AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.”
–Ken Kesey
“Revenge is like a ghost. It takes over every man it touches. Its thirst cannot be quenched until the last man standing has fallen.”
–Vladmir Makarov
“Hate is a train…That thunders aimless through my head…And hate is the fame…Chained to the wheel until I’m dead…And from a darkness I descend…
Clenching a torch of sweet revenge…”
–Hate Train, Metallica
Prologue
It never rained in Los Angeles in June.
Gray slouched down in the busted-up lawn chair under the torn cloth awning of his trailer. It flapped in the wind above him, and rain like he hadn’t seen in ages pounded down from the heavens, soaking the gravel. If it didn’t let up soon, the flooding and mudslides would inevitably start. The city couldn’t handle massive amounts of rain that fell too fast.
The rainfall made his scar itch and he absently rubbed at the five-inch-long white slash that stretched down his inner forearm. Memories he’d been fighting back all day began to assault him, and the only way he knew how to cope was to make himself numb.
Every time it rained like this, he did the only thing he could. He got stinking drunk.
Finishing off his fifth beer, Gray waited for the buzz of indifference to kick in, but it didn’t come. Granted, it usually took quite a few beers because he was a big guy. Far from a lightweight at six foot four and nearly two-hundred and twenty pounds of solid muscle, he was sometimes tempted to drown his pain in something stronger, not unlike other guys he’d known.
Just crush and snort some hydrocodone and oxycodone. Quick and easy. He had a bottle of fentanyl in his cabinet, legally prescribed, but every time he shook out a handful of pills, he ended up putting them back. His buddy died of a fentanyl overdose and Gray didn’t want to go out that way.
If he decided to take his life, he’d do it in a blaze of glory, not convulsing on the floor in a pile of his own vomit and piss.
As a former Navy SEAL, he still had standards to maintain.Yeah, right.He laughed and it sounded rusty, unused. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been genuinely happy. No, wait, that wasn’t true.
It was the day he received his Trident pin.
What a joke. Irony at its best.
If only he knew then what he knew now. How his career choice would give him the highest and lowest points of his life.
There was no denying he was made to be a SEAL. Despite his size, he was fast and nimble. He worked well under pressure and didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. And, most importantly, he was a team player and always had his buddies’ backs.
Until he didn’t.
Gray sighed, doing his best to fight the horrific memories he tried so damn hard to keep locked up. But tonight they were leaking out, soaking his brain in their toxicity, dragging him down to drown in the pain.
Dropping his empty bottle, he threaded his fingers through his slightly graying temples and pulled at the short brown strands, trying to force the suffering, torment and guilt back into the box. His name, like the premature silver in his beard and temples, fit him perfectly. Mr. Doom and Gloom himself. No doubt about it, Gray was a hot mess and he knew it.
He just didn’t know how to fix himself.
At this point, he didn’t believe he could. Nothing had worked. Not the counselors or their forced therapy. Not the self-help books Zane had sent him. And certainly not the alcohol. Most people this low would turn to their friends, but he didn’t have any left.
Well, except for Zane. And they barely talked anymore. Thank Christ Zane had left when he did and never got sucked into ghost ops like Gray had.
His entire team had been killed in South America when a mission went sideways, and there was nothing Gray could’ve done to save them. The fact he’d survived himself had been a miracle. Now he viewed it as a curse.
Gray hated his life, how he was pissing it away, still unable to cope with the guilt and depression. Survivor’s guilt, his therapist had called it. Gray called it the worst sort of hell. He’d failed his brothers, the men who had been his closest friends, and witnessed the horror that had accompanied their deaths.
On nights like these, he wanted nothing more than to leave this world and join his brothers in Valhalla.
But Gray’s problem was he didn’t have it in his DNA to give up. He was a tenacious sonofabitch. However, the sad truth was, he’d lost hope a long time ago. With no family left either, his world seemed to be growing more dark and more lonely. At least losing his parents hadn’t been a shock. They’d had him when they were older and passed away peacefully five years ago, one right after the other. It had been far too long since he’d visited their graves back in Tennessee. Just another pound of guilt to weigh down his fractured, barely beating heart.
