Page 44 of Forging Bonds: Part Two

I nod, my smile sharp, “Pretty much.”

“Exactly what did you do for HID?” Van asks.

Ransom grins, “Van has a point, we know that you worked for them, and it was the jobs that no one else wanted to do. We assumed that they were dangerous, but what exactly were you doing?”

“Things that meant that I didn’t have to worry about keeping people alive,” I reply, somewhat bluntly. “I was brought in when no one else could get the job done because the person was either incredibly well protected, or too dangerous for anyone else to want to go near. To be fair, there was only one, maybe two jobs like that. The rest of the experience comes from the fact that the jobs were incredibly dangerous, so it was either them or me.”

I don’t tell them that I did die multiple times, not as many as I did when I was a prisoner of the sick fucker that Coen and Dimi saved me from, but I did die. Now is not the time to bring up that conversation, and there is a chance that someone may be listening. That conversation absolutely should not be overheard.

“They put you in deadly situations?” Griff practically growls. “I mean, we knew that, but there are dangerous situations, and then there are ones like the one that you’re describing, where you have no choice and it’s either their life or yours.”

I shrug, “It is what it is, and it’s partly thanks to my reputation with Dimitri, which is why they put me into those situations. You said that you guys knew about the raid at the fight ring, did you not hear anything about me?”

They all shake their heads.

“We didn’t really have many of the details of the actual case. We were brought in as backup,” Reed replies.

Chapter Sixteen

Neith

“Actually, come to think of it, considering that you were so close to Dimitri, and such an integral part of his operation, I’m surprised that we didn’t know about you,” Raiden says with a frown, as he begins to walk again, and we all do too.

“At the beginning, Dimitri made sure to keep all of us out of the public eye. We couldn’t do what we did if everyone knew who we were. After he changed and he moved away from what we were, and everything that came after it, Kar and I still made sure to keep as out of the knowledge of others as possible, we were obviously known but not widely so,” I explain.

“Kar?” River asks curiously.

“Yeah, he really was like a brother to me. Fiercely protective, but would mess with me all the time, and didn’t treat me any differently just because I was a human. Coen, Dimi, and he used to have the most epic sparringmatches, they were literally explosive. He helped to keep an eye on me around the more dangerous supes if Coen and Dimitri weren’t around. When Dimitri changed, he also tried to distract him as much as possible so that I could avoid Dimitri’s poisonous and hurtful words and actions as much as he was able to. Obviously, he couldn’t do it all the time or even too often, since he had his own jobs to do,” I explain with a fond smile.

“Sounds like someone I’d like to meet,” Doc says with a smile.

“He’d like you guys,” I grin.

“Where is he now?” Ransom asks curiously.

“He’s still with Dimitri,” I reply with a frown. “He said that someone had to keep an eye on him. He also knew that there was no way that HID would protect him, and he had made too many enemies and done too much to go to SID and hope that they didn’t take him down. He had done no more than I did. He just wanted to stick around for Dimitri, even though Dimitri treated him just as badly as he treated me. I never really understood it.”

“Huh,” Doc replies, with a slight frown.

“When was the last time that you saw him?” Raiden asks, distracting me before I can ask Doc what he’s thinking.

My eyebrows draw down as I try to think of how long it’s been, “It must have been a good few years. I have seen him since I got out and started to work for HID, but it’s been a long time. Dimitri followed him the last time and let loose a torrent of verbal abuse that nearly broke me. Kar knocked him out, gave me a giant hug, threw Dimitri over his shoulder, and told me not to worry, he’d keep him away. I didn’t see him again.”

My frown deepens as I think back to that moment, looking at it from an outside point of view, now time has dulled the sting of his words and actions. I’m most likely remembering it wrong, and seeing things that I want to see, it was a long time ago, but looking back, I would almost be tempted to say that Dimitri let Kar knock him out. Kar is strong, but he and Dimitri fought all thetime, there’s no way that he was able to surprise Dimitri enough to knock him out. Plus, Dimitri is stronger than Kar.

I shake my head. I’m not going down that rabbit hole, not again. I spent a long time making excuses and trying to find reasons for Dimitri’s behavior when there weren’t any, and I can’t allow myself to start doing that again, all it does is cause me pain.

“Well, if everything went to plan, then Dimitri is most likely in one of our prisons now, so you might be able to see Kar again,” Griff points out, with a slight frown between his eyebrows.

“Why are you frowning?” Ransom asks.

Griff’s frown becomes deeper, “I don’t know. I just got an uneasy feeling, my magic stirred.”

“A vision?” Raiden asks.

Griff shakes his head, “I didn’t see anything, but I would definitely say that the feeling was a premonition. I just don’t know exactly what it’s about.”

“Give it a day or two, and you’ll probably get the full vision that will let you know what the feeling was about. That’s how it usually works,” River suggests.

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