Never Cross the Back-Gate Guard

Chapter 008

Cole stopped ten feet from the booth, his eyes locking onto Travis like twin laser sights. “Clean out your mouth while you still can.”

Julian Hayes had already lost three teeth for running his mouth about Nathan yesterday. Cole had come to this company to help his brother stand tall, not to start a brawl on his first morning, but his patience had a hard limit.

With his cousin Tanya backing him up in HR, Travis had been the resident bully of the security department for a year, and he wasn’t about to get stared down by a rookie. He blew a puff of smoke toward Cole’s face and sneered. “Or what, newbie? You gonna take a swing at me?”

Cole’s right hand slowly curled into a fist, a glacial, murderous chill surfacing in his eyes.

The cigarette between Travis’s lips suddenly trembled. Without knowing why, the hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up, as if he had just stepped into the cage of a starving Siberian tiger. Those eyes weren’t human—they were dead, pitiless, and completely indifferent to taking a life.

Travis involuntary stumbled half a step back, swallowing hard. “I-I’m warning you, pal, there are cameras all over this yard! You lay a finger on me, and I’ll sue you for every penny you don’t have!”

Cole’s lip curled in disdain. “Hitting you would just dirty my knuckles.”

Having grown up as a street punk before landing this cushy gig, Travis couldn’t stomach being backed down in his own yard. Humiliation overriding his fear, he roared and threw a wild haymaker straight at Cole’s nose.

Cole flicked a brief glance toward the CCTV camera mounted on the utility pole behind Travis—confirming that Travis’s wide back completely blocked the lens’s angle on Cole’s hands—and smiled faintly.

Fifteen minutes later, inside the top-floor CEO’s office, Travis stood by the desk nursing two purple, swollen eyes and a split lip, while Cole stood beside him without a single wrinkle in his uniform. Tanya Brooks hovered near the sofa, glaring daggers at Cole.

Behind the mahogany desk, Victoria Sterling stared at Cole with frost in her eyes. “I went out of my way to give you a chance to earn an honest living, and you can’t even make it through your first hour without hospitalizing a coworker. Under company policy, workplace violence is grounds for immediate termination.”

“Even if you’re firing someone, shouldn’t you check who threw the first punch?” Cole asked calmly. “He swung at my head, and I defended myself. That holds up in any court in the state.”

Slam!

Victoria brought her palm down on the desk. “This is my company! My word is the policy here!”

Cole looked at her with cool detachment. “Blind to the facts and high on your own authority. No wonder this company’s been bleeding money. If you can’t even judge people right, how do you expect to run a business?”

Travis’s swollen eyes nearly popped out of his skull. Is this guy insane?! He’s insulting the CEO to her face!

Victoria’s chest heaved, her face flushing crimson with rage. Before she could scream for building security to throw him into the street, the heavy office door flew open without even a knock.

Victoria’s executive secretary rushed inside, breathless with excitement. “Ms. Sterling! Mr. Grant is here! He just stepped off the elevator!”

Victoria froze. “Which Mr. Grant?”

“Damon Grant—Vice President of Operations from Monarch Fashion Group!”

All the anger vanished from Victoria’s face, replaced by sheer shock. “Quick—come with me to meet him!”

Monarch Fashion Group was the undisputed titan of the East Coast apparel industry, a two-hundred-billion-dollar conglomerate. Every textile mill in Havenport would kill for a supply contract with Monarch, though the conglomerate almost exclusively sourced from European luxury mills. To secure her footing against her scheming uncles on the board, Victoria had spent weeks pulling strings just to get a proposal onto Damon Grant’s desk—only to have it rejected without a meeting. Now, Damon Grant had shown up at her building unannounced!

Forgetting all about Cole, Victoria hurried toward the door with her secretary in tow. Cole shrugged and walked out right behind them; if his sister-in-law didn’t want him here, he’d find another way to help Nathan.

Just as they stepped into the executive corridor, a tall young man in a tailored charcoal suit came striding down the hall. Victoria immediately put on her warmest, most professional smile and stepped forward. “Mr. Grant, welcome to Sterling Textiles! Did you have a chance to reconsider our fabric samples? All of our yarns and dyes are imported directly from Milan—”

Damon Grant raised a polite hand, cutting her off with a distraction-free smile. “Thank you, Ms. Sterling, but we can talk business another time. I’m actually here looking for someone.”

Victoria’s heart sank as her hopes evaporated on the spot.

Then Damon’s gaze landed on Cole standing three paces behind her. His face lit up immediately. “Ah, there he is.”

Victoria blinked in utter confusion, turning her head to look at Cole in his security guard uniform before forcing a stiff smile. “Mr. Grant, that’s my husband’s younger brother. The two of you… know each other?”

“Oh? He’s your brother-in-law?” Damon looked pleasantly surprised, which immediately sent a fresh jolt of hope surging through Victoria’s chest. Stepping past the CEO completely, Damon stopped in front of Cole and inclined his head respectfully. “Mr. Mercer. Do you have five minutes for a cup of coffee?”

Victoria’s jaw nearly hit the carpet. The Vice President of Monarch Fashion Group was calling an ex-con security guard Mr. Mercer—and asking if he had time for coffee?

Cole stopped and frowned slightly. “Do I know you?”

Victoria’s heart leaped right back into her throat. He doesn’t even know him?!

“I run errands for Briggs,” Damon said quietly, lowering his voice so only Cole could hear.

Cole’s expression shifted instantly. He glanced at Victoria, then nodded toward the stairwell at the end of the hall. “Let’s talk over there.”

Once they were alone on the landing, Cole didn’t waste a second. “Did Briggs find Luke Miller?”

Without a word, Damon pulled out his smartphone, tapped open a video file, and handed it over. On the screen, a man with shoulder-length hair sat in a wheelchair in a sunlit courtyard, painting a fierce, coiling dragon across a canvas. As if sensing the telephoto lens from across the street, the man suddenly whipped his head toward the camera—revealing the scarred, familiar face of Luke Miller.

Cole’s breath caught, a hot sting rising behind his eyes. He’s alive.

Just then, Damon’s phone buzzed with an incoming call from Briggs. Cole handed the phone back, waited while Damon took the brief call, and accepted a slip of paper with Luke’s current address before Damon excused himself and hurried out.

Slipping the address into his pocket, Cole headed down the stairs—and nearly collided with Nathan coming up from the second floor, grinning like he’d just won the Powerball.

“What’s got you smiling like that, Nate?” Cole asked.

Nathan clapped both hands onto Cole’s shoulders. “Better than the lottery, kid!” Catching sight of Cole’s serious expression, Nathan paused. “Wait—what happened upstairs? Did Victoria give you a hard time?”

Cole gave a short sigh and filled him in on the run-in with Travis at the dump.

Nathan’s face darkened with frustration. “That bastard Travis has been riding Tanya’s coattails for months. Still, Cole… do me a favor and keep your hands in your pockets around here, okay? If people want to talk trash about me, just let it roll off your back. I got used to it years ago.”

Cole said nothing, looking at his brother in silence. He had walked through hellfire as the commander of Task Force Wraith, where foreign warlords trembled at the mention of his callsign. Asking him to bow his head while bottom-feeders spat on his family was out of the question. A soldier’s spine didn’t bend.