Bone Deep by Lea Griffith Read Free Book Online

what he spoke of and the deflection from his problem to hers didn’t go unnoticed.
    “What will you do then?”
    Grant seemed genuinely concerned. She couldn’t help but wonder at the reason. “Why do you care?”
    “He is a killer. Oh, I know you and your sisters have seen a side of him others may not have. The side that protects and heals. Make no mistake, the man is just a breath away from being what his father was.”
    She turned her gaze to Grant and studied his features. “You know something else you aren’t sharing, Mr. Fielding. That’s not very nice.”
    He shrugged. “You only call me Mr. Fielding when you’re pissed. And yes, I know a lot I don’t share. It’s what makes me valuable.”
    She rolled her eyes again. “I’m waiting.”
    “Both Dmitry’s father and Dmitry himself were trained by the same one who trained Joseph.”
    He dropped that bomb and Bone’s insides froze. The thought of Dmitry in the hands of Badr Abela made her skin prickle and her hands clench. Badr Abela had been a Dutch-born Moroccan mixed-martial arts master. Versed in kick-boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Jeet Kun Doo, Muay Thai and plain old gutter fighting, he had been a preeminent killer. If you wanted to learn a million ways to kill, or die, he was who you sought. He’d also been a sadist. He enjoyed pain—his, but more importantly, other people’s. If anyone had been born evil, it was Badr Abela.
    “I see that caught your attention,” Grant mused. “Perhaps now you understand my concern when it comes to your safety once Dmitry finds out the truth of his father’s passing.”
    Bone said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say. Her fight with Sacha Asinimov had been brutal and now she understood why. Badr Abela .
    When her training at Joseph’s hands ended, he’d sent her to Morocco. For an entire year she’d trained under Abela. For an entire year she’d suffered. She’d been away from her sisters, but that had been the smallest of the pains she endured. The agonies, or as Badr Abela called them “lessons”, only ended when she’d taken his head into her hands and twisted the life from his body.
    She clenched her fists as she struggled to contain the hate.
    She had learned so much under the man who called himself Master. Abela taught her to channel her rage. He taught her to be quicker in mind and body than her opponents. He was the one who taught her lusting for death was as natural as breathing and if she accepted it, took it inside her and succored that desire, she would become death in whatever form she chose. What her father began when she’d been a baby, had found fruit and manifested first under Joseph then Abela. Master, had given her a target and she’d taken everything he taught her and utilized it perfectly.
    His last look had been one of surprise.
    She’d been nine years old when she stuffed the head she’d ripped from his shoulders into a knapsack and hopped a plane to Arequipa. Bone had hitched a ride to the compound and walked through the woods, avoiding all the booby-traps and cameras, until she walked into the main house and found Joseph sitting at his dinner table, a slew of guests dressed in shimmery clothing and shiny jewelry fawning over the bastard, listening to some story he was telling them.
    She had taken Abela’s head from the knapsack and placed it on Joseph’s ivory dinner plate before she stepped back and stared at him.
    He had clapped in delight and then had Minton string her up from the highest cliff in the mountains. She had soiled his dinner plate, spoiled his grand party, and should be punished after all. He left her in the hold of those fraying ropes for three days. It had taken fifteen men to overcome her and she’d sworn she’d never be caught that way again. Yet another lesson Abela taught her—this one from the grave.
    “I killed Abela at the age of nine, Grant. Dmitry may have trained under him, but I am him.”
    Grant winced, rubbed his chest and nodded.