Page 3 of Danger Close (Mourningkill #3)

We’re Getting Married

Cobra

Seven Days Before the Wedding

“A week?” My daughter looked down at me as I worked to open the drain plug on my Vulcan.

She’d caught me as I drove the bike back in from a joy ride.

I was supposed to just ride long enough to lower the viscosity of the oil so that I could change it, but a ten minute ride turned into an hour.

It was October in Upstate New York, and I’d have to put her away for the winter soon. I just… resisted.

Trinity must have had the same thought, because she came on her Ducati, pulled up next to me, and dumped the news like a steaming pile of shit.

Nothing could have prepared me for the nonsense that was retirement life. I spent decades undercover with the worst mafiosos, criminals and traffickers in the world. I worked in the world’s most dangerous places.

And fatherhood? I don’t know how anyone gets through it without going nuts.

I stared at Trinity, or “Taz” as she called herself, as I let the oil spill into the drain pain.

At least that was something we had in common.

We both liked bikes. We could bond over it.

She also had a hint of pyromania, which gave me an amazing sense of pride.

Nurture? Meet nature. The kid was a chip off the old block.

I was almost disappointed that she didn’t take on more of her mother’s traits.

Teresa had been a model; frail thin but luminescent.

Her straight, black hair and pale, gold skin had been all the rage at the time.

Paired with her startling blue eyes, she’d been unforgettable.

But Taz? She was like me. Made of motor oil and grit. She got my darker skin, thick lips, and thick, brown, wavy hair, and square face. Poor kid.

“Getting married in a week?” I was still shocked by that fact.

What was I supposed to buy for a wedding gift?

She already had a motorcycle that functioned smooth as silk, because she knew her way around a garage.

I wasn’t going to get her jewelry. Maybe I’d set up a trust fund?

But she was marrying Kai Griffith of the North Virginia Griffiths. They wouldn’t hurt for money.

A week was like no time at all. Sure, she and her fiancé had known each other for some time – years, in fact. But a week? Engaged and married in a week ? Then again, Teresa and I had been married even faster. Maybe this was genetics at work.

“What are you trying to do, put your Ma and I to shame?” I almost laughed, despite the pit growing in my stomach.

It was that sinking feeling I always got when I thought about the wife who’d left me.

Then, it was safer for me to stay far, far away.

Keep them out of my orbit so that the bad guys I went after didn’t go after them.

I’d just gotten my kid back and now, I’d be giving her away in seven days. This was going to be a significant emotional event. I could already tell.

“How long were you and Mom engaged for?” Taz looked confused.

Had Teri not told her anything about me? About us?

“Oh, I don’t remember,” I lied. “However long it took for the piss stick to turn pink, and for me to get her to a church?”

“So, you two got married in less than a week?” She tilted her head in surprise. “She was with my stepdad for almost ten years and kept saying that was too soon.”

“Stepdad, huh?” I felt the pang of something in my chest. Something akin to jealousy. Someone else had my Princess for ten fucking years—which was eight years longer than our marriage! But this feeling wasn’t jealousy. Definitely not. Definitely not.

What did I care if she laid her head down beside someone else at night?

No, I resented that someone else was being the man of the house while I was sleeping with my head in the dirt, surrounded by scumbags. While they were playing house, I was smiling at the faces of people I despised, waiting for the day I could stab them in the back, or put them in handcuffs.

“Was he a good guy?” I asked, swallowing down my resentment. “Your stepdad?”

“The best,” Trinity shrugged. “I was really happy when we lived with Dad."

“Then what happened?” I pried, trying to seem unaffected even as the rock in my throat went down to my gut. She called someone else Dad.

“One night, Mom packed us up in a car, and we drove off.” Trinity shook her head. “We’d do that every few years after that. Just pack up and disappear. New town. New faces. New school.”

“Do you know why she left your…” I hated saying this word, as envy burned my throat. “Your stepdad?”

“Because she got moody and restless. She got tired of having a good thing,” Trinity scoffed. “Anytime things got too comfortable, she packed us up and left. Who the hell knows?”

Trinity crossed her muscular arms that threatened to bulge out of her black leather riding jacket.

Our jackets were almost identical now. I'd gotten rid of the patch-riddled one I’d worn while I was spying on The Frontline, the radical right wing piece-of-shit group I was more than happy to blow to hell with a few well-placed missiles.

“Christ, that time sucked.” Trinity’s tight-lipped smile bothered me. “All I wanted to do was go back to Florida and ask my stepdad to adopt me. But since they were never married, and technically he wasn’t blood…”

I couldn’t reconcile the rolling stone that Trinity described with the woman I had known in Paris. Teresa was the most stable, level-headed person I knew. But maybe things had changed. “Moving around can be tough as a kid.”

I guess this was something else my kid and I had in common.

“I moved quite a bit, too, growing up. It wasn’t pleasant.” I understood that as well as anyone.

“Did you?” The hopefulness in her eyes shot through me like a sabot round to the chest.

She was reaching out to me the same as I was to her. I smiled, knowing that given enough time, she and I would be buying father-daughter motorcycles, complete with matching jackets… maybe next Father’s Day if I was lucky.

“Yeah, well,” I rubbed my palm against the nape of my neck, coming to my feet. “You know, your Uncle Jericho’s part of the New York Bratva, yeah?”

Not the greatest way to introduce her to the family business, but here we go…

“Yeah, you guys set up a spy agency called Paradigm, and infiltrated criminal organizations to combat Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.” She smirked at me, raising her brow, as if saying, duh, Dad, of course I know that. I’m not a kid.

I chuckled to myself. I might have missed the teen years, but the little warrior in front of me sassed me with a childish petulance I hadn’t seen her use on anyone else. Not even to her First Sergeant, or his wife, Charlotte, who’d taken her under their wing like second parents.

This attitude was for me, and me alone. I liked that.

“Right.” I said, taking out the oil filter. “Well, Jericho and I have the same dad—your grandpa Anton, I guess. Dead now. But that’s… a story for another time. Especially when we talk about your other uncle, Anton Junior. He’s dead too. Anyway…”

There’s a whole lot of death in my past. No need to discuss our family history of fratricide.

“My mom, your grandma Maeve, and I moved around a lot to keep me out of my father’s clutches. Otherwise, I would have been his eldest son, and sucked into that life.”

“Grandma Maeve?” Trinity’s eyes lit up. She’d been curious about her family, but she had no cousins to speak of, and my siblings…

“Aw, shucks. She passed away twelve years ago now. Sorry, kiddo.” God, I wish I had more family to introduce her to. The kind that would fill up a dining room at Christmas. “But you do have an aunt, Yuliya. I think you’d like her.”

I thought about it for a minute, wondering if I should arrange for that meeting anytime soon. “She’ll come to your wedding.”

I wasn’t sure if that was possible, but when Trinity smiled, I knew that I had to make it happen. “I’ll add her to the guest list. And… also Uncle Jericho?”

“Do that,” I said with a nod. “If you don’t invite your uncle, he’ll crash anyway. The prick watched you get your Green Beret. Did you know that?”

She smiled, pleased.

“He also watched you get pinned with your Combat Infantry Badge in Afghanistan.”

Her brows knit together, as she tilted her head. “Was he… was he one of the contractors on the base?”

“Probably flew in for a day or two, then flew back out. He was out there working for the CIA at the time. You remember seeing him?”

She pursed her lips, thought for a moment. “Oh my God, I think I do. He was going by the name Brett Bradley!”

I laughed. “Yeah, that’s his spy name. Horrible isn’t it?”

“What was your spy name?”

“Tim Smith.” She looked almost disappointed with my answer. “It’s no Brett Bradley, but it’s common enough to slip into government databases unnoticed, but not so common that it sounds fake like John Smith, ya know?”

“It’s no Trinity Blaze Guerro?” she said, lifting her eyes. “Was my name your idea, or Mama’s?”

“Mine, kiddo. You’re welcome.” I thought the name I gave her had been inspired! But what counted as inspiration to a twenty-year-old boy sounded like pure idiocy to a fifty-year-old man. Thankfully, the name suited her.

“Is Director Roland Griffith cool with his oldest son getting hitched in that short of a time?” I was surprised that the Griffiths signed off on that. Society weddings were over-the-top networking events.

Trinity shrugged, leaning against her black Ducati.

“Griff doesn’t want to wait, and we have a perfectly adequate venue right here.” She waved towards the general direction of where First Sergeant McClanahan, retired, and Charlotte had a hundred-acre farm. “It’s secure, so all of his guests can come.”

“His guests?” I grunted as I replaced the oil plug on my bike. “You mean the President of the United States, Davis Lau. Your fiancé’s godfather?”