Page 60 of Stand: Part One

“The way I see it, General, is that your niece is the reason my youngest brother is dead. As far as I’m concerned, what Daniel did was an act of revenge, an act he was more than entitled to.”

“If Regina wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, then as far as I’m concerned, she had no hand in Dominic’s murder!”

I chuckled at that, shaking my head at the audacity of the old fool. “I’ve wiped out entire families who have had less involvement than she did for the very same reasons. Regina is not exempt from the consequences of her own actions just because your dying brother guilted Matt into accepting an impossible task.”

“Regina was innocent!” he bellowed back, spittle dotting his lips.

“That girl has never been innocent,” I argued sharply. “You forget I also had cause to kill her myself when she tried to secretly murder my wife on our honeymoon.”

The general shook his head, waving his hand through the air dismissively. “A minor lapse in judgment,” he muttered. I rolled my eyes.

“As was my agreement to this useless meeting. I will not surrender my brother,” I pressed, the hard tone in my voice barely disguising my rage. “From this moment on, any move you personally make against me or my family will be met with the release of every concrete block of evidence I have that will permanently sink you to the bottom of the hole you’ve been digging yourself in for the last decade.”

He scorned my warning, sputtering all over himself at my threat.

“You really want to fuck with the abilities of the US military?!” he roared. “I could just as easily leave instructions with my best and most trusted soldiers. Even if you did succeed in putting me away, that doesn’t make you safe from my reaches and influence. I know the locations of many of your operations. I could have them wiped out in a single night.”

I sneered at him then. “I invite you to try. You may have a decent supply of dirty soldiers loyal to you, General, but my supply is endless. And they don’t play by the same rules.”

The general’s lips tightened, his eyes bouncing back and forth as he considered his growing lack of options. He finally took a step forward. “If Matt fails, he will lose my protection, and by association, so will you,” he continued to argue, his voice growing anxious.

I shook my head at his clear desperation, as if I’d sacrifice my brother to protect such an inconsequential interest.

“If Matt is still relying on you to cover up his mistakes, then he obviously hasn’t learned from them. And your protection by association is not worth the life of my brother, especially when I have several of my own shields still in place. You are not the only paid player in this game, General, and you have long outgrown your usefulness to me.”

We stared each other down for several seconds, the tension building in the air as the two of us refused to yield. He should have fucking known better. The audacity for him to think I would actually bow to his ridiculous demand and give up my last living brother was a sure sign the man was losing his touch. If he needed a reality check, I would happily oblige in blood.

General Rainer’s face continued to redden as his stance remained rigid and tense, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. I stood relaxed with my hands in my pockets, waiting impatiently for him to concede his pointless bullshit demands.

“Fine, Darren. Have it your way. But there will be consequences.”

I smirked at him. “At this point, General, I hold no ill will toward any of you. Matt already took a bullet from me for his threat against my wife, so I’ll consider that to be his one and only warning. I’ll even overlook the bullet he put in Daniel’s chest as a sign of good faith. But make one more move against me or mine, and I start killing you all.”

I ended the conversation there and turned to exit the building, my steps as sure as the words I spoke. I hated admitting it, but Matt’s uncle would be a formidable opponent should he become one. He was not an enemy I wanted on my ass, given the global influence he had due to his ranking in the US military, a very esteemed position that he’d held for a very long time.

The man had plenty of loyalists on his side, and while they may come in handy for this trial, it wouldn’t mean shit against the hard evidence I had on him. He was truthfully more of a psychopath than I was. He’d order entire villages wiped out under the guise of harboring terrorists just so he could take whatever resources they had and sell them to the real terrorists. It was genius really. But unfortunately for him, well documented.

I had spies everywhere, my reach spanning beyond the limits of the law or borders. And that was the one thing my adversaries always forgot right before they met their downfall. And I intended to deliver.

After driving home, I stepped through the doorway and stood in the foyer for a moment, noticing the silence of my home. Even with the guards stationed inside, there wasn’t a single creak in the house. After tonight, I probably wouldn’t be stumbling upon this kind of silence for a long time.

Walking into my office, I moved straight for the bar, ignoring Scott’s presence as he sat at my conference table, staring intently at the screen of his laptop. I poured myself a glass of whiskey, swallowing back the dark liquid and letting it burn away the irritation growing in my blood.

“That bad, eh?” Scott commented.

With a sigh, I grabbed my glass and walked toward the table to take a seat across from him.

“The General is going to make a move,” I informed him, pinching the bridge of my nose to release the tension growing. “We need to be ready.”

Scott hummed his annoyance, rubbing his tired eyes as he brought his dark gaze to mine. He knew just as well as I did the pain in the ass it would be dealing with the stubborn old man should he truly become a problem. And we both knew it would be foolish to assume otherwise. So we needed to act first.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

I rolled my shoulders as the domino effect played out in my mind. A very calculated domino effect.

“We need to find out where his most trusted soldiers are stationed when they’re operating outside of the US.” The General’s type of men tended to pray upon impoverished, vulnerable rural governments to influence them into their favor and self-interests.

Scott arched a brow. “And then?”