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CHAPTER ONE
Nine months later
Nathan Malone stood in the clinical white office he had been brought to. He was six months past the most horrific nightmare he could have imagined enduring. Six months. He knew how many days, how many hours, how many minutes and seconds had passed since he had "died."
Since the day he walked out his front door and headed into hell. The mission was supposed to be simple. Rescue three young girls from a cartel drug lord in Colombia and allow himself to be captured just long enough to draw out the government spy working with the cartel lord, Diego Fuentes.
There had been an electronic tracker in his heel that he could activate the moment he saw the spy. Unfortunately, the spy had known that. His heel had been sliced open before the spy ever appeared. Before Nathan could realize the danger he was in, he had been strapped to a hardwood table and the first of a series of synthetic drugs pumped into him.
Whore's dust. A powerful, blinding aphrodisiac. Hell. Because there had been no relief. Because Nathan, enraged, crazed, animalistic, had been unable to break the vows he had made to his wife. No matter the amount of drugs. No matter the provocation.
He stared back now at the small group of men who had rescued him from Diego Fuentes's hell. Three doctors, an admiral, some scowling bastard in a suit, supposedly a JAG representative, and his uncle Jordan Malone.
Jordan wasn't in uniform. That was telling enough. His resignation from the SEALs three months before had surprised Nathan when he'd heard about it. Of course, there wasn't much left to do but listen to rumor in the highly secured, specialized private clinic he had been recovering in.
Surgery after surgery to repair his body and his face. They'd fixed what had been damaged. They'd rebuilt what couldn't be reset. But his mind still felt broken. The man he had once been was no more than a dream.
He was still a SEAL. He hadn't resigned. But he had a feeling he wouldn't be one for long.
"Lieutenant Malone." The admiral nodded back at him, his lined, weathered face drawn in worry and concern. "You're doing well."
Like hell he was.
He stood to attention, but this was f**king shit. He felt like he was being stretched on a rack of fire.
The three doctors watched silently. The psychologist assigned to him made a few notes. Damned bastard was always making notes.
"Thank you, sir," he finally managed to say. Hell, he just wanted to get back to the exercises he'd been doing. The ones that pushed his body to exhaustion, that made the hellacious arousal that still cursed him lessen.
The admiral frowned back at him.
"Are you in pain, son?" he asked him.
Nathan forced patience. Forced patience didn't sit well right now.
"Yes, sir, I am." He wasn't going to lie about it either.
The admiral nodded. "That explains your borderline disrespect. Maybe."
Nathan gritted his teeth. "Sorry, sir, protocol isn't my strong suit these days."
He expected a snap in the admiral's reply; he didn't expect the old man's face to smooth out or the understanding that lit his gaze.
Admiral Holloran had once been not just his superior officer, but a man he respected.
"Sit down, Nathan." The admiral nodded to the chair behind him before taking his own seat.
Nathan glanced at Jordan. His uncle was sitting, all protocol pretty much abolished where he was concerned. But it wasn't disrespect, it was an arrogance, a confidence that had only been thinly veiled until now.
Nathan sat down gingerly. He was still having trouble with one leg, but it was strengthening. As were the muscles in his back that he had worked to rebuild.
The admiral finally sighed as silence filled the room.
"I attended your funeral," he stated then. "I grieved, Nathan. Seeing you now"—he shook his head— "makes me wonder sometimes at the decisions that are made behind my back. I wouldn't have approved that mission."
"I agreed to it."
Simple. It was supposed to have been so simple. He still had the hole in his heel to prove it hadn't been.
"We'll discuss that another day." the admiral growled. "We're facing another problem."
"Has my wife been informed I'm alive yet?" The words felt torn from his ruined vocal chords.
His voice was rougher, darker than it had been, but hell, at least he could talk.
"Not yet," the admiral answered.
"I still prefer she not be told."
Nathan stared straight ahead now. He was aware of the bandages that still covered his face, the wounds that were still healing on his body. But even more, he was very much aware of the effects of that f**king whore's dust those bastards Fuentes and Jansen Clay had pumped into his body.
Eighteen months of it. He had been the guinea pig. The SEAL to break with the black evil they forced into him. But he hadn't broken. He'd become a monster instead.
"Sabella's been grieving, Nathan," Jordan said then. "She's still grieving. She still cries for you."
"She'll stop crying. Sabella's tough." He shrugged as though it didn't matter and glimpsed the admiral and Jordan's exchanged look from his periphery.
He was lying. His Bella wasn't tough. She was soft and sweet and he swore he heard her cries in his dreams, in his nightmares. The ragged wound that was his soul would never heal, because he couldn't get the sounds of her screams out of his head.
How much worse would her screams be if she saw him now? His gentle little Bella had loved his body. When he had walked out the door that last day he had been strong, powerful, but even more, he'd been a man who knew how to be gentle. That man didn't exist anymore. There was nothing gentle in the dark, twisted dreams he had now. Dreams of death. And dreams of Bella. And a hunger he knew he would never restrain if she came to him.
"I'm dead," he told them, his voice cold as he thought of the consequences of trying to return to her. "I'll stay dead."
The psychologist was scribbling furiously on his pad. Nathan's gaze jerked to him. As though he could feel the spikes of fury aimed his way, the balding little man lifted his head.
His shoulders shifted beneath his ill-fitting suit jacket, and behind his plain glasses, his brown eyes flickered nervously.
Nathan's eyes jerked back to the admiral. "Would you get him the hell out of my sight, sir."