america's assassin ➻ steve rogers

five

Then

"It might take you all a little while to get used to one another," Silver took a deep breath and smiled wide, looking each one of us in the eyes. "But I have chosen each one of you based on your abilities and your passion and I know that together, we will be able to rule this world as a family." Uneasy eyes looked over the group in the room. It had been one thing for Silver to come to me and promise me a family and that stupid sense of belonging he had somehow known I'd been harbouring, but seeing the said family in the flesh was something else altogether.

"As strangers," A girl two seats over from me said, snapping gum that I could smell from my seat. "How do you expect us to be a family?" She looked over at me, sensing my gaze on her, and winked. I looked away.

"You are all here because you wanted this," Silver said, watching the girl with a sense of uneasiness and pride. "If you want this, Carina, you will do what you need to do. If you don't, feel free to go back to Hydra. I'm sure they'll understand your need for more." Carina dropped her head, cheeks flaming.

"So what are we?" A voice from directly behind me said and I turned in my chair to look at him. Dark hair, green eyes. He appraised me for a moment before looking back to Silver. I did the same. "Contract killers that come home for dinner around a big ol' table? Do we say grace?" A smile tugged at my lips. The man spoke with a southern drawl and Silver raised an eyebrow at him. I waited for the coiled anger that I knew he was capable of, but instead he laughed.

"Precisely, Axel!"

Now

"Why did you tell Steve about the others?" Natasha burst into my room, making my new chaperone Scott jump in surprise. I gave an expression of apology to Scott as the two of us dropped our hands of UNO cards onto the table and he excused himself from the obvious fight Natasha and I were about to have. I settled back into my chair and crossed my arms.

"To be honest, I'm more surprised he didn't already know," I said. She rolled her eyes at me and sat in Scott's abandoned chair across from me.

"You told him to one up him, didn't you?" Her voice was dead pan and she scowled when I giggled. "Mia, the others aren't in the folder we give out in this case. They have nothing to do with it."

"Why?" A spark of anger hit my chest. Whether I liked it or not, those people had been my family at one time or another. Not involving them in the case felt untrue to the case and a lie after everything that had happened.

"Because they're all dead and gone." A muscle hitched in my jaw.

"They're not all dead," I reminded her. "And they have plenty to do with this case." For a second, Nat had the good grace to look away under my glare. Then she was staring back at me, eyes cold.

"Regardless, none of them are working for Silver anymore. They don't need to be involved in this," She said. My thoughts snagged on Carina Bianco, a former agent of Hydra, who was hiding out in an undisclosed location somewhere in the depths of Europe where Silver could never find her. Or Wes Kinglsey, who had come from the organisation used to assassinate John F. Kennedy, who was somewhere underground now. They weren't working for Silver anymore, but they were still hiding from him. They needed to be involved, even if only for their freedom.

"Axel is," I breathed, barely even recognising the words on my lips. Nat fell silent, her lips pursed at my use of the name. I realised it might have been the first time I'd said it aloud since the snap and more incredibly, it didn't hit as hard as it once had.

"You said if I ever spoke his name, you would slit my throat," She said after a long silence. I looked down at my hands, thinking about the blades I had hidden under each cuff of my jacket.

"Well," I said, trying to channel my cockiness. "I don't feel like slitting my own throat today." It sounded like a joke, but my mouth was dry. Axel Bancroft's face flashed through my mind. That dark hair that always fell just right, the green eyes that watched your every move, the smirk that said he knew what you were thinking.

"We don't even know he's still working with Silver," Nat said and I knew it was supposed to comfort me. "He probably left the way the rest of you did." I grit my teeth.

"He's still there." I didn't know in any fact that that was true, but if I knew Axel the way I'd always thought I had, then he was still Silver's right hand man.

"I will kill him when I find him, Mia," Nat said. My gaze snapped to hers and I bared my teeth at her.

"No, you won't," I said to her surprise. Her shocked gaze fell to concern and acceptance. My mind flashed through old images of teeth and tongue and hands on my skin and promises that were never true. "Nobody gets to end his life except me."

"You aren't getting anywhere close to him," She told me. "Or to Silver."

"You don't get to make that decision for me, Nat."

"I'm just trying to keep you safe," She countered. I waved at the abandoned game of UNO on the table before me.

"That much is obviously clear with the whole Scooby gang sticking like glue," I said. "But don't forget I'm not useless, either. Silver didn't just recruit me because I was desperate enough to listen, Nat. He picked me because I was the best." She stared at me, arms crossed over her chest.

"I've been thinking about last night," She said. I pressed my fingers against my still-hurting shoulder.

"That makes two of us."

"You're right about Silver picking you because you're the best," She said, taking Scott's empty chair across from me. She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. "Which begs the question of why he only sent two sub-par agents to kill you." As she stared at me, the cogs in my brain sprang into action as I tripped over her words.

"You don't think that was the intention." It was a statement now, not a question. As my brain landed on the foggy outcome, it seemed like the only option. I mentally cursed myself as I realised that should have been the first thing I'd thought the second I'd connected those men to Silver.

"No," Nat said.

"Then what was it?" Nat sat back in the chair and shrugged.

"A distraction, maybe. A message?"

"A message for what? Letting me know he knows I'm alive and he's coming for me?" I pressed my hands to my mouth and dropped them to my lap.

"That makes sense, doesn't it?" Nat said. "A warning that he's coming to finish what he started six years ago?" I shook my head.

"But wouldn't it be easier to not put us on high alert? It would be easier to get to me in my apartment than behind the guard dogs." If Nat was annoyed by the way I referred to her team, she didn't show it.

"He always liked to play the long game," Nat said and I flinched at her insinuation. "Especially with you." I didn't like to think about those times. It had been the elation of finally gaining a family and then having it violently ripped away.

"That's why you assigned chaperones to me twenty four seven," I said. "If he's playing the long game, if he sent those men on purpose, then this is something bigger than getting me."

"It could be trying to get you back," Nat said carefully. Flames shot through my veins.

"There's no chance in hell of that happening," I growled. In the end, Silver had caused more damage than the Red Room ever had and he did it all under the pretense of loving me.

"I think you should come to the briefing with the team," She said. "I was wrong before when I said the others don't matter. If this is all a game, then Silver is more dangerous than we expected and the others definitely matter." I thought about Carina, dark hair swinging behind her damp with seawater and sand, laughing with her mouth wide open and fingers threaded through Wes'. My feet kicked up in her lap, my head resting in Axel's as I shuffled to get his head to block out the sun. Entertaining a life outside of the bloodshed and death that we had been so sure we could accomplish. Yes, they did matter.