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Nathan gritted his teeth. “Sorry, sir, protocol isn’t my strong suit these days.”
He expected a snap in the admiral’s reply; he didn’t expect the old man’s face to smooth out or the understanding that lit his gaze.
Admiral Holloran had once been not just his superior officer, but a man he respected.
“Sit down, Nathan.” The admiral nodded to the chair behind him before taking his own seat.
Nathan glanced at Jordan. His uncle was sitting, all protocol pretty much abolished where he was concerned. But it wasn’t disrespect, it was an arrogance, a confidence that had only been thinly veiled until now.
Nathan sat down gingerly. He was still having trouble with one leg, but it was strengthening. As were the muscles in his back that he had worked to rebuild.
The admiral finally sighed as silence filled the room.
“I attended your funeral,” he stated then. “I grieved, Nathan. Seeing you now”—he shook his head—“makes me wonder sometimes at the decisions that are made behind my back. I wouldn’t have approved that mission.”
“I agreed to it.”
Simple. It was supposed to have been so simple. He still had the hole in his heel to prove it hadn’t been.
“We’ll discuss that another day,” the admiral growled. “We’re facing another problem.”
“Has my wife been informed I’m alive yet?” The words felt torn from his ruined vocal chords.
His voice was rougher, darker than it had been, but hell, at least he could talk.
“Not yet,” the admiral answered.
“I still prefer she not be told.”
Nathan stared straight ahead now. He was aware of the bandages that still covered his face, the wounds that were still healing on his body. But even more, he was very much aware of the effects of that fucking whore’s dust those bastards Fuentes and Jansen Clay had pumped into his body.
Eighteen months of it. He had been the guinea pig. The SEAL to break with the black evil they forced into him. But he hadn’t broken. He’d become a monster instead.
“Sabella’s been grieving, Nathan,” Jordan said then. “She’s still grieving. She still cries for you.”
“She’ll stop crying. Sabella’s tough.” He shrugged as though it didn’t matter and glimpsed the admiral and Jordan’s exchanged look from his periphery.
He was lying. His Bella wasn’t tough. She was soft and sweet and he swore he heard her cries in his dreams, in his nightmares. The ragged wound that was his soul would never heal, because he couldn’t get the sounds of her screams out of his head.
How much worse would her screams be if she saw him now? His gentle little Bella had loved his body. When he had walked out the door that last day he had been strong, powerful, but even more, he’d been a man who knew how to be gentle. That man didn’t exist anymore. There was nothing gentle in the dark, twisted dreams he had now. Dreams of death. And dreams of Bella. And a hunger he knew he would never restrain if she came to him.
“I’m dead,” he told them, his voice cold as he thought of the consequences of trying to return to her. “I’ll stay dead.”
The psychologist was scribbling furiously on his pad. Nathan’s gaze jerked to him. As though he could feel the spikes of fury aimed his way, the balding little man lifted his head.
His shoulders shifted beneath his ill-fitting suit jacket, and behind his plain glasses, his brown eyes flickered nervously.
Nathan’s eyes jerked back to the admiral. “Would you get him the hell out of my sight, sir.”
Admiral Holloran stared back at him for long seconds before nodding to the doctors and jerking his head to the door. They all filed out quickly. None of them were comfortable in his presence. They never had been. Of course, they’d had to deal with an animal for the first three months that he had been under their care.
Admiral Holloran sighed wearily and stared back at him.
“Last chance, son,” he said softly. “Let us call your wife. Send someone for her.”
He bared his teeth in fury. “No, sir.” The “sir” was habitual, the growling rage in his voice wasn’t. It was pumping through him, numbing his mind, filling his senses with the echoed images of his nightmares.
“Enough.” Jordan spoke into the silence. “I warned you he wouldn’t change his mind.”
