My reddened knuckles turn white and I nearly break the iPad I'm holding while laying in the hospital bed with a shitty hospital gown as though I'm a pregnant bitch waiting for her time to deliver.

Head slanted, I replay the video feed recorded live from Mia's new apartment, and my blood pressure rises all over again from the uncontrollable rage I'm feeling right now

That motherfucker is fucking my wife as if she's his. I watch how she holds him so passionately, seated on the kitchen countertop like the horny whore she is. And the bastard pounds on her, his dick buried into her pussy—which is fucking mine—as though I can see all of it close. My muscles stiffen, and my breath runs so rapidly that the heart monitor begins to beep randomly.

"Mr. Kingston!" Bastien snaps, but I keep gripping the iPad while panting furiously, dreaded. "Nurse!" he shouts frantically and jogs out, but my focus is on the woman I gave everything to only to see her fucking an employee.

"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS, MIA? HOOOOOW! HOW COULD YOU STOOP SO LOW?" I growl, too much anger coursing through my heart. And there she's kissing him, grinding herself against him. "YOU'RE MINE! YOU'RE FUCKING MINE!" I throw the iPad away and pain burns through my chest until I can't move an inch.

I yowl in pain and lose focus on reality except for the blurred vision of the doctor and nurse and Bastien running into the room while yelling incoherent words. I remain trapped in the chasm of my dark trance, watching my wife getting screwed by her bodyguard like a cheap slut.

I will kill her. I will kill both of them! I swear I will!

Hours go by to no tell ever since I fell into darkness moments ago. Pulling the oxygen mask off my face, I open my eyes at the same sound of a beeping heart monitor that irritates the shit out of me. It's the sound I recall from my childhood when Mama lay in her sleazy hospital ward after getting a beating from that bastard I called father.

The man I killed with a choking water-like poison mixed in his favorite Russian Vodka. And God, it felt so good. His bottle of liquor was always more valuable than Mama. Women are never to be trusted, Patrick. They're dirty little things that need to be shown who's in control or else they become a real problem you can never control. 

He claimed Mama was having an affair with the sheriff, but I was too little to understand, so I simply hated him. 

Looking back, I think I do understand him now. I've been too lenient with Mia, scared to follow my father's ways.

But it's over now. She will pay for this!

"How are you feeling, boss?" Bastien asks; he stands up from his seat, throws the magazine aside, and strides over to adjust my bed.

I can breathe on my own but I can't bring myself to move fluidly and it makes me so angry that I grit my teeth. "Good," I reply, pulling in a breath. "Send some men to get my wife from that place this very instant."

"I'm sorry, sir, but that can't be done without a plan," Bastien replies, his hard black face filled with concerns.

"Why? Are they too incompetent to get one fucking woman from a fucking apartment that we already have access to?" I bark, no more pain resonating in my chest.

"Red is there, sir. He's not to be underestimated," Bastien preaches like a songbird.

As if I don't know that much!

"I don't care, Bastien! Send ten men! A hundred! I don't care! I just want my wife out of that place, away from that bastard, right now!" My eyes grow infuriated. I can't take the picture of him fucking Mia off my mind. It's torture. "And that fucking judge who double-crossed me; I need him taken care of."

"With all due respect, sir, the judge did not double-cross you. He received orders from above and he had no choice," Bastien chimes in.

I scoff, giving him a grave glare. "Do I pay you to give an opinion, Bastien?"

He sighs, hesitating. But eventually, he replies, "Okay, sir. I'll do as you wish."

"I thought so," I remark.

It's late at night but I can't seem to fall asleep. Too much has been going on in my head for the past couple of days, and each time I look at Mia, I wanna do nothing but take her away from here. Now that I managed to end her marriage for good, I'm not sure how that unstable Patrick Kingston will react.

I know he's in Montreal, in a private hospital he probably owns. I also know he's unable to move, and God knows how tempted I am to end his life right there and save us all from trouble. But that goes against my mission, and if I do it, I'm equally declaring war with the FBI who want him to be alive.

Sighing, I glance at Mia who's sleeping soundly beside me, her warm breasts crushed on my chest. What an obedient woman she looks like right now. So innocent. So fragile. It makes me smile, for everything I'm seeing is downright opposite of her. She is fickle, stubborn, and the strongest woman I know.

"Hmmm," she hums in her sleep when I run a soft caress of my fingers over her spinal cord, devouring the silky skin of her naked upper body. "Don't go, Red," she whispers, tightening her arm across my chest.

"Shhh. I'm here. Go back to sleep." I kiss her tenderly and at last, she drifts.

Eyes back on the LED ceiling, I begin to think of the person I'm meeting tomorrow. The key to my mission. If I get the ex-file, I'll be done with the FBI, and the main job that made Marlow bring me into this, the one that requires a shooter, will finally be done when I put a bullet into Patrick's head.

My eyes start to shrink, and just when I close them to sleep, I hear distant sounds coming from downstairs. Serving a few years in the Marine Force Reconnaissance, aside from the hunting seasons in the wilderness of Arkansas ever since I could write my name, gave me the ability to sense movements from miles away. 

A survival instinct, or killer instinct.

"Mia," I wake her in a whisper. She only stirs. "Hey, wake up." I shake her slightly. 

"What?" she asks abruptly, fully awake in a nanosecond. "Something wrong?" 

She knows we're still at war. Unlike most women in normal situations, she doesn't complain about being disrupted from her beauty sleep, but instead, she sits up and allows me to get out of bed.

"Stay here." I grab a T-shirt from the floor, thankfully I'm already wearing a pair of running joggers Mia took from my apartment some weeks ago. "You still have my gun?" I whisper.

She nods a silent yes.

"Good. Stay right here and don't open the door until I say so," I deadpan, and for once in our short but eventful life together, she doesn't argue.

I pull the new SIG P226 from the top drawer of the nightstand and move carefully through the moonlit bedroom until I'm out.

The minute I step out, I see a gunman's shadow in the hallway. Wasting no second chances, I pull the trigger. One shot on the chest. Quietly, he falls, and I have a feeling he's only one of the few more. So I walk, and another one pops. Fluidly, I send a bullet in the head,  pull the body out of my way, and deal with the third one.

But too late for my cover; the rest must've caught up as the third body falls on the stairs where I hear a quick gasp.

As I suspected, there's more. I wait.

When a flashlight ascends the stairs. I rear myself onto the wall, raking side steps toward the entrance connected to the stairway. I lower my gun, peering through the darkness, waiting for the fourth gunman. Who re fuck are they? Careful shoe steps reach the top stair; adrenaline spurs me forward where I tackle the intruder and slam him against the railings.

They can't be burglars. 

The flashlight slides away, but a gun remains in his grip. Tall, masked, wearing full black. As he registers his confusion, I smash the wrist holding a gun onto the aluminum bar, earning a satisfying grouch from him. He knees me on the groin—motherfucker—but I return the favor to his nose that surely breaks alongside his body that topples over the railings.

So much stuff on Mia's storage bench table breaks heavily from his fall.

And suddenly a bullet files my way; I dunk. It hits the wall. Another flashlight. Another guy inside. Or more. I'm not sure. But I can't let them pass through these stairs as long as I live. Never. Using my small caliber, I fire back, and the light falls. A man grunts; I'm sure I've grazed some flesh, if he's that lucky, that is since I rarely miss my mark.

Then silence ensues. I keep my cool, ears focused. This is nothing. Not even close to bad. I've been through worse.

With a quick inhalation, I sprint through the stairs, one at a time, while holding my pistol with both hands. It's still silent. He's hiding somewhere, wounded. I smell blood. Behind the sofa? I aim my gun. Nada. In the kitchen? I change my stance, eyes careful like vulture's, yet I hear nothing. 

Where are you, motherfucker? Very warm breath emits through my nose.

When I hear movements, slow and calculative, my instincts kick in.

Swiftly,  I switch on the lights and my target rises from behind the kitchen counter, ready to shoot. But I'm faster, stealthier, and eager to finish this foolish impromptu more than they do. Like a rocket, silently, my bullet pierces through his shoulder while I walk toward him, purposefully avoiding his heart so that I get the chance to ask questions.

"Ahhrgg!" Groaning, he clings onto the countertop but eventually falls to where I can see him.

He's panting, his body shaking like a typical wounded prey. Calmly, I click his gun away and crouch beside him. He's the last one. With a furrowed face, and a modicum of anger boiling inside me, I pull down his mask, and a pair of gray eyes on a bald face staring up at me. He looks younger, tattooed from the neck. Some gang.

"Who-the-fuck-are-you?" he asks me, terrified, still holding his injured shudder with seeping blood that paints his fingers red.

"I do the questioning. Who sent you?" I retort, even though I can tell that it's Patrick Kingston.

Before this idiot could do so much as utter a syllable, I hear the shards of Mia's flower vase grinding against the hard wooden floor. I hold my breath, getting ready for another attack from gunman number four who I threw down from upstairs.

But there's a sudden BANG!

My eyes sweep over the falling body, and a breath finally escapes me when I see Mia standing on the staircase, holding my old Glock with both hands, frozen. She never listens, this woman. Sighing, I rotate my neck, only to find the last one pulling a knife from his jacket.

Amateur move. I give him a swift death.

"Should've answered my damn question," I mutter while getting up.

On my way to Mia, I check the guy she's shot. He's still breathing.

Ignoring him, I reach for my crazy woman and take a gun from her hands. Terrified,  she looks at me only in the eyes until I pull her toward my chest. She remembers to breathe upon my embrace; she holds me tightly for a good, long moment until her heart stops beating rapidly against my chest, indicating the shock has worn off.

"Hey." I lower my gaze down at her, making sure she's okay.

She edges back and looks up at me, worried this time. "Are you okay? You're not hurt anywhere, are you?" she asks me, and for once I manage to smile.

"I'm fine, baby," I say, "and I guess you never take an order without acting on your own, do you?"

"Never." She smiles languidly. "Not when my man is fighting the war alone."

"You infuriate me, woman," saying this, my lips fall on hers as if we have no dead bodies lying in the house.

Mia Diaz is fickle. I have no choice but to accept this fact once and for all.

"Come on. Let's go and pack your stuff," I tell her breathlessly, my mouth still on hers. "We're leaving."

__________

A/N: Patrick has gone insane, and Red has gone wild. I'm here for the war. Well, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.