MIA
IF HE WASN’T A COMPLETE asshole, the knots tightening in my stomach would ease up.My nerves in disarray, I panicked. The weather for the most part did nothing but haul harder reminding me that in seconds, my leg would be blown to smithereens.“Don’t move”, Andro nudged and my feet really wanted to move.Add in the cold, the life-threatening predicament I was in and I wanted nothing but to turn the other way and run as fast as my weak legs could manage.But running or moving was going to kill me faster than frost bite hit the man in front of me.Kneeling on the thickly covered ground that was snow, I glanced at his back. Watching the muscles at his back contract and expand like pistons working together to get the job done.“Fuck!” he grunted digging into the snow with his bare hands and I winced at his actions.“L-Leave me”, my voice wobbled.I was a goner anyway the minute I stepped foot outside Bryant Knox’s mansion.“No can do, Tonelli. You die, I lose my money”, Flames’ voice sounded hard and taut as I felt his hand finally reach my ankle beneath all that snow.Right. I was the client. His client because the man I hated didn’t help people from the goodness of his heart.What heart was I speaking about in the first place? He killed my sister; he didn’t have a heart. He’d always been the scrawny asshole-ic boy who used my sister’s feelings for him in order to escape working for my dad.“Is that all you care about? Money?”“Yes”His voice came almost immediately and I glanced down the more with so much hatred that if looks could kill, Andro or whatever bullshit name he went by, would be six feet under with maggots having a field day over devouring his body.“I see it, I’ll have to dig a little deeper but if you move, we both die”“Maybe I want us to die”, I replied with indifference.“If you wanted to die, you wouldn’t have run away from Bryant Knox. Stay fucking still, sunshine, this will be done in a sec”Hiding my anxiety as he dug harder into the ground, his nails turning brown from the color of the soil and the patches of snow, I nearly collapsed when I saw the time capsule look alike that was under my leg.“T-That’s the bomb?”“Yes”“Do you know how to disarm it?”I prayed he did.With Bryant, I saw death every day and I had embraced and welcomed death.But this?I did not want to die like this. I did not want to die with him in the first place.“I wouldn’t have sticked around if I didn’t know how to”, he answered dryly, his left hand reaching for something in his pocket.A Swiss pocket knife? Brandishing the knife as if he was cutting through goat cheese, he scraped the cover of the time capsule bomb off revealing a whole bunch of wires that made me dizzy.He cut an orange wire without even blinking. Then the red wire.“Wait!” I cried watching his fingers hold a yellow wire, “you can’t just keep cutting wires like that. They don’t…they don’t do that in movies. You are supposed to cut two wires okay. Two”I was losing my mind. I was panicking and I was damn well sure I was going to taste death in seconds if the man didn’t stop cutting wires so recklessly.“It’s the last wire and it stops the timer”“What timer?”“The one that started the minute I cut the yellow wire”“What?”My heart pounding, my knees threatened to turn to mush. Before I could ask how long I had, Flames cut the yellow wire.“Done”Standing up, the ice already covering most of his hair and eye brows, Andro straightened his hand out for me.“What do you mean it’s done?”“You taking my hand or not, Tonelli”“How sure are you we won’t die the minute I take a step away from this thing”Running his other hand in his hair, his eyes turned murderous.“I FIXED THE FUCKING PROBLEM. YOU WANT TO DIE IN THIS COLD, BE MY GUEST”He turned around and he did what I didn’t expect him to do.He started walking, fast towards the cabin.I stood there, alone. In the fucking blizzard with a bomb that had a high probability of detonating the minute I took one step.“Andro!”The asshole didn’t look back.Apprehension washing over me faster than the snow fall, I decided to…trust him. I was the god damn client, he wouldn’t have wanted me to die because if I died, he could lose his money. Whatever the fuck that meant.Inhaling the draft air, cussing a lot at what stupid moron would booby trap a cabin that looked too shabby to be considered safe shelter, I took a step.The minute I stepped off the bomb thingy, I ran like at any minute the bomb would detonate and pulverize me into oblivion.Heart racing, sweating-I didn’t know how that was possible- my throat constricted as I tried to swallow saliva and ease whatever tension that had made my body turn into a bundle of nerves.I survived. I was alive-“Like I said, I fixed the fucking problem”The tank of a man next to me spoke and that was enough for me to wish the bomb had actually taken me out.“You left me out there to die”, I panted mercilessly holding onto his biker leather jacket like a heating pad.“But you didn’t”, his voice came with a shrug indifference.Whatever crap he had uttered about him helping me out of the love he had for Elise, flew out my fucking ears.He really wanted me to die. He wished it. He longed for it; I could see it in the way he looked at me. Like I was a worm wriggling in his soup.His six-foot four frame standing by the door, I plunked behind him listening to the tick tocks of the pass code on the door.The door flinging open automatically, Andro went in and I followed.The first thing I noticed was the stuffed moose head above the fireplace. I wouldn’t be shocked if the man assessing the place had killed it and stuffed it himself.He sure looked like the type. Fierce, heartless, gruesome.The cabin was small on the inside but cozy. With bear fur acting like a rag on the floor, two couches by the fireplace, the kitchen right next to the living room, it was everything I could ask for.A place that felt like home. Cozy, small and not fake like the lavish hotels and mansions Bryant Knox owned.Taking off my boots, my toes shivered at the touch of the plywood beneath my feet. I took in the smell that was more of Andro and stale oxygen with a hint of dry wood.The caveman however moved around with his shoes on leaving a whole trait of snow crumbs everywhere.It irritated the hell out of me and not because I was OCD or something but because that was who he was.The asshole who tainted everything that was beautiful.For the most part of it, Andro searched the loose drawers in the kitchen, moving to the fireplace, then back to the kitchen, then behind me to the wooden stairs I hadn’t seen before.“We need more supplies”He came back minutes later with a new black shirt and a heavy trench coat in his other hand.“You are leaving me here alone?”The question slipped from my mind.“You’ll be fine”“Oh God. Can’t you call your buddies or something”I sounded desperate and that was because I was.The cabin was great but… a psychotic drug dealer was after me and if he showed up here, I wouldn’t know where to start.“There’s a gun underneath the cushion of the first sofa. You see anyone that’s not me, you fucking shoot”I laughed.“Shoot? You think I was in the fucking army like you? I don’t know how to use a freaking gun!”Barely affected by my outburst, he reached for something at the back of his trousers. A black gun piece in his hand, he took my hand.“Trigger. Remove protection, aim, fire”He couldn’t possibly be serious. The heat of his hand leaving mine, he placed the gun back to his waist, putting his coat and before he made it to the door, he looked back and said,“Don’t open the door for anyone. Not even me”The minute the door slammed in my face; I made one fucking conclusion.Where Andro went, I went.I wasn’t sticking around here with no protector and a gun that might as well have been useless in my hands.I was going to follow him.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
MIA THE BRAVEST thing I had done? For starters, leaving Bryant knowing very well I put a target on my back when I did.This...what I was doing right now wasn’t close to valiant. I was crying…hard and pathetically and that wasn’t a good look on me because the two hundred pounded man clung to my shoulders threatening to pass out again any moment.My lips quivered; I bit my lower lip toning down the tears constricting my throat and it hurt. The snow didn’t cease but continued to yowl at us till it made sure we knew it didn’t give a shit about a bleeding man and a woman who was too wind and bones to drag said man to the cabin.He was heavy.Insanely heavy for a normal man.For a moment there when he passed out, I thought he’d died and the gun shook in my hands. I hated him and I might have wished for his death at one moment of weakness but I never ever wanted him to die. Whether we both liked it or not, I needed him, he needed me and fate had deemed us inseparable.Him dying meant I was
FLAMESI HAD BEEN shot before. The kind of shot that left my body a few feet from joining the eternal flames of sulfur in hell.This…this was different because I hadn’t seen it coming. The delirium, the haggard breaths, the feel of a woman’s hands all over my body without my permission. And not just any woman but her.Fucking her. The bad shooter. The disobedient minx. The blonde devil. The scarred witch. Honestly, I could have gone on and on about how bad I loathed Mia but the situation stopped me.Just what the fucking hell?!A jut of pain coursed through my veins up the damn place she’d shot at, disorientation bit me in the fucking head and I stifled a hiss, my dick the damn thing…I could feel it painfully poke my briefs and my pants chose the wrong time to be tight.Morning wood, they called it because I refused to believe that my dick responded to the woman beside me.The woman’s whose bare pussy hugged my thigh, the woman whose pebbled nipples poked my chest like hot irking bul
MIA“LIKE THIS?”“NO”Was his gruff reply that was accompanied by an even bigger scowl than the last one which was five seconds ago.Sure, he’d ran to his secret bunker and came with stacks of wood, chunks of wood for lack of better words but he refused to absolutely teach me how to use an axe and I was determined to know how to use it.Leaning against the beams of the cabin, hands crossed on his puffy chest, he tsked every passing minute and I wasn’t backing down from what I was doing.He had left me alone. Alone and unguarded after I had spent the whole night stitching him, cleaning him up, cleaning his blood off my hands and off the floorboards and up until now he was still being an ass.I apologized but why hadn’t he apologized to me?For leaving? Where had he gone in the first place?Hunting?Getting attacked by fucking wolves again?Roaming around the snow with a wound that wasn’t completely healed?I grabbed the wooden handle of the axe again, swinging the damn thing with the
FLAMES“I THINK I ATE SOME BAD MUSHROOMS”It wasn’t mushrooms. Mushrooms either killed you or made you high-if you ate the good ones that is-Nonetheless I found myself smiling like a goofy chum as we both knelt near the toilet bowl.She had a case of ‘eating slightly expired’ canned food and I didn’t need to call Snakes to translate that for me.She wasn’t going to die that’s for fucking sure but at least the wave of nausea would shut her up for a while and I was comfortable with that.My chest hit her back, my hands holding her hair back as she hurled inside the toilet bowl like crazy. If I wasn’t an asshole, I would have been telling her shit like it was going to be okay or rubbing her back like a good little boyfriend telling her to let it all out.But I was an ass, and the ass thing to do for a woman you didn’t like but had boners for, was to fist her hair, fucking enjoying her misery.This right here was the fucking universe telling me Mia Tonelli was weak. If she couldn’t handl
MIA‘IT’S DONE’Ten minutes later after signing the electronic contract sent by one of his buddies from B&A, I was standing in the middle of the cabin’s back yard trying to pick up as much sound as I could.Legs apart, eyes ahead, he’d commanded.Then he had put this rag he called a blindfold over my eyes and let’s just say training had gone downhill.It was in the ass crack of dawn and while I wasn’t a morning person, I wasn’t complaining, I was going to pay him for this very torture because I needed it when everything went south.Because I needed to be ready on the event Bryant ever got hold of me again. I needed it to kill Bryant if he survived the B&A guys.“Focus”, came his voice behind me and I turned.“On what?” I asked.The only thing I could focus on was the cold biting me underneath his oversized clothes. My toes were frozen cold.“Everything. Your surroundings, my voice, the fall of snow lightly touching the ground, touching your shoulders, be perceptive to the trees swayin
FLAMES‘AND YOU ARE TELLING ME BECAUSE?’Fuck, I don’t know he was the only guy in B&A who actually listened and paid attention and maybe gave great advice.“I’m lonely”, I snickered sarcastically knowing full well he was holding in a chuckle.And all this was fucking laughable from my point of view, me…the loose screw who shot his way through everything training a woman I hated to fight, using methods that were effective and at the same time driving me crazy.In the marines, our commander didn’t teach everyone the same fucking thing otherwise that was as useless as telling a cat to eat hay.No. He assessed us through a series of tests. Locked some of us in a room without food for days with only a pistol being your friend and from that he’d conclude what training this soldier needed and what this training another soldier needed.What this soldier’s kryptonite was.And what fucking drove a soldier to be in the Marines in the first place.Mia Tonelli’s kryptonite was Bryant Knox.Her dr
MIA‘I THOUGHT WE START GUN FIRING TODAY’, I mused.I had slept like a baby last night; my body getting rid of all the knots and aches I had garnered during the day.Right at this second despite the circumstances, I felt like a polished powdered baby bum fresh and definitely with more fire than I had the previous days.The birds twittered, the trees wavered slightly taking along with them the evidence that it had stopped snowing with the droplets falling on me and Andro now and then. The sun might have spewed its great light on us but I kind of missed the fat icy snowflakes we had received for days now.The snow beneath my feet had dropped an inch than yesterday and with the thawing of the ice on the trees when I looked up, I could see a mountain peak past the trees. Shining at the snow cap like a beacon and the sight was breathtakingly beautiful.I wanted to stay here.I mean it wasn’t much but I could understand why anyone would want to lock himself up in here forever.The air was f