gotten better at lying now. I’m way more secretive than I was when you knew me. Everyone thought I was dead. I left the day of the explosion with nothing but our emergency pack. No one knew I was here living my life until recently.”
“I’ve always known where you were,” Marshall answered honestly. “You took the identity I’d had created for you, so I knew where to find you from the moment you left.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you come to me sooner?” Aaron asked in a small voice.
Marshall reached out, wanting to touch him, to ease his pain, but stopped short when Aaron flinched away from him. Not that he could blame him for the reaction at all.
“Franklin is powerful and determined to make the damn Senate. If he had known you were alive earlier, he would have killed you just to tidy up that loose end. He couldn’t have his own son coming out and telling the world what an asshole he is. Aaron, even when I knew I shouldn’t, I kept up with what you were doing. I’ve fucking stalked you from afar for years. What existed between us was real.”
Aaron’s gaze swung to him. “Really? Because I loved you with everything I had and losing you destroyed who I was. Flames were lifting into the air, and gas bottles were exploding and all I could think about was walking straight into that burning building so that I could go with you.”
Marshall’s heart broke at that. “Baby. I am so sorry I had to put you through that. But I had to get you away from Franklin and I knew you wouldn’t go without me. Franklin wasn’t going to let me go, Aaron. I was an asset he had no desire to lose. If we had run together, he would have come after us with everything he had. I knew that the only reason you would go by yourself is if you thought I was dead.”
Aaron frowned. “Why couldn’t we have just left together? If he was convinced that I died in that fire, why wouldn’t he accept it was both of us? Damn it, Marshall I managed to leave that day and no one came looking for me for seven years! I started a new life and fought for a chance to live it. Why couldn’t we have done that together?”
Marshall took a deep breath. He’d known this conversation had to happen, but he hadn’t expected it to be so soon. “He was going to take you away that night, Marshall. He was going to take you from me and use you to control me. Every option I looked at to save you resulted in you being hurt or killed. I was too young, I had very little experience with everything, and I panicked. Making it look like the explosion killed you was the only option I came up with that got you away from him.”
“Why the hell did you stay?” He could hear anger in Aaron’s voice. “You could have gotten away from him at any time.”
Self-loathing threatened to drown him. “I had to make sure you remained safe. And without you, I just stopped caring about anything else. Your father claimed your life insurance, had a funeral, and publically mourned your death. And I did it all with a happy heart because I knew that you were alive and that you were free.”
“But what about you, Marshall,” Aaron asked quietly, “weren’t you worth saving, too?”
Marshall turned to look out at the road ahead. “I may have been then, but everything I have done since, what your father has turned me into, all of it makes me beyond salvation now.”
Aaron made a dismissive sound. “That’s bullshit. No one is so far gone that they can’t be saved, either from my father or themselves. You’ve already said that a lot of what you have had to do over the years was at the bequest of Franklin George. It sounds to me that the fault lies with him, not you.”
“But it was me pulling the trigger all those years, Aaron, and not always at Franklin’s request,” Marshall answered, turning to give him a sad look. “It’s me that took money from your father and others to kill the people they most needed eliminated from their lives. And it’s me who has to somehow reconcile everything that I have done since I left you seven years ago so that I can sleep at night,” Marshall took a moment trying to find the words that would explain it. “You could say this is about vengeance with a strong dose of penance for me and that would be a lot closer to the truth, but it would certainly not grant me absolution.”
An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Marshall fought to keep his attention firmly on the road ahead and not on the man beside him. Marshall had lived a pretty shit life, spending time in and out of various foster homes as a child, a ward of the state, and was labelled a juvenile delinquent at a young age. When he met Franklin George and the man took him under his wing, Marshall was already on the road to becoming a career criminal, and it was Franklin who turned him into the contract killer he was today. But it was his own natural ability to strategize and shoot that made him successful at it.
“Condoms,” Aaron blurted out, breaking the silence in the truck.
“Pardon?” Marshall asked in a voice an octave higher than normal.
“In the brown bag I threw at the douchebag,” Aaron explained. “There were condoms in that bag. I had decided that six months lamenting the fact I’d fallen in love with a cheating asshole was long enough and I was going to go out this weekend and find a man I could have a one night stand with. I wanted some fun, and to see if I could actually ever enjoy being intimate with someone that wasn’t you. I—watch out!”
“Shit, sorry!” Marshall corrected his steering and drove back into his lane. He had been so shocked at what Aaron was telling him, he’d almost run the truck off the road.
Aaron laughed out loud, a sound that Marshall found he’d missed a lot. “Shocked you a little, huh?”
Marshall snorted a laugh in return. “You might say that, yeah. I can understand why you would want to forget about some cheating bastard. Since you, I have not been in a relationship that has lasted longer than a couple of mutually satisfying hours, but I get that if you were invested in someone romantically and se
xually and they betrayed that, then wanting to move past it makes total sense to me.”
Aaron moved in the passenger seat, his breath caught as he no doubt pulled at the stitches in his thigh and Marshall subtly sped up, wanting to reach Lake Conroe faster so Aaron could rest.
“You’re not going to lecture me on the dangers of one night stands in this day and age?” Aaron asked in a curious tone.
Marshall shook his head. “Like I said, I have had no relationships since you, just a series of nameless men. It would be hypocritical as hell of me to tell you that it would be wrong to go out looking for a one night stand of your own. But what does intrigue me is that last comment. You haven’t enjoyed being intimate with anyone since me?”
A silence fell between them and it wasn’t an uncomfortable one. Marshall knew that Aaron was thinking about the best way to answer the questions so just remained quiet, waiting for the other man to gather his thoughts.
“You were the first person I ever slept with, Marshall,” Aaron finally said. “After I lost you, it was as if I couldn’t find anyone who appealed to me on that same level. I guess living the way I did as a child made it difficult to be intimate with another man that I didn’t trust implicitly.
“I’ve had sex with two men since you.” Aaron’s voice was emotionless and Marshall’s hands tightened on the steering wheel thinking of him with another man. “The first guy was really just an experiment to see if I could, you know, be with someone. And when I proved to myself that I could, I stayed with him for six months because I wasn’t sure how to break it off. It was never good between us, at least not for me. Eventually we parted ways amicably. Then, a few years later, I met a guy I thought I could really love, someone I believed that I could trust.”
Marshall immediately hated whoever this man was. Anyone Aaron thought he could love had to be a paragon of the perfect man. Marshall knew how perfect Aaron was, so this man who got a piece of his heart must be a man someone like Marshall could only ever aspire to be.
“I put up with a lot from him, too. Thinking I had to pretend to be someone different to be worthy of his love. Making excuses when he got a little rough,” Marshall’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “But I couldn’t overlook the fact the he was fucking our neighbor in our bed whenever he could. And the shittiest thing about that is the fact I lost sleep, weight, and tears over that piece of garbage.”
Marshall had to physically fight to unlock his jaw. He was clenching his teeth so hard he was surprised he hadn’t cracked a tooth or three.
“He hurt you?” Marshall heard the cold tone in his voice, and from the way Aaron froze in his seat beside him, he heard it, too. His silence was answer enough as far as Marshall was concerned. “His name?”
Aaron sighed. “I’m not telling you his name, Marshall. You’ve got a gun and knives which I know first-hand you know how to use. I will not be responsible for his death. He’s out of my life for good.”
That didn’t make it a done deal as far as Marshall was concerned. He figured he’d find out who the man was eventually and pay him a visit sometime.
“You’ll tell me his name. I’m very patient. It’s an imperative skill when it comes to my line of work, but I think we should add a control to this little experiment of yours.”
“What do you mean?” Aaron asked.
“Well, you wanted to sleep with these men to see if you could enjoy it, especially after losing me,” Marshall threw Aaron a grin. “That makes sense to me, baby, because it has never been like it was between you and me. Not with anyone. So, I reckon we should see what sex would be like between us now that we are older and wiser. If it’s just as good as it was—and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it’s going to be fucking epic—then perhaps the catalyst to the good sex isn’t the sex itself, but rather the man. And that would be me.” Marshall heard Aaron’s sharp inhalation. “And just to be crystal clear on this, I am more than willing to lay my body on the line for science.”
Aaron barked a shocked laugh that had Marshall feeling lighter than he had in a long time. Taking it as a win, he decided to leave it at that.
Chapter Four
“Whose boat is this?” Aaron asked as soon as Marshall had expertly steered the expensive boat out of an equally expensive marina and onto the lake.
Marshal threw him a look. “It’s mine, Aaron, we didn’t just steal it.”
Aaron didn’t think he could be blamed for wondering what the hell was going on. The two of them had driven a couple hours out of Houston to Lake Conroe. They’d driven a while longer around the lake before parking in a gated marina and getting into this very expensive-looking boat.
“Is it a coincidence that you’re taking me to a place on Lake Conroe?” Aaron asked, watching Marshall’s face carefully. It might be after dark, but the moon was high in the sky and he could make out his face quite easily.
Marshall’s jaw tightened. “What do you mean?”
“I still don’t like playing games, Marshall,” Aaron heard the fatigue in his voice. “But I am going to accommodate you this one time. I’m asking you if it is a coincidence you’ve chosen this lake, the place my father has a holiday home that not many people but those closest to him know about. It’s also the place you and I both fantasized about living when we were sixteen years old, playing the age-old game of where will we live when we’re free.”
Marshall turned off the motor and turned to face him, the sudden silence after the roar of the large engine absolute. “No, it’s not a coincidence. I had the place I am taking you to built three years ago. No one knows about it, and they sure as hell don’t know that I own it. Hell, if your father knew about the house or how much money I have at my disposal, he might not have ordered a hit on me two days ago.”
“He hired someone to kill you?” Aaron asked incredulously. “Why the hell would he do that?”
“Your father is running for Senator,” Marshall said with a straight face, so Aaron figured he wasn’t joking. “He’s cleaning house and he started with me. The problem the narcissistic fuck had was that he wanted the best to take me out, convinced that the killer would need to be the best in order to take out his damn prodigy. The kicker is that his prodigy is the best.”
Aaron frowned, his mind whirling as he tried to keep up and make sense of what Marshall was saying. “So what, he hired you to kill yourself?”
Marshall leaned back against the driver’s seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “Effectively, yes. But he had no fucking clue it was me he was hiring. And this is where we get to a portion of my own sins that I have to live with. I started taking contracts on my own five years ago, amassing a huge fortune and a reputation second to none. Franklin never had a fucking clue. He would lament the fact that no one knew the identity of this man who only took the most dangerous and high paying jobs, and only ever took a contract from one source one time. It was funny as hell when I received the request to kill myself from one Franklin George. I took it as a compliment that he would use his one-time pass on me.”
Aaron nodded like it all made sense, but he was still confused as fuck. “So, before he decided not to just fuck up the lives of those around him, but to spread his wings and see if he could take the whole fucking country down with him, you were working for my father for seven years. Why, if you were already this kick ass contract killer, didn’t you just take his ass out and put him out of our misery?”
Marshall released a long breath and Aaron had a sinking feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer. “I thought I was so fucking clever. I got you your new identity, secured some start up cash, and made it so you would leave me behind. I was positive that I had pulled it off and it would only be a matter of time before I would be free of him and able to come for you.”
Aaron liked the sound of that more than he was prepared to admit in that moment.
“But he knew,” Marshall looked up, locking his gaze with Aaron’s, his expression bleak. “He fucking knew you were aliv
e, where you were living and every damn thing about your life. The best I can figure is that the bastard I paid to create that new identity for you told him about it, and he tracked you down about three months after your funeral.”
Aaron closed his eyes for a brief moment. “He used me to control you, didn’t he?” He didn’t need Marshall to answer that, he knew it was the truth. “And I made it easier for the bastard because I stayed in Houston, wanting to be close to you anyway I could.”
Marshall blew out a breath. “He had multiple men on you at all times. If I didn’t do everything he said, then he would have had them beat you to death while I watched. I couldn’t get to all of them at once and he knew it.”
Aaron felt terrible that he was the reason Marshall had stayed in that situation for as long as he did. “So despite it all, he was able to use me to control you. He had you kill for him, I know that much, but what else? There had to be more to it than that. If Franklin had so much invested in you then it was more than just as his trigger. What else?”
Marshall dropped his gaze to the floor of the boat. “I did everything, Aaron. Killed, hurt, blackmailed, maimed, whatever Franklin needed to grow his organization and get the most powerful men in the state in his back pocket.”
“That’s why he needed you taken out, you know too much.”
“Exactly,” Marshall shook his head. “My next mistake was the biggest. As soon as he put a hit on me, I made my run at him out of fear for you rather than planning it properly, and for a man as meticulous as me, that’s a mistake I never thought I’d make. Not only did I miss him, I made him aware that I was the one he hired. Now he’s coming at both of us.”
Aaron stood up and walked across the cabin of the boat to stand in front of Marshall. “And rather than taking off and going into hiding, you put yourself directly in the path of danger, and came for me.”
