This is not what I wanted.
I might have just become one of the richest people in the world, but that didn't stop me from worrying about my lost contractor. I was alone now. And as much as I'd like to think Ashton and I had each others back, I'd be a fool to expect that after what happened at the airport.
I might have hated betrayal with everything I was, but that was nothing compared to when I pulled a gun on Ashton with the intention of killing him. No matter what I said or realized I felt, I still was going to kill him at that moment and that was as good as throwing everything we've built away.
I couldn't make excuses. Had he poisoned me? Yes, but he also saved me. I put a bullet next to his head and did nothing near removing it. He had a humanity that I didn't and that was just reality. Ashton could trust and love others. I could love myself and that's it. At least, that's what it felt like now I days.
"I'll take care of Kavyat," Ashton told me when we reached one of Rick's safe houses in Saudi Arabia. It was far enough from Jeddah to keep us under the radar but close enough to make escape easy. I'd go into further detail but one should never give away the locations of safe houses. You never know when you might need one. The only reason we were here was to get a new set of weapons and clean clothing. This safe house was always the final destination so I had stocked it before we left for Russia. "You should make sure Rick's lawyers have their heads screwed on straight. We wouldn't want to draw more attention to this situation." Yes, we wouldn't want to draw more eyes to the dead English millionaire in Saudi Arabia.
I crossed my arms awkwardly, not knowing if he was going to bring up how I almost killed him or if it was just going to fade into the past, just like our friendship. He ran his hand through his black hair before getting a glass of water. "I'll take care of the CIA..." I hesitantly spoke. "So you don't have to worry about them." I could find the rest of Cooper's agents and take care of them. That would destroy whatever the task force didn't have on paper; and trust me, they didn't have a lot on paper, especially about Ashton and myself.
There was a silence for a moment. The tension and the events that transpired between us was too much. It was more than an elephant in the room; it was the oxygen in my lungs and my blood. There was no escaping it and there never would be, not even after I was off this continent on some remote island in the South Pacific. This was one of those moments in your life that you remember forever: your first kiss, losing your virginity, graduation, your first car, losing your parents, the first time your dad hit you, your first kill, losing your best friend, committing the biggest terrorist attack in years, scamming a government.
Almost killing the one person you grew to love and trust.
I was going to turn and leave, there was no point in staying here for longer than I needed too, but Ashton stopped me in my tracks with his deep tone. "Did any of it mean anything to you?" Ashton's words echoed in my ears, vibrating my bones and shaking my core. His voice was sharp like a punch in the face; the kind you don't get up from. A clean knock out. That's how I felt inside.
I didn't try to hide the emotion in my weak voice when I responded to his angered and annoyed face. "Can you honestly say for one second, one second, you didn't question if I had anything to do with the CIA? That I wouldn't sell you out?"
"That's not what I asked."
"Don't say I didn't care. If I didn't care I wouldn't have said a word to you when we weren't in public," I said harshly, trying not to get mad at Ashton and this situation. This was my fault but he couldn't act like he didn't play a role. Neither one of us trusted each other and that was the real problem, not my supposed disloyalty.
