Perfect Soldier: Scorpio

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I didn't want to leave Cat. She had allowed me to touch her in a way she hadn't let anyone before. I didn't understand why but she stirred something deep within me that had never felt before. I wanted her the way I wanted no other. To be honest, I had never truly wanted a woman. Women were simply I means for
release, a release I needed as much as a fish needed water.
Catalina was indescribably perfect. She had the natural olive complexion of her Greek ancestry, coffee colored hair, not quite black but too dark to be considered a brunette that was streaked with lighter shades of chestnut and bronze.
Her eyes held such a deep gemstone green they out shined the most polished emeralds. She was brilliant, athletic, and strong; maybe not in physical strength but in tenacity and will she was so very strong. Her independence was admirable but
mostly she was pure.
Too pure, I thought to myself. She deserved far better than me and yet she seemed to desire me as much as I her. I had desperately hoped that my blatant display of sexual ferocity would scare her away, infuriate her, anything to make her push me
away. I knew I couldn't keep myself from her unless she told me to stay away.
After all, self-control had never been one of my strongest attributes.
As I thought of her my phone began to ring. It was her. She had seemed distant and somewhat upset when I left. Maybe my intentions had worked. Maybe she was going to tell me to lose her number and never come back. I had mixed feelings as I answered her call.
"Yeah?"
"Sorry if you're busy," her voice wavered. She still sounded distant, like she wasn't very eager to talk. She had no qualms with rejecting Michael so if she was calling to ward me away why did she sound so troubled.
A vacuum sounded in the background as she began to speak again, "my mom wanted me to ask if you'd like to come to church with us in the morning".
"Church?" I scoffed; I hadn't meant to but then there was the whole self-control issue. I really did need to work on that. She had paused in cleaning the mess made by that perverted narcissist Michael to invite me to church.
"Church isn't really for someone like me," I replied as I thought of the anger I had felt last night and again this morning. I had to gash my hand open to clear the fury laden fog from my mind and keep myself grounded. Had I not been holding that glass I would have hunted that snake down and done to him as I had done to so many others. Cat may be too good for me to pursue romantically but that didn't mean I was going to let someone like Michael take what she wasn't willing to offer.
Speak of the devil. Michael emerged from the small hunting supply store and without another word I hung up the phone.
It felt like ages since I last did surveillance. It really was like riding a bike. First, I drove by his house to see his vehicle and memorize his license plate number. It was easy enough, a customized tag that read STAR-74. He really was full of himself.
After he left, I drove around town until I saw it again. He was parked in front of an array of small mom and pop shops. I doubted he had gone in the dress shop so I tried the hunting and fishing supply store first. He was so entranced with flirting with the college aged cashier he hadn't even noticed me walk in.
Big mistake.
I casually browsed the aisles closest the register to listen to his plans for the day. I had to grit my teeth to keep from gagging as sweet compliments and half hearted promises dripped from is tongue like acid. He reminded me of a green mamba. I had dealt with one once. A man my father hired as a navigator had one asa pet. One day on the truck I overheard him talking to another member of our team,
Arik. Arik had asked why the man had kept such a dangerous creature as I pet, his
response was to ask why Arik slept beside a woman.
The green mamba was a beautifully colored snake with a pearl white belly. despite
its normally non-confrontational nature it couldn’t be trusted. The potency of the
venom per milliliter was enough to kill in minutes. Michael’s words were as sweet
as medovik but laced with poison, beautifully enticing yet dangerous just like the
green mamba.
Michael told the cashier that he was headed to a spot on the Tuckasegee
River to fish as soon as he left the store. It would be easy enough to follow him. He
had no sense of his surroundings. His mind stayed buried too deeply in the filthiest
gutter on the planet to so much as notice me standing right behind him. Had we
been in Russia I would have simply killed him where he stood but I couldn’t do
that now.
as Michael left the store and headed up the road I knew exactly where he was
going, Milksick Cove.
I followed at a reasonable distance and once he reached his destination, I
passed without slowing down. I wanted him to get comfortable before I closed in
on him. I headed up the road. My plan was to drive for ten minutes up river then
turn around and head back. He would be finished setting up and be standing in the
river, pole and line in hand by the time I got there. I wanted it to seem like a
coincidence. He couldn’t know I had followed him.
A I drove my thoughts mingled through my past. It was a time of violence,
murder and hate. No matter how hard I tried I would never be able to clean the
stains from my hands. There was just to blood to wash away. With that thought
screaming like a siren I allowed my memories to overtake me.
* * * * *
My father was one of the few men that believed in keeping a journal. One
night while he was out my curiosity over took me and I decided to see if he had written of my mother.
He had.
My mother was a French gypsy woman named Adalaina. Her hair was the
color of obsidian and had dyed feathers and ribbons tied in braided locks that
framed her face. Her eyes were a mirror image of the French sky after the first
winter snow a pale gray with the faintest hint of blue. He saw her first at a street
fair. She was dancing with a small Fox she had domesticated. Her copper skin was
swathed in blue silk. Bells chimed around her ankles in rhythm with her
movement. My father tipped her performance well and slipped a note with the
address to his flat in the hand sewn purse along with his contribution.
His journal read that he had half expected her not to show up. The gypsy
people were reclusive and tended to stay in the company of their own, but she had
trumped his expectations and had accepted the invitation. It began a long romantic
affair. She adored his thick accent and fearless nature and he loved every aspect of
her. The only hitch in their relationship was that despite loving everything that
made her, her he did not love her herself.
My father was what psychiatrists classify as a psychopath. I knew that from
having read his psychological evaluation that was given to him by the Russian
police when he worked with them and from seventeen years of life with him. He
could not feel love, empathy, or compassion. Maybe that is why he raised me to
believe that they were signs of weakness. He could fake those feelings when it
suited him to do so but that was a very rare necessity.
Eventually his lack of emotion caused a rift in their life together. She began
to fear him, his anger and his utter devaluation of life. They had never married in
the two years together but she had moved in with him and slowly he had fully
isolated her. By the time she had decided to end their affair she was pregnant with
me. She hadn't wanted to tell my father but with his keen intuition he knew she was
hiding something. So, he had her followed. She led her surveyor directly to an
obstetrician.
When he discovered she was caring a child he was overjoyed, though only at
the prospect of having an heir. He couldn't have cared less about a family, but his
joyousness fooled her. She began to trust him and love him as she had in thebeginning. She assumed that she had exaggerated his perpetuance for violence.
Sadly, she was doing exactly what his calculating mind wanted her to do.
He knew that my mother would raise me with the love and compassion he
despised. He said in his journal that he could not allow her to ruin me. He never
detailed what had actually happened to her, it only contained a brief entry that a
week after my second birthday when I had fully weaned myself from breastfeeding
that we had attended her funeral.
There was a cut out of her obituary included in the pages.
Adalaina Lucia Desmarais
Born on the 30th day of October, 1974
Called home by her Lord and savior on this 13th day of April 1999
She passed away due to injuries sustained in an automobile
accident
She leaves behind a grieving son and husband as she has been
reunited with her mother and father.
I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the accident was really an accident
and how much of it was due to my father's tampering.
I wondered if I had missed her. Had I mourned her? Had I dreamt of the
mother I had lost, awoken in the middle of the night crying for her? If so, who had
comforted me? Had anyone comforted the mourning toddler that lost his mother, or
had I had to learn at such a young age to fend for myself? Knowing my father, I
knew the answer. Still those questions plagued me for weeks, kept me up at night
and stunted my appetite. I only found temporary peace when I was fighting or
claiming the body of the girl who had offered herself to me in place of my seeking
violence.
I could still remember that first night. Seeing her in tears on my bed and
wondering why. Why was she crying for me? Now with age I had come to
understand that she had feelings for me. Had grown fond of the boy three years her junior.
I had always looked much older than I was. At thirteen my height was
enough for me to allowed to walk seamlessly into any bar in our small town. I was
maturing much faster than other boys my age. The intensive martial arts training
my father had me undergo served to further my physical development. It was no
wonder really that the emotionally damaged girl had fallen for the aloof and
sarcastic boy she had been hired to tend.
My father had hired her from the Abbey, they were more than happy to be
rid of the girl who they claimed invited defilers and undesirables into her company.
She was meant to be my tutor for my school work. Father had not wanted me
attending public school, I had questioned why for some time but again with age
realized it was because he did not want me receiving any normal socialization.
Friends, romantic flames and doting teachers would impede in his molding of me
into what he admired as the perfect man and soldier.
After asking me why I sought to fight I explained that it was simply because
I enjoyed it. That fighting allowed me to release the pent-up anger and frustrations
I held in my heart. She stood, tears streaming down her face but she did not make a
sound. She allowed her gown to slip from her shoulders revealing her naked body.
She was ordinary, pale skin, thin but not quite fit. Her hair was an auburn
brown and her eyes were the color of chocolate. She pressed her thin lips together,
''Use me instead," she had sobbed when she tried to speak. "I'm not pure," she
confessed as if I cared, "it was taken from me by force, so I have no reason not to
offer myself in the place of your fighting and if it will save your life, I see no
wrong in it."
I didn't love her, couldn't love her, not emotionally or physically but when a
woman bares herself to a man and offers her body with the full knowledge of the
violent rage that swelled within him, who is he to turn her down.
The next three years I don't believe a single week passed that she didn't carry
bruises as evidence of my release. I believe there may have been a few times I had
inadvertently fractured a rib or dislocated an arm, but she never complained. She
took my anger and frustration with silence. As I showered one night, washing her
blood tinged fluids from my body I wondered if she ever found pleasure in my use of her. I hadn’t considered her before and wasn’t sure why at that moment I
thought of her feelings.
The night she died, the night she was murdered by a man that pulled a knife
on me was the first time I considered her when I called her to my bed, it was also
the first time I killed. I was sixteen years old.
Using her always satisfied my insatiable appetite for violence but that night
was different. My curiosity plagued me. That night I called her to my bed and for
once I kissed her. She was surprised and I could feel the difference in the beat of
her heart.
I moved my hands slowly and softly over the slight contours of her body.
She had gained some weight since being with us, it was the first time I had noticed.
I experimented with the way I moved my hands, and where I kissed. I allowed her
reactions to guide and teach me. All the times before this she had lain silently and
without expression but now, she writhed beneath me, unable to contain her
pleasure as I gently sent her over the edge to her climax. The experience was as
different for me as it was her.
It wasn’t enough.
I needed to fight. I needed to feel the bones of my enemy crack beneath my
fists. Smell the metallic tinge of their blood. I had started that fight. I was
determined to finish it and would have easily.
From the time I was old enough to follow instruction my father had me
taking martial arts classes. Monday was Karate, Wednesday was Judo, Friday was
Taekwondo, and between those days was weapons training and physical training.
Marksmanship, speed, and athleticism were as important to my father as Science
and math. In the eleven years since my training had started, I had mastered three
different types of martial arts, could top even Olympic athletes and Navy Seals in
physical fitness and could fully assemble any firearm and get off several rounds
center mass in under a minute. A little bar fight was nothing I couldn’t handle.
I hadn’t realized she had followed me. She stepped between us the moment
the knife was drawn. I tried to throw her out of the way but he had already buried
the blade hilt deep in her back, severing a major artery.
As she lay in my arms she spoke as if she was speaking to someone far
away, "I have no regrets," were the last words she uttered. She was dead before the
Ambulance arrived.
My rage overflowed. I felt the heat of his blood run down my hands as I
sliced through his abdomen with his own blade.
At first, I hadn’t realized I had moved. With all my force I yanked the blade
from her still body. With a single sweeping motion, the serrated edge slit through
skin and muscle. He stood shocked as slowly blood began to drip from his blood
drenched shirt into the frozen snow.
He died on the way to the hospital with his intestine laid beside him on the
gurney.
I assumed there would be repercussions and I was correct, only they were
not the ones I had thought. My father used his many connections with the Russian
police to silence witnesses and lose evidence. Though I faced no conviction the
consequences I faced were far worse.
My father put me to work.
He had started his own company after leaving the police force. He started a
firm with a team of mercenaries. A private army that had no alliances. Whoever
could pay the highest price bought the loyalty of my father and the men he hired. I
then realized my father’s purpose for me. My entire life he was grooming me to be
one of his soldiers and then to eventually take care over his self-made army.
His journal described his desire to create the perfect soldier. The men that he
had hired were cruel and relentless. They held no value for human life but they all
held the same flaws. Greed, vanity and lust were the only factors that drove them.
They could be easily swayed with the fastest cars, most money and prettiest,
sluttiest women. They held no loyalty, not even to my father who had hired them
and gave them everything that they had.
By seventeen I was doing one-man jobs on my own. The one I can
remember the most clearly was for an American judge. A man had photos of him
soliciting an under aged girl for prostitution. The judge was planning on moving upin the ranks and those images could not become public. As all blackmail goes the
blackmailer was greedy and wanted more every time the judge paid him. It was
like feeding a stray dog, no matter how much you fed it, it would always keep
coming back for more. So, the judge contacted my father.
My father sent his best man to do the job: me.
It was an easy kill. I remember the feeling of the bones of his neck snapping
in my hands as I twisted his head 180 degrees. It's amazing what one quick twist
can do to the body. Snapping bones, severing your spinal cord all in one gesture.
My father taught me more ways to kill then he did anything else, but I
always enjoyed the hands-on jobs the most. Any job that I could get close to the
target, see the fear in their eyes, sparked excitement inside me. When they fought
hard and refused to accept death it was even better.
I traveled to more countries then I could remember, under even more aliases.
Turkey, France, America and Amsterdam were some of my favorite. I always took
a few days to relax, enjoy the sites, the food and the women. But none, at least
none of the women were ever enough for me. I was always left wanting more. It
was as if a hole was inside me and nothing, I did could fill the emptiness.
I started doing more jobs. I went from one or two jobs a month to one a
week, more if there were multiple targets in the same country.
I never felt guilt over the people I killed. They were people the world was
better off without. People that raped, murdered needlessly and used children to
carry drugs, guns and bombs. They were the sort of deplorable that even the
mainstream media wouldn't talk about for fear of retaliation.
My father didn't feel fear, even thought of himself and his team as
invincible. The better I got the higher his ego soared and the more risk he took with
the jobs.
The last job we worked was five months before I moved here.
We were contracted by a rebel group in Afghanistan that was greatly
outnumbered and under trained. They operated in a small village and were made
up of farmers and craftsman from neighboring villages that were being ransacked by a secular group that sold merchandise do the Taliban. All they wanted was their
homes safe. There was a diamond mine in the center of the three villages that made
up the largest population of the area, it was controlled by the locals, which is why
they were a target. They were going to pay us for our work in the diamonds and
precious stones they mined
It was the most high-risk job we ever took. The objective of the operation
was to find and infiltrate their base. We were to dispatch every soldier but one low
ranking grunt and send him to his boss, the one who orchestrated the hits and sales,
with a message to leave the villages alone or we would be back. We spent two
months doing research, three months making contacts and another month doing
surveillance. When our spy had gathered enough intelligence, we hopped a plane
to Afghanistan.
Once there we spent a week reviewing all our information and setting up a
plan. We had no idea there was a traitor among us. Someone had leaked
everything, where we were staying, when we were leaving, the route we were
going to take, every stop, every moment to the letter had been handed off to the
people we were trying to exterminate.
I had a strange feeling over the 48 hours leading up to the job. I could have
sworn that I kept seeing the same man several times, like he was watching us, but
it was such a small village I just assumed it was coincidental. I should have
listened to my instincts. If I did though where would I be now?
Probably exactly what I’m doing now. Stalking some perv that deserved
their fate, though in this case the wretch wouldn’t die. At least not yet. I smiled to
myself as the realization that the rugged mountain terrain would make an excellent
backdrop for a hunting accident.
The evening of the hit we moved out with no problems. We made every
scheduled stop at the exact time with no issue, and honestly that bothered me. We
were a group of white men in one of the most war ridden areas of the world. White
men, Christians or anymore that look like they may be American were attacked or
kidnapped. I expected at least a civil disturbance, but there was nothing.
We were half way to the final stop where we would ditch the truck and head
out on foot when we saw an odd hump in the road. We were all well educated in
IEDs, improvised explosive devices, so we stopped to survey the area. It was open
and it would be easy to drive around the suspicious spot to the left of the road. One
of our men, Arick, got out of the truck to walk ahead with a metal detector. When
he gave us the all clear we started on his cleared path. We heard a shot and I saw
Arick fall.
I jumped out to pull him out of the open and apply first aid if it wasn't too
late and I heard an explosion behind me. The force of the blast sent me flying
forward. I hit my head on a rock as shrapnel impaled me from behind. The next
thing I remember is waking up in a triage unit at a U.S. military encampment.
The captain at the base told me that I was the only survivor, that I had been
badly injured by shrapnel and heat from the blast. The explosive specialist that was
stationed with them said that the fire the bomb started in the truck had burned
longer and hotter than any he had ever seen. I was questioned about what we were
carrying on the truck for days. Just like my father had trained me to do I just
repeated the same lie, we were an investor team that came to scout the mine and
make an offer to partner with the village leaders. After nearly a week I was hurting
too bad, too tired and too annoyed to just keep repeating it. With my father and
entire team dead there was no point in keeping up the facade.
I told the captain that we were a team of mercenaries hired by the villagers
to take out a gang that was in the area. That we had gone off the road in an attempt
to avoid an apparent IED and our road scout had been shot by a sniper. I told them
that the only thing on the truck was water and the gear in our packs.
When I had finished, they looked puzzled. They informed me that the gang
we were hired to take out had already been dealt with by their unit more than 24
hours prior to our scheduled hit. I came to the conclusion that the guy we hired to
be our boots on the ground had to be the leak. They informed me that a man fitting
his description, down to the tattoo on the underside of his tongue had been one of
the casualties in the U.S. raid on the gang’s base. That did however leave the
question of why did the fire burn so hot and for so long. It had literally incinerated everything, and why had Arik's metal detector not picked up the presence of the
bomb?
I spent two months, three weeks and four days with them. The captain told
me he felt sorry for me, being raised to be a soldier not a person. He said that I had
two choices, take the chance to be a normal teenager and live my life in the United
States or go to the U.N. He told me that if he reported the real reason my group
was there that I would have to account for our crimes. I would have to divulge all
of my father's clients, past and future and give details of every hit we had ever
made. I would be tried for war crimes against several different countries. I took the
only beneficial option I was presented with.
The captain reported the story I told him about being a group of investors
and that my father had been killed leaving me orphaned. They got all the paper
work in order and placed my guardianship in the hands of a young sergeant, David
Martin.
David had grown up in a small town in North Carolina just passed the
Tennessee state line burred in the forests and hills of the Smokey Mountains. It had
a very small population and I could easily stay out of trouble.
David had been given a few weeks to go with me back to Russia to settle my
father’s bank accounts, after all I would need money to start my new life in
America. My father had far more money than I had originally thought, 3.2 million
in U.S dollars to be exact. As soon as I everything was finished, I left the only
home I had ever known.
I used the money to purchase the motorcycle for everyday use and the Jeep
for when the weather didn’t permit me to ride and put the rest in two separate
accounts for saving and use. David set me up in his apartment while he was
deployed though since meeting cat I hadn’t stayed there very often.
She assumed that every night except the last had been an accident and
maybe it had been for her but I couldn’t honestly say the same.
The first night I had gone to her house was simply to call her bluff. She was
angry at me I knew and truthfully, I didn’t need her help at all. Had it not been for
the fact that not all of my home school credits transferred over I would have already been presented my diploma. Nothing she was currently learning was new
to me.
When she fell asleep in my arms, I felt my heart skip a beat. I had never
slept with a woman in the literal since. From the moment I lost my virginity I had
only laid with women I was using and only during the act. As soon as I was
finished with them, I would send them on their way. I had never felt an emotional
connection to any of them and frankly I was sure they were too afraid to get close
enough to me to create one, and yet there she lay.
Her eye lids fluttered as she dreamed, her soft breath warm against my bare
chest. She hugged herself closer to my side so habitually I wondered if she maybe
slept with a stuffed animal or a doll. Her innocence perpetuated her. I had wanted
to move, to lay her peacefully on the bed and leave her and that house. Her mother
had ordered me to stay due to the weather but I had trouble following even my
father's orders. Despite all rationality telling me I needed to leave I couldn’t force
myself to move. I felt like a devil holding tightly to an angel for she would be as
close to salvation as I would ever come.
For a while I lay there, not touching her. I was too afraid to touch her. I had
so much blood and filth on my hands I was afraid my touch alone would stain her.
I watched as her silky hair fell into her face. She rubbed her cheek against my chest
obviously trying to move the thing that was tickling her. Reluctantly I brushed her
hair over her shoulder, my fingertips grazing her skin. The pain and longing I felt
in my heart were almost too much for me to tolerate. I closed my eyes and took a
deep breath to try to center my thoughts and fight back the desire that swelled
inside me. For once it wasn’t the desire to defile the woman that clutched herself to
me but rather the need to make her mine, fully and only mine.
Maybe my hatred and anger toward Michael stemmed partially from
jealousy. No matter where it came from, he would know after today that she was
protected. She would never be his.
I allowed my thought to trail away as I pulled up behind his SUV. A red
Chevy Trailblazer with the haughty tag that was carelessly parked on the rocks. He
paused in his fishing to glance over his shoulder. He looked surprised to see me but
not afraid as I hoped. I doubted he had the intelligence to understand what my being there really meant. The look in his eyes said he knew why I was there but the
lack of panic said he was very unaware of how much danger he was really in.
I surveyed my surroundings. There were so many ways one could come to
an accidental untimely demise on this river simply by losing one’s footing.
"Oh, the things I could do," I mused to myself.
I hadn’t realized I had been grinning at the images that played through my
mind until Michael spoke
"Guess you're here cause a Catty huh," he amused himself far too much.
"She get my letter I sent her?" he asked in a condescending fashion. He stepped
from the river to stand squarely with me. He wasn’t the first to think they could
take me and I was sure he wouldn’t be the last, what I was sure of is that he
wouldn’t be much of a challenge.
"You must be really jealous," his words caught me off guard. Was he really
so egotistic that he thought Cat was simply playing hard to get?
"Why would I be jealous of you?"
"Because, you might be sleeping beside her but you haven’t actually slept
with her, now have you? You're jealous because I actually have the balls to take
what I want."
My anger began to swell. I fought the urge to snap his neck as he continued
to speak, "Catalina Angelus, she takes that last name to seriously. she’s a prude but
one good fuck will pull her out of that holier than thou act. I’ll be doing her favor".
I couldn’t contain myself any longer. He had the audacity to turn away from
me.
Before he could take his first step away from me my hands were on him. I
twisted one arm over his back until I felt the snap of his shoulder separating from
its joint. He was too shocked to make a sound other than an agonized gasp. I
heaved him up right and pulled him close enough to me, arm still pinned at his
back, to speak directly into his ear.

"If you ever come near Cat again, I promise you that a dislocated shoulder
will be the least of your worries." My voice came out more as a growl than a
whisper as I had hoped it would. I threw him into the dirt and rocks at my feet and
added, "I’ve killed worse men than you, don’t make the mistake of thinking I’ll
hesitate."
I caught one last glimpse of him as I pulled away. He was on his knees
where I had thrown him, gripping his shoulder. Fear, pain and anger twisted his
face into a disfigured mass.
I drove away with the image of Cat's face playing at my mind.
I hope you enjoyed this sneak peak into Escaping Fate and your glimpse into
the past of our Perfect Soldier Scorpio Volkov.
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⏰ Last updated: Dec 30, 2019 ⏰

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