Page 11 of Game of Love
Still… I was sure someone else could help him.
“I’m on my own personal mission,” I answered.
“Balthazar Kane?” He offered and I tensed at the name, biting down hard on my back teeth.
That name…
Balthazar Kane.
He was the reason for the way I’d lived my life for the last five years.
Hearing his name made me think of them.
My team.
And most of all I thought of her…
Claire.
She was always in my mind. Always there.
Balthazar killed her right in front of me. A bullet to her head… gone just like that.
The woman I loved.
She was the reason why I’d lived the last five years of my life seeking vengeance. Seeking to kill that mad man who took her from me.
I first came encountered Balthazar Kane when Ethan put my team on a mission to kill him on sight.
He was no mere criminal.
Being part of the global terrorist group called the Ra, Balthazar got him his own sweet section on the world’s most wanted list. Worse than belonging to the Ra was the fact that he was the leader of the Spades, a faction of the group. Anarchists, terrorists extremists, assassins. Think of the worst thing and they were it. They were the people who put plots in motion to exact national and global devastation.
On that nightmare day when Claire was taken from me we went against mission protocol to rescue Paul Jenkins, an agent in our team. Ethan agreed it even though it was against everything we stood for. It meant complete disavowment if we got caught and no help would come if we needed it. He agreed it though because our team were like a little family. Close and the kind that would have done anything for each other. Going in for Paul wasn’t up for discussion whether Ethan agreed it or not.
That was the last time I had any correspondence with Ethan and the damn mission more than went to hell. When we got there it looked like Paul had been dead for at least a week. Except, we’d spoken to him that morning.
It was a trap. A damn trap
Balthazar killed Claire and a bomb took me and the rest of the team out seconds later.
It was a bomb that would have killed me if I was as close as they were.
I survived and I’d been on a personal crusade to find that motherfucker ever since.
For the last five years I’d been looking for him. That was why I’d enlisted myself in all these crazy jobs. Looking for a man like that took money.
Every time I had some lead on him I’d had to throw down serious cash to pay various people and most important stay hidden. Stay listed as dead. Balthazar had never been easy to locate even when I had the best resources at my fingertips.
“Balthazar Kane… funny how my last conversation with you was about him. How’d you know I was still looking for him?” I had to ask.
“Whispers on the underground.” Ethan nodded. It was enough of an answer.
Maybe I did slip up and hadn’t realized. Then again, speak to the right people and offer them the right price and you could get dirt on anybody.
“Xander… if you help me, I will help you,” Ethan added. I intensified my gaze on him. “Balthazar fell off grid at the same time you did, probably because your team were the only people who could get close to him. In all my years of searching for that son of a bitch your team were the only people to get close to him and I think that was why he found a way to stop you. He knew you would go in and try to rescue one of your own. That was the fucking trap. Believe me when I say we want him stopped. But the reason I’m here today is a priority. If you help me, I have word from the leadership that we will reform a team specifically to take down Balthazar.”
Now he got my attention.
