Ties That Bind by Elizabeth Blair Read Free Book Online Page B

he should grab it while Jimmie was pouring himself another drink. But another voice was telling him not to care. “Would you like me to leave?”
    Jimmie frowned, hoping he looked some manner of sober to this man sitting across from him. He wasn’t – he’d been drinking long before he reached the compound after hearing that Ashli had spent the last few hours being shot at in some rundown warehouse by punks that no one could seem to put a name to. But he knew it wasn’t Mitch’s fault. By Ashli’s account, she would have perished if Mitch hadn’t been there to cover her ass. He wanted to blame someone, he wanted to strangle the life out of the people that had done this but without any details his hands were tied. He emptied his glass and extended the bottle to Mitch, pouring him half a glass. “No.”
    “I had to call in Sonny Markesi to get us out. I hope that’s not a problem.”
    “You’re longtime friends with him, right?”
    “Since childhood,” Mitch nodded. “I didn’t have a lot of options.”
    Sinking back onto the uncomfortable rigid back chair, he shrugged with drunken non-committal. He tugged his white pleated shirt out of his dress pants, letting it hang loose across his lap. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the scent of cedar wash over him as he inhaled deeply to calm the tremble in his stomach. His baby sister. Nearly killed and for what?  No one seemed to know. She was the reason he’d killed his right hand, his closest friend, his most trusted confidant two weeks earlier. Alex had threatened her life if he and his girlfriend were not allowed admittance into the witness protection program. He wanted to gamble with Jimmie: Ashli’s life for his freedom. It was one of the few bets Jimmie was unwilling to make.
    His eyes opened slowly, trying to focus on Mitch’s form a few feet away. The flickering torches surrounding the patio area made it difficult any time but tonight, hours into his drinking binge, it made it impossible. He dropped his gaze, focusing on the buttons of his shirt, which were much closer and seemed not to be dancing with quite so much vigor. “You saved my sister’s life. I don’t give a damn how you accomplished it. Just that you did. You have my sincerest gratitude.”
    Mitch withheld the bitter, sarcastic retort that came to his mind. He hadn’t saved her for Jimmie’s benefit. He hadn’t even saved her because the IOC would have expected him to. Protecting people had been ingrained in him since birth, the absence of suffering one of the idealistic causes his homemaker mother had long aspired to. She had dragged him on every mercy mission she went on no matter how small or boring to a child – pans of lasagna with mozzarella so thick it required spatulas to dip it out of the metal baking tin were dropped off at the old widow down the street that had lost her husband in a car bombing; boxes of homemade cannoli with tiny chocolate shavings decorating the ends were delivered to the orphanage each Saturday; and then there were the pastrami and pancetta sandwiches she handed out to the neighborhood kids on the evenings when their fathers, normally always prompt for dinner, didn’t show up.
    She knew, he knew…a late father meant he would not be coming at all. Sometimes it was simple – he had skipped town, either because he was fed up or because he was running from the law. Other times, the times his mother somehow always knew and prepared Mitch for in advance, the father had disappeared and would never be found. No body. No trace. No sign of him ever again. Like a vapor of smoke that was there and then suddenly gone, these were the men that dropped into obscurity and rarely, if ever, did anyone bother to ask where they had gone.
    He wanted to hate Jimmie, knowing that he was the type of man who made these fathers disappear. But he couldn’t. How many people had Mitch himself made disappear even under the close scrutiny of the IOC?  Dozens. Hundreds. He’d