AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
Dimitri Kyriakos threwhis keys on the countertop. He removed his suit jacket and hung it on one of two kitchen chairs, unstrapped his side arm and placed it on the counter, loosened his belt, stripped off his tie, went into the kitchen, and got himself a tumbler, filling it with one large square ice cube. He watched the amber colored whiskey drizzle over the top, crackling the ice and making him thirsty.
Picking up the glass, he walked into his tiny living room, which wasn’t really much for living as for crashing on the couch to binge watch something on TV, scan a bureau paper, or read something that would help him fall asleep. He sat in the overstuffed chair he sometimes had trouble extricating himself from if he was drunk.
He took a long satisfying sip and let it trickle over his tongue to the back of his throat, tempting a gargling by reflex but, at the last minute, swallowing. He closed his eyes, pressed the cold glass against his forehead, and waited.
He waited for the buzz to start. Maybe he’d have to sip two or three more times, but he needed that buzz tonight more than anything else in the world.
He’d just signed the divorce papers. Had to dress up just to go into the office and sign some fucking papers. Again. Divorce number two. He was believing the rumors now, that he was a serial marrier, except only going on number two wasn’t reallybad compared to all the detritus scattered amongst other State Department Agents or SEALs in his community. In truth, he was going on number four or five, but he never got so far as the altar with some of them before they changed their minds.
Most people after number two just didn’t bother to do it again. And that was probably what Dimitri was headed for, except he never planned on having there be number three. There was not enough room in his soul for another scar. He’d already stripped, cut, and extracted all the bile and hate and missed opportunity and regret that he could from his psyche. There just wasn’t any room left for more triage.
He’d lived through his fifteen years of SEAL active duty then been recruited by the State Department to become a Special Agent, evacuating embassies and guarding individuals the government deemed necessary, like the vice president, the secretary of state, even the president himself. He’d done that job expertly. No questionable kills while on SEAL Team 3 either. No dirty little secrets while in the State Department cadre, although he uncovered quite a few—just not his secrets. Senators doing things on the side they shouldn’t have, costing innocent people their lies through their lack of attentiveness or lack of conscience, whichever it was.
He never lost an asset he was protecting. But even though he’d done everything correctly in that arena, he still couldn’t keep a woman.
He stared at the ceiling, noticing the cracks that had developed in this new building already. Further evidence of incompetence. It was all around him. Sometimes, he felt like he was the little boy holding his finger in the dike.
It always started out fine with his female relationships. Usually very physical, but he told himself, that was what kept him going on dangerous missions, somebody warm and hot to come home to. Somebody who could argue and had a point ofview, of course not some kind of a doormat. He would never go for that. But in that variety of spitfire personalities he seemed to always choose, they eventually came around to the fact that they wanted to do it their way more than they wanted to do it his way, and they made his life miserable until he finally either went out and did something they couldn’t tolerate or just stayed home, had a few drinks, and never took them out. There’s no woman who could live in a petri dish without being shown affection. It wasn’t their fault. He was pushing them away by ignoring them.
It was an effective strategy.
He took another sip, examining his tiny apartment. It was tiny because he lived there alone. Didn’t need more space being alone. Only needed the things that he could use, and he didn’t have a lot of stuff after all the move ins and move outs and purchasing things and then having to get rid of them or donate them to charity.
This time, he just wasn’t buying anything. No precious items that he stored in his drawer. Just his guns, his service records, his papers, some of his favorite books, all of his favorite whiskeys (he’d tried probably one hundred in the last five years), and some photographs of teammates on campaigns that he was especially proud of or glad were over.
He had that picture of the day he got his Trident, at thirty years of age, the oldest in his graduating class, with his parents and Moira, his girlfriend at the time, standing next to them. She would have become Wife Number One in Dimitri’s long-term plan. But even she drifted away from him, moving on with her life while he deployed for the first time. She’d told him she didn’t want to be his second priority. And it was a fact, she was. His first priority was his duty to the Team he’d just made, trying to put into practice all his training, trying not to get himself killed or cause someone else’s death. She had a right to her own life. He was a mess. A proud, well-trained mess, but a mess nonetheless.
He often thought about what kind of a life they could have lived, if they’d started back then.
Probably she would have left right away.
So he saved her from that.A good thing, right?he asked himself.
And then years later, in between his two marriages, she resurfaced again, doubling back to check on him. She was so vibrant and beautiful compared to his damaged and grumpy soul, suffering from lack of inspiration. He’d maintained his iron will to do his job well, though. That was always the same.
He didn’t want to spoil the vision he had of her as a young woman, so full of optimism and plans for her brilliant future, pursuing her dreams of becoming a world-class international reporter, learning to embed in dangerous situations. He didn’t want to tell her about the horrors he’d already seen and what she’d be getting into if she succeeded in her career. She spent the entire evening talking about doing that, asking his advice, even suggesting one day perhaps she could embed on his Team.
It was a lovely evening, and he didn’t push anything physical. Later, he would regret that. He shipped out the next day and thought about her for weeks afterward. Lots of “should haves” ruminated around his head: should have apologized for being such a dickwad to her when he got ready to deploy, should have written, should have tried harder to find her. But he let it all slip away.
When his few emails didn’t get answered, he figured he was being a pest, so he stopped and went on with his life.
And then the only miracle in his life happened. She came back. She’d had a very dangerous assignment that nearly got her killed. Her cameraman was killed, along with their driver. She came back to him, because for once, she needed him.
And that peeled him open, after ten years longing for her, knowing she was the one, also knowing he shouldn’t chaseher for her own safety, she came back to him. The evening confessions before lovemaking healed everything broken inside him. He was so much in love with her he began to fear they would be separated too much by their jobs, and he begged her to quit. Their tiny argument was over immediately as soon as he realized his folly, and he totally caved to her demands. He’d do or let her do whatever she wanted with his heart, with his body, with the rest of his life.
And then she agreed to marry him. She didn’t see the need he had for her or, if she did, didn’t acknowledge it. The ring on her finger was just the first step. Everything was finally going to turn out for him, for them. His parents were working on a big Greek wedding, and he’d even do that without objecting. Moira thought it would be fun.Fun?
On her last mission before they were to tie the knot, she didn’t return. She’d been killed in a botched rescue attempt by another SEAL Team before Dimitri was even aware of it. He was on a mission to Cape Verde, and it took a week before he knew. She was just gone forever.
With no family, her arrangements were left up to him, so he let her lay buried in Italy where she had been left for dead by a sniper’s bullet and then burned in the botched raid. That way, he told himself, he’d go visit her every year. It would force him to leave the confines of Washington and get out to another culture, somewhere he could think and breathe. He could talk to her alone. That was the plan.
Except he never did. In three years, he never once visited her grave. Not even when he was doing a detail in Genoa. He was so shattered, it was everything he could do to keep it from showing on the outside what his insides felt like. Just like some of the ops he’d been in, everything was bloody and spread out in that ominous death pattern he’d become so familiar with.
And maybe that was a good thing, he thought. He never had to see in her face the sad eyes that would get sadder as months and years droned on. He had that vision still of her fresh face, warm lips, her unflinching dedication and belief in him. Always being happy to see him no matter how long he was away. She never wanted to know why he wasn’t home twenty minutes after he landed like the others did. She let him come home when he could face her, when he could hold her in his in his arms as a whole man, not a prepubescent errand boy trying to please.
That part of himself, that pleasing part, he tried to bury with everything he could. He waited a suitable length of time and dove into another loveless relationship, which lasted barely a year, mostly for the sex, and he needed a lot of it then, as now. She didn’t seem to mind. Her needs were simple, he thought, but then, he wasn’t really paying attention to her. Very unfair, he was making love to someone else, someone she could never be. It wasn’t her fault—all his. At least he was being honest.
