Page 9 of Fighting for Scarlett

She wasn’t telling him how to make the drug which meant all those torture devices hanging from the walls were ones she would become intimately acquainted with.

A wicked grin filled Raul’s face as he followed her line of sight. “Oh, I’ll use every one of those on you if I have to. Sooner or later, you’ll talk. Pain is a very powerful motivator.”

With that, he reached out toward the ragged hole in her arm and pressed his thumb into it.

Agony burned through her body, and Scarlett couldn’t hold back an ear-piercing scream as her body tried instinctively to get away from the pain.

Only there was nowhere to go.

How was she going to do this?

January 10th

7:12 P.M.

His mood had been getting progressively worse since he walked into the briefing room and found out the woman he hadn't been able to get out of his head was a traitor to her country.

Like father like son.

Okay, so his father hadn't fallen for a traitor, but then again, Tate had always had a penchant for outdoing everybody around him.

At first, as a kid, it was because he always felt like he was competing for his parents’ attention. As an only child, one would assume all attention would be focused on him, but his parents’ love for one another was so big, so deep, so powerful that they had a tendency to get caught up in it and forget about everyone else.

Including their son.

Then, it had been about trying to pull his dad out of the depths of the grief-filled depression he had gotten stuck in after losing his wife. Only eight at the time, little Tate had been afraid of losing the only parent he had left and thought if he was stronger, smarter, more helpful, and more obedient than any other kid around, his dad would have to notice and be a dad again.

After that, it was because he needed the self-reassurance that he was worthy. That just because his parents loved each other more than they loved him, and his dad couldn’t get over losing his wife, he still had value.

That determination and single-minded focus had served him well. He’d graduated high school early, then college, then worked hard to make it through training and become a SEAL. Not an easy feat, and one he was proud of.

But all the determination and single-minded focus in the world couldn’t stop him from falling for a woman just like the one who had finally pulled his dad out of his hole of depression.

A liar.

A betrayer.

A backstabber.

A selfish, self-absorbed woman who didn't care who she hurt as long as she got what she wanted and was fully prepared to throw anybody under the bus.

At least his father’s ex-wife was nothing but a lowlife drug dealer. After getting his father hooked on drugs, when she got caught dealing, she shoved all the blame onto him. Spending all his time high, his father had been unable to properly defend himself and was now serving a ten-year prison sentence while his scheming, lying, now ex-wife claimed she was nothing but a poor, abused spouse.

Tate wasn’t pretending his father didn't have faults, but he wasn’t abusive.

At least his former stepmother had only wiggled her way out of a drug trafficking charge, unlike the woman he hadn't been able to forget. She was prepared to backstab her own team and sell something that could have been used for good to a weapons dealer who was indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths.

There was not a doubt in his mind that right at this second, Scarlett Madden was currently sitting in Raul Castillo’s jungle mansion relaxing and enjoying herself, believing that she had gotten away with it.

Well, she was sadly mistaken.

They would take her down.

He would take her down.

And once she was in custody, he would personally take it upon himself to make sure she was punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Although he’d rather she got the punishment all traitors deserved.

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