SEAL Team Seven Tyler: Book 4 (3 page)

The latest suspicion that he might’ve been murdered was heavy on my mind. It fucked with me to think that he’d come home to live out his latter years in peace only to be cut down by someone he might’ve trusted. I’m pretty sure each of my brothers had the same thoughts running through his head right now; if we find the fuck he’s done.

But we had more to take into consideration these days. I have no doubt a few months earlier we would’ve waged all out war and gone head to head toe to toe and not given a fuck, but now we had women and babies and shit.

I didn’t regret that shit for a second, just the thought of her and my child in her womb fills me with the kind of joy I never thought to feel ever. But the thought of them in the midst of all this danger was making me twitchy. I have half a fucking mind to let Ty pop his fucking leash, the only thing holding me back is, I’m not sure I’d be able to bring him back if I let him.

We went over what we had so far for the one-hundredth time, but that was a big part of what we did, it’s what made us the elite force that we were. We never made a move until we’d looked at shit from every perceivable angle. We had to out think the enemy and since these fucks were still hidden we were walking a minefield.

I had no doubt we’d get to the bottom of shit though we’d already made strides there. We knew one of the main players in the game. A very powerful family to be sure, but nothing we couldn’t bring the fuck down.

The only question is, are we gonna do this shit behind the scenes where they have moneyed suits to clean up their shit and keep it buried? Or are we gonna take it to the people and put their shit on the world scene?

Whatever happened it had to happen soon. I want to be married before my son gets here. As much as I’ve been fucking Dani in the raw, as many times as I’ve told her I was going to breed her, I don’t think I expected it to happen this soon.

Shit, this was really happening. In less than a year of us moving here my life had taken a turn, the best fucking thing to ever happen to me outside of meeting the men I had come to love as brothers.

I could do without the throwing up shit though; I mean what the fuck. With all the shit we can do today we can’t come up with a way to do away with that shit?

I need to take her to the doctor but I’m waiting on that shit for another day or so, until we know more about what these assholes are gonna try next. For now I was satisfied that she was healthy and there was nothing to worry about, except that her man was holding her prisoner.

My mind went back to Ty and that look I’d intercepted tonight. Lo didn’t know the half of it, that little fucker was on the brink. It won’t take much to have him going ape-shit, and now with the baby here and both Dani and Gaby pregnant, I knew he was a pot about to boil the fuck over.

Hopefully those will be the very things that will keep his hotheaded ass contained, I can only hope. The truth is I’m getting tired of holding him in check; half the time he’s spot on with his shit. The only drawback is he might get his ass thrown in the chair if I left him to his own devices.

“We need to have another talk with Ty, he needs to know that it’s okay. He likes her I know he does no matter how he tries to hide that shit.”

“And if we want to keep him from flipping his shit over this fuckfest we’d better figure out a way to get it through his thick skull that the shit that happened in his past was not his fault and should not stand in the way of him finding happiness now.” They all nodded but I knew it was going to be left up to Lo and me to deal with his ass, fucking wimps.

Tyler

Damn, that was the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a long time. I’d snuck the baby home with me and locked the damn doors before fading everything to black. The truth was I didn’t want to be alone. I’m not gonna look too hard at the reasons behind that shit. Let’s just say I didn’t want to be stuck with my own damn company.

I was pissed as fuck at everything that was going on inside my head, and I knew that the best way to calm my shit down was to have my baby Zak with me. Even though the little traitor had called her daddy’s name before mine.

I’d put the pillows all around the perimeter of the bed and slept with her pretty much on my chest with one eye practically open. At some point I must’ve fallen off because I woke up feeling like I’d got a solid eight, which was something that never happens.

She was trying to force her fingers in my mouth and babbling away at me, that’s what woke me up. I grinned at her because hey, cute kid, and she gave her uncle Ty one of her sweet smiles.

I had a fleeting thought of Victoria before I ruthlessly pushed it aside. Sometime last night before I’d given in to sleep I’d made up my mind to leave that shit alone.

If I didn’t have feelings for her it would be so easy, but it was because I did that I had to let her go, let her find someone else…fuck me. I grabbed the baby as tight as I could without hurting her and willed the nearness of her sweet innocence to wash the pain away.

I guess telling myself to back off hadn’t worked as well as I thought it did, not if the mere thought of her with someone else made me this fucking mental. How the fuck was I supposed to live here now? What if she met someone and they had a life? Could I see her with another man, could I watch her build a family…I almost threw the fuck up at the images in my head.

“I’ll kill her first.” Yeah, and how does that make any sense Tyler? She isn’t the one who swore not to have a life, you can’t ask her to make that sacrifice. That shit sounded good, but I wasn’t fucking having it. I didn’t tell her to come after me, to give me sweet smiles and look at me with promises in her eyes.

What if we had some kind of arrangement, where we could live separate lives but still…you can’t ask her to do that either asshole. How do you think she’s gonna feel when she sees all her friends walking down the aisle? She’s gonna want that shit too and you can’t give it to her. Let her go. “No.” Victoria…The pain was like a hot poker in my chest. I actually felt close to tears as I mourned her, the promise of her.

The baby moved on my chest and as if sensing my heartache laid her head on my heart and wrapped her tiny arms around me. Fucking heartbreaker; I gotta remember to remind Zak, we gotta teach her how to handle herself for when we weren’t there. Pretty soon she’ll be in kindergarten and shit and the little fuckers…Ty what the fuck?

***

“Morning cupcake, you muddy?” I didn’t smell anything approaching the smell of a dumpster in the Arizona heat with the remains of an animal carcass in it, so I was inclined to believe that she was clean.

No such luck though, she was a mess and I had to run her a bath and get us both together to take her home for her mom to feed her before she started her shit. Of course bath time was a whole production with this one and it was a lucky thing I’d filched some of the bath toys her auntie Vicki had bought her; auntie Vicki…

Dude, seriously? If I didn’t know better I would swear that bitch made shit was rubbing off on me. I washed her up while she tried to drown my ass as she wet down the whole bathroom with her shit, talking my ear off the whole time.

“Say uncle Ty.” I think she knew what she was doing because every time I said that shit she’d look at me and grin. I managed to get us both bathed and dressed without too much hassle just before she started fussing.

In the kitchen I found a note on the refrigerator door. Apparently her dad had come up for air long enough last night to bring some expressed milk over for her while we were asleep. Sweet, that meant I could stay in a little longer which was good seeing as it was the ass crack of dawn and I wasn’t in the mood to see anyone, I was still a little raw.

“Okay little girl, let’s get you fed and then uncle Ty is gonna teach you how to do crunches.” She answered me like she knew what the fuck I was saying, and I carried on with our usual convo about boys and how icky they were. I figured if I start from now it’ll sink in by the time she’s ten.

We went through my morning routine with her talking a mile a minute and getting into shit before it was time to start the day. Her father was at my damn door ready to knock when I opened it. “Something I can do for you bro?” He rolled his eyes and reached for the kid.

“Yeah you can give me my baby girl. Hi pumpkin you have a good time with uncle Ty?”

“Da-da.” She clapped his cheeks and chortled while I looked around for the others.

We’d gotten into the habit of meeting in the yard early in the morning before heading to the commander’s place to go over shit. Today was back to work day after laying low for the past few. But we still had shit to batten down here before that could be done.

“Where’s the rest of your bitch made crew?”

“I heard Lo and Gaby going at it on my way over.”

“I wonder what she wants now.” I looked towards Lo’s house, things must’ve got really loud for Zak to have heard them arguing.

No one was screaming bloody murder so I figured Lo hadn’t taken a strap to her or she hadn’t brained him yet this morning. It’s a regular movie set in this place these days with all the different personalities trying to mesh.

“Same thing, wedding shit most likely.” Just then Lo came slamming out his door and I could tell from over here that he was cussing to himself. Nope, no thank you, too early in the day for this bullshit.

Before the women came we use to be up in the mornings doing our routines, which we still did four days a week now, but there was never any drama except for what was for breakfast. Now there was always some shit going on and my fuck stupid brothers only seemed interested in multiplying the fucks. Lo looked mad enough to bend nails the dumb fuck.

“What’s eating you brother?” I tried to keep the grin off my face; he can get snippety especially after Gaby’s been after him. It’s the only time our fearless leader loses his cool. From the looks of things she’d given him a run for his money this morning.

Still he started to give me shit until the baby sidetracked him. “Hey baby girl, come give your uncle a hug I need one.” He took the baby and sniffed her hair that I’d just washed. “I just cleaned her up watch it.”

“Damn Ty what do you think I’m gonna do with her?” Her mom came looking for her not long after and we headed for the commander’s place as the others left their houses.

The day was off to a good start with our usual bullshit bantering and as usual I listened for the undertones in their voices to see where everyone’s head was at. So far today it seemed like the guys were doing good. Dev and Quinn were arguing about video games of all things, and fuck me why would anyone who’d ever been in a war want to reenact one on a screen was beyond me.

Con was bitching about morning sickness and some shit like he thought he could kick its ass, what a heel. Cord wasn’t saying much but that’s only because he was probably thinking up ways to add to the dungeon he had in his basement the freak.

I felt my shoulders ease as I ascertained that for now, they were all okay. As for me, and my little issue, we’ll see what we see; maybe it’ll cool off with time. Who knows, maybe after not seeing her for a while if I can avoid it, the novelty will wear off and I’ll go back to the way things used to be before she floated into my orbit.

They’d better is all I can say. It had been weeks since I’d fucked anything other than palm and her five daughters and me and dry spells have a hate-hate relationship. Shit, either way you look at it she’s in for it. If I decide to pass once and for all, cut her off completely, she was bound to be hurt. If I took her up on her offer after going without for so long she’d be begging for mercy within five minutes of her back hitting my bed.

For fuck sake Ty think of something else, any one of these meddling fucks get a whiff of what you’re thinking they’d have you hitched faster than you can blink. “So what the fuck are you three dickless wonders gonna do about this wedding shit? The way things are going those women are gonna mutiny soon and you know what that means, they’re gonna go on strike. You AWOL motherfuckers fuck with my food intake I will help them scalp your ass no joke.”

I was only half kidding about that shit. The food around here of late has been top notch. If I have to go back to eating the swill these mooks come up with I just might off my fucking self and be done with it. “My girl won’t go on strike and I have it on good authority that she can cook, you won’t starve little brother.” Listen to this one.

“Thanks Genghis Kahn but if it’s all the same to you I’d rather not have some poor girl chained to the stove so I can get my grub on.” I rolled my eyes at him as I wondered if anyone else had caught on to that sure sign of ownership, ‘my girl’.

From the way Lo and Con perked up I was pretty sure they did. If they were planning on intervening there I was buying the biggest tub of popcorn for that particular show. I was in no way getting involved though, that fucker’s crazy as bat-shit. And from what I know about those dominant types they have some kind of short wiring when it comes to their women, fuck that. I’d rather fight a bull barehanded.

“We have bigger issues than your never ending gut brother. Is it me or does shit seem to be steamrolling around here? If I didn’t know better I’d swear the shit was following us, but that can’t be right because it started before we ever stepped foot here.”

Quinn was busy tinkering around with the monitors and shit, making sure our security was up and running as he made that statement.

Davie finally found us, and the mood changed, it was hard sometimes to remember that he was just a kid, but now with the prospect of him being who he is, the rest of us by tacit design were shifting gears. Our thing was to protect him and his sister, even from the shit that they’d found themselves in the middle of.

It was only natural that outside these four walls we’ve been going out of our way to keep shit light, especially for the women’s sake, but we all knew we had a shit storm on our hands. Our hands being tied, wasn’t helping matters.

It’s not like we could set up and go after the enemy the way we would in some desert or jungle somewhere. The fucked up thing was, this was the most important fight of our lives this shit had become personal. But for once we couldn’t just go hard, not yet anyway. Quinn was right though, it sure as fuck felt like we were in the midst of the fire a lot these days.

Zak’s woman had been held hostage by our number one enemy, something we’d only just learned, and he wasn’t gonna sit still on that for too long. On top of that, nothing was really panning out the way we like shit to with this situation in our own backyard, or at least not the way I like them to.

I like to get shit over and done. If it were up to me Dani’s ex, the Rosalind chick and the two fucks we’d brought in, would be ass deep in the ocean already. But Lo had fucking scruples and shit. I say if your asshole barometer exceeds the national limit you should be put the fuck down.

“Okay what are we doing about today, are the girls leaving the compound or nah?” I needed to keep my mind occupied before I started thinking about shit that was better left alone again. That question started off a debate that led into other things while we looked over the intelligence we had running in the background.

It was just like when we were running an Op; each man had his position to fill. And although this shit hadn’t gotten half as dangerous as some of the other shit we’d dealt with in the past, there was no way we were taking shit lightly. We had to go through everything with a fine-tooth-comb before we could all go about our respective days, and we didn’t have the backing of a full fighting force on this one.

It was decided that for now the women would stay behind the walls since it was the safest place we knew anyway. “Still not letting them out there no matter how much they bitch and moan. Ty you drew the short straw brother, you’re riding herd on the girls today.” What the fuck?