Snake Eater - THE BRAVO BOYS [book three]

Chapter FIFTY THREE

Logan Nash

"This is never going to work! It's absurd! Not to mention utterly reckless! You really have no idea what you're dealing with, young man!" The lecturing drone of his superiority is almost impossible to drown out.. Though I try my darndest to ignore Hendrix Quinn and his never ending disdain for my very existence.. Pacing restlessly back and forth over the cheap linoleum floor, I scrub a hand back through my hair with an exhausted sigh..

Any minute now all hell is going to break loose and I have no intention of sitting around aimlessly while this place burns to the ground..

"I'd rather die than sell my soul to these debased corporate devils, Professor Quinn.. And I'd have thought a man of your noble pursuits would feel the same way.." Looking the scowling Doctor square in the eye, I can't help but notice the familiar sapphire blue that illuminates his iris'..

But that is where the resemblance between daughter and father ends..

If I thought Shelby was a standoffish snob the day we first met, Hendrix proves I had no understanding of the true meaning of the word 'rude'.. The woman, while she lives to test my patience, has nothing on the unpalatable arrogance of her father..

The man is a certified fucking narcissist, and not at all subtle about it..

Having been raised captive in a cult the way I was comes with very few advantages.. But if there was one thing living under the rule and whim of an egomaniacal Prophet taught me, it's how to spot a user from a million miles away..

Maybe Hendrix doesn't mean to be that way.. Maybe he really can't help it.. Maybe it's the way his father was before him, and his father before that..

But that doesn't make it right..

No wonder Shelby felt she could never measure up to his impossible standards or step out from the cast of his overbearing shadow.. It's understandable why she puts on such a brave front to the rest of the world but suffers behind the mask of her stoic exterior..

Shelby was lonely, long before her father went missing.. And I realise now that it is a lifetime of neglect that has shaped her into the incredibly fearsome, determined and independent woman she is today.. All those little things she does that frustrate me and get beneath my skin, are the very same things I adore about her, and now I can see just how many of those traits are entirely self made..

Her courage and tenacity..
Her compassion and empathy..
Her grace and humility..
She cultivated them all herself..
Because she sure as shit doesn't get them from her father..

Since the second I woke up in this godforsaken hellhole, Hendrix has done nothing but doubt my every move and question my capability.. He refuses to accept that I might know things he does not, or that I am more than equipped to find my own form of logic.. Instead he badgers me to listen to his directive with an air of ignorant confidence that only comes from a man who has never been told 'no' in his life.. Every time his mouth opens, more disrespect dilutes my tolerance and shortens my fuse.. The way he speaks is as if he were the authority of our crappy basement prison cell.. And I am beginning to grow tired of his incessant orders, pessimism and self absorbed attitude..

Actually, after three days of being trapped with the guy, I'm downright fucking sick of it.. And if I'm honest, the thought of him ever speaking to Shelby the way he does me, makes my blood boil with fury..

She doesn't deserve that.. She never did..

"Your ridiculous scheme is liable to get me killed!" The old man snaps selfishly as I check the hour on the ticking wall clock for the hundredth time in the past twenty minutes..
By now, the classified Blackstar data I had transferred out on broadcast has most definitely reached its intended inboxes, and some violently zealous Feds are most certainly cross checking and verifying the leak..