The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like something that wouldn’t work.
“I’ll deal.” I sighed.
“Xander, I’m here if you need me. No point bottling things up. We trust each other. That’s the way it’s been for years. Even if your old buddies come back with their need for your skills that doesn’t change shit to me. Talking about work and talking about life goes hand in hand. Because when your mind’s taken up with life you can’t focus on the shit we get up to.” He smirked and nodded, putting out his hand to bump fists with mine.
I obliged in the action we’d shared like it was some act to seal the promise of trust.
“Thanks bro. See you later.”
“Sure. I’m gonna continue working on my ideas. I think I can get a good head start on what we need. I discovered a park we may be able to enter to get into the tunnels. We’ll see though.”
It sounded good. Before I met Jia earlier on, Wes got the building plans for The Grand Marchesi showing the casino and the hotel but also a whole secret area that wasn’t listed on the records City Hall kept. Wes had a friend help him retrieve these new building plans and while I may be all worked up now, I had faith that the blueprints we’d been looking for were there.
It seemed like the perfect place to hide them. Giovanni Marchesi was a real son of a bitch and I would never understand how he could have fathered a sweet woman like Jia, but fuck I had to give the man credit for his ingenious ideas.
He’d gone from arranging an ambush weeks ago on a military envoy carrying the blue prints designed by NASA for a hybrid nuke, to hiding them so well that not even guys like me could find it. He definitely deserved credit for that.
“All being well we can wrap this up this week,” I stated. That was what I needed to focus on. Wrapping everything up. The people Giovanni was working for couldn’t be allowed to further their plans.
I’d seen him talking with The Chameleon and Diego. I saw them myself and knew how real the shit was. The Chameleon was an illegal arms trader nobody could locate for more than five minutes before he disappeared and Diego was of the Cuban Cartel. Just the names of those guys could put the fear of God in anybody. No matter how badass they were. Giovanni, The Chameleon and Diego. Big names but who they were working for had to be bigger.
We didn’t know all the players in this game but we knew they were big. No mere person could want the blueprint designs for a nuke just for a keepsake.
I was here to get the blueprints back before The Chameleon could take them to whoever was supposed to have them next.
That was the part I had to focus on.
All we knew right now was Giovanni was hiding the prints somewhere to keep them safe and The Chameleon had told him he wasn’t ready to take them yet.
It was all being considered a global threat so if I allowed whatever fucked up plan they had to come to fruition it meant disaster for everyone.
And, I didn’t just have them to worry about. There was The Ra too.
Terrorists… terrorists linked to Balthazar.
Balthazar was another reminder of how I’d gotten to this point and that I needed to do my job properly if I was going to get the help I wanted to find him.
He was the leader of The Spades, a faction of the Ra. He was a man I wasn’t likely to find by myself, or even with Wes’ help.
Wes and I had been from one corner of the globe to the next for the last five years in my pursuit to find him. All leads on him had gone to shit. Anytime I thought I was close I came out with nothing.
I was out for blood and vengeance. I wanted his head on a stake for killing Claire.
Ethan promised me help to bring him down if I helped with this mission to find the blueprints.
I was supposed to be dead too like my other teammates that were blown up after Balthazar killed Claire.
I’d been a dead man walking all these years looking for vengeance and this gig made me see that I couldn’t keep on like I was for the rest of my life.
I couldn’t keep looking and hoping I’d kill the asshole then get that redemption I’d wanted so I could face Claire’s father, Jack.
There was so much to all of this mess.
Too much.
Right now everything was such a fucked up mess.
No wonder my head was ready to explode.
