Breaking Conviction by Greer Rivers

Chapter Thirty

Wes itched to go after Naomi, but she’d asked him to give her space. Honoring that one wish was the least he could do after adding a new trauma to her life. The mix of disappointment and horror on her face wasn’t something he’d soon forget, but he had a job to do. He wasn’t going to let his emotions get away from him again.

Instead, he, Devil, Hawk, and Phoenix spent hours in the basement with Andrew Ascot. They’d tried every non-torture-related tactic and even the ones that were on the cusp but still had no viable information from Ascot.

“Maybe he actually doesn’t know anything,” Phoenix murmured, barely loud enough to hear over the heavy metal music drifting up from the locked basement door. “Also, Devil, my dude, I don’t know how you listen to this shit. I get why the UN considers it torture.”

They’d put on one of Devil’s workout playlists and turned the volume up to deafening decibels, playing the tracks for Ascot while they “gave him time to think.”

“ADA Aguilar said that there was enough evidence that Ascot was involved in the trafficking to sign an arrest warrant,” Wes countered, trying his best not to snap at Phoenix’s whining. He was still furious at his teammate for bringing Naomi to the interrogation room in the first place. Phoenix had done that shit on purpose, but Wes wasn’t sure yet what that purpose was. “He knows something, we just have to figure out how to convince him to tell us.”

“Yeah, well it sounds like y’all are about to level up.” Phoenix slapped his thighs before standing up from his rolling chair around the round table in the war room. “And y’all know how I feel ‘bout that, so tell me how it goes, alright?”

“Phoenix,” Hawk growled. “We need you to stay on base.”

“I will, I will. Cross my heart. I just can’t—” He tipped his head in Ascot’s direction. “I just can’t. If anyone needs me, I’ll be upstairs. Probably begging Naomi to make some more of that bacon she let get cold this morning.”

Wes perked his head up. “What do you mean ‘let get cold?’”

Phoenix shrugged. “I went upstairs after you and her had y’all’s lil’ lover’s quarrel. When I got up there, she was runnin’ around like a bat outta hell. Her plate was still full of food when she left.” He patted his stomach. “Don’t worry. I ate the rest. Can’t let good home cookin’ go to waste.”

“Wait…” Wes waved his hand. “Back up. She’s gone?”

“Yup.” Phoenix nodded. “Looked like she had places to fuckin’ be, too. I don’t think she even noticed I was up there.”

“FUCK, Phoenix, you asshole! Why are you just now telling me this?”

Phoenix frowned and waved his hands up, either too dumb to put two and two together or a genius at fucking Wes over. “Dayum, dude, chill out. I didn’t know it was a big deal. You were busy.”

“I’ll be back.” Wes stood from his rolling chair so fast it almost fell before he shoved it toward the table, not caring that it didn’t stay under.

Wes started dialing the phone before he even got to the stairwell. He took it two at a time and had to call again to make sure the shitty service wasn’t the reason why the call dropped. The dial tone mocked him on the other line until it cued the voice mail.

“Hey, lov-Naomi, I, uh, I know I said I’d give you time. And I am, I swear. I just wanted to double-check something really quick. Call me when you get this. Please.” He emphasized the last word for good measure, hoping he didn’t sound so worried that he scared her, but concerned enough for her to know he was serious.

What was going on? She’d gotten a call from Thea’s day care. Was everything okay with Thea?

Fuck, I should’ve asked on the voice mail.

Once he shouldered open the door to the second floor, he practically ran toward Naomi’s room, halting about ten feet away.

“Please be here…” He was so close and desperately wanted to just chalk his intuition up to paranoia. All he had to do to find out was walk up to her door and knock. No big deal. But that awful feeling twisting his gut made him hesitate. The quiet whirr of the air conditioning and gentle hum of the refrigerator put the silence everywhere else in stark relief.

He finally closed the gap between his hope that she’d still be there and the reality that he could’ve just scared her off for good. Leaning into the metal door, he prayed to hear something, anything, behind it. After several minutes of absolutely nothing but the AC, the refrigerator, and his pounding heart, he rapped his knuckles against the metal door, only to have it open slightly.

“Naomi?” He pushed the door open and saw…

Nothing.

Naomi and Thea hadn’t had much, but there wasn’t a trace of them in the room. None of Thea’s toys. No clothes on the floor. He walked in a daze toward the bathroom, but again, nothing. Not even a toothbrush. After a half-turn around in the room, scanning for any indicator of where she’d gone, he thumbed through his phone and found her name again.

“Come on… pick up. Pick up. Pick up. Pick up,” Wes growled over the mocking dial tone.

“Dude, calm down.”

Wes whipped around, finding Phoenix resting his shoulder against the doorjamb and felt an anger that had been brewing for over a year finally bubble up.

“Snake, you gotta chill the fuck out, man. Ain’t no way you’ll get her back with that crazy look in your eye right now. You’re on the verge of psychopathic stalker mode.”

“Shut the fuck up, Phoenix.” Wes couldn’t help the feeling that maybe he was already there. Nor could he help the overwhelming feeling that all this was partly Phoenix’s fault. “Why did you take her down to the fucking interrogation room? You knew what would happen.”

“Hey, man, I’m not the one who fuckin’ lost it on a mission yesterday. If you’d just kept your cool, she wouldn’t have had that reaction today.”

“The voice mail box you are trying to reach is full. Goodbye.”

Frustrated with Phoenix, with Ascot, but mostly with himself, Wes grumbled curses back at the robotic woman’s voice before shoving his phone back into his pocket. He swiped his face, pushing up his glasses with the movement before groaning out a loud curse.

“Talk to me, dude. What the hell’s wrong—”

Wes whirled around on Phoenix and pushed him in the chest. “She’s gone, Phoenix! Gone! Because of you! You brought her down on purpose! Why?”

Phoenix’s mock concern on his face melted, leaving a grim fury in its place. “Fuck you, Snake. You don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about.”

All of Wes’s frustration surfaced until he asked the question he’d been wondering ever since the interrogation had started. “Why weren’t you down there with us already, anyway? Was it because you were hungover? Or what? What’d you do? Wait for just the right time to go ahead and turn Naomi against me? Why do you hate me so much, Phoenix? Huh?”

Wes pushed him again, but Phoenix only took a step back. Why he was taking it, he didn’t know. The lack of reaction was too much for Wes and his vision darkened. Red filtered in around the edges and he panted like he’d just been in a fight.

Phoenix just maintained his silence, both calming Wes down and enraging him more.

“What is it? You’re always shit-talking me in meetings, never following my direction on a mission, insisting on blaming me for the disaster that was our last mission in MF7. What the fuck is wrong with you? We used to be friends, man… and now… Fuck, now you might as well be my enemy.”

“You’re not my enemy.” But Phoenix’s words came out flat, as if he didn’t truly believe it himself.

“Then why did you bring her down there? You could’ve texted me to come up or warn me, why would you—”

“Maybe she needs to see what we do! Have you ever thought of that? Maybe she needs to see what we’re capable of. It’s better she knows now who she’s gettin’ in bed with than find out later!”

“Where is this coming from? We’re trying to help shut down the trafficking ring. We’re the good guys in this situation. Yeah, we might have to get our hands dirty, but at least we’re not kidnapping and killing innocent people. What the fuck are you talking about?”

Phoenix scrubbed his head hard before slamming his hat back onto his scalp. “Everyone thinks they’re the hero of their story. But since Yemen, hasn’t it ever occurred to you that maybe we’re the villains? Think about it, man. All those women we were supposed to save? Gone. Dead or God knows what else. What would’ve happened if we’d just left them alone? Would it have been better for them?”

Wes scoffed, trying to catch up with Phoenix’s logic as a pit developed in his stomach at the answer to that question. “I don’t know, but I do know that we did our best. Phoenix, we were ambushed by men we’d trained and thought were our friends. We couldn’t have known—”

“One of us should’ve known! We were the ‘best of the best,’ and none of us figured out we were about to get stabbed in the back by men we trained? I just find that real fuckin’ hard to believe. And you’re the smartest of us. Did you really not know what was gonna happen? Or did you set us up?”

“Phoenix, what the fuck? Are you listening to yourself? Of course I didn’t set us up!”

Phoenix’s eyes narrowed. “What did you hear in Yemen?”

“What?”

“What… did you hear? I don’t know about Eagle, but I know everyone else’s headsets went static. Everyone’s but mine… and yours. So tell me, Snake. What did you hear?”

“Phoenix, what the fuck, man, are we doing this now? I gotta find Naomi—”

“What did you hear?”

“Nothing! Everything was cutting in and out or static. I caught some feedback from enemy lines, but that was it. It was all in bastardized Arabic from what I could tell, and I was trying to get through to you guys to warn you of the parts I did hear.” He waited, watching Phoenix’s face as it got darker. “Why? What’d you hear?”

“Everything.” Phoenix’s fists tightened and loosened at his sides. “You’re not my enemy, but I don’t think I can ever forgive you for that.”

“Phoenix, I don’t know—”

Wes’s phone rang in his hand and he looked down to see My Queen on the screen. “Shit, Phoenix, I have to take this but we need to talk, okay—” He looked up from the screen, only to realize he was talking to empty space. Phoenix had already left.

He wanted to go after him, because what if Naomi was fine and he’d overreacted? What if it was all in Wes’s head and he was losing the chance to have the first real conversation with his teammate in over a year? But he needed to hear Naomi’s voice, needed to hear that she and Thea were okay.

He swiped the screen and answered. “Naomi?”

“Yes.”

At her voice, relief came in waves and he collapsed onto her bed. “Thank God you called love, I was so wor—”

“Snake, I need you to stop callin’ me.” Naomi was definitely on the phone with him, but her voice was totally different. Despondent. Dead. Devoid of the laughter and light he’d come to know over the past few weeks. “We’re done.”

The two words were like barbs from a Taser gun, embedding in his skin and electrocuting him to the point of seizing up. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t talk. He just sat there dumbly on Naomi’s bed.

“After seein’ you and… what you’re capable of… I just… I can’t trust that it won’t happen again. What if you lose your temper and it’s just me there?”

“Naomi, God, please, I would never hurt you. You don’t know my past, but I swear on my life—”

“You lied to me, Snake. You lied, and you… you let your emotions lead you to beat a man to within an inch of his life. I can’t be with you. I can’t have left my… fiancé, to be with a monster.”

His words caught in his throat. “Naomi, please.” Every one of her words was a killing charge across the line, but he had to focus on what was best for Naomi and Thea. “I-I hate this decision, but… I respect it. I’m not trying to change your mind about me, but come back to BlackStone. Please. I’ll leave, but it’s not safe for you yet. If you’re ready to move out, fine, but we didn’t come up with a plan of action to keep Dean away—”

“I’m back with him.”

The words hung in the air, threatening to collapse and suffocate him.

“What?” He growled the question, beginning in his chest and he was sure she could feel the anger coming through the phone. “Naomi, what the hell are you doing? You don’t want to be with me? Fine. But for Thea’s sake, don’t go back to him.”

“It’ll be different this time. He’s said he’s gonna go to therapy. We can be a real family.”

The words twisted in his chest. Everything she was saying was something he’d always desperately wanted. Recently, he’d dreamed about it with her. But she wanted it with another man.

Of course, Dean was part of their ‘real’ family. I was just the placeholder in the abusive cycle… But what if he’s right there listening? What if he’s making her say those things?

“Please, Naomi… let’s meet somewhere and talk about this. You should at least look me in the eyes as you tear my heart out.”

There was a gasp and silence on the other end and Wes sighed.

“I care about you too much to see you go through this again. I’d need to see you, but at the very, very least, please just take a day and think everything over first.”

“It’s done. I-I’m in love with him.” The last word dipped low and landed like an anvil on his chest.

She’s not lying.

“Goodbye, Snake.”

The call ended and Wes looked at his phone, completely dumbfounded by what he’d just heard, trying to make sense of it. Had she been deliberately pitching that last word to prove she wasn’t lying? Or maybe she was trying to prove she was?

His phone vibrated in his hand again and he immediately looked at the screen, cursing at the text before he opened it.

Hawk: Break’s over. Time to get back to work.

He desperately wanted to speak with Naomi, face to face, but she was refusing to see him and he still had a job to do. They needed to get answers out of Ascot before Wes tried to figure out his next steps with her.

Phoenix was an asshole about his temper, but what his teammates and Naomi didn’t understand was that Wes had never gotten violent with anyone who didn’t deserve it. Ascot fucking deserved it, but Wes wasn’t going to seriously injure an unarmed man.

But Ascot doesn’t know that.