The Generals Missile

Chapter 09 - Asura Returns

I landed him a death punch!

- Not bad enough to kill him, but very good enough.

Followed by a thunderous confession slap!

I pulled him out of the car by his collar, his body hitting the concrete floor face-first, the sickening thud echoing in the stillness of the garage.

His phone skidded across the ground, and I snatched it up, glancing at the screen.

The last call was to a number with an international prefix... Voss, hahaha! I knew it!

"You have been busy, Gemi," I said, my voice low and dangerous... "hiring hitmen, coordinating with foreign military contractors, selling photographs of my daughter to snipers... Did Elder Harrington authorize all of this, or did you freelance?" I asked with a witch smile.

"I do not know what you are talking about," he replied, blood trickling from his nose where it had cracked against the unforgiving floor.

"I am just a security consultant." He replied.

This idiot didn't know this wasn't the time for professionalism! I had no time for titles! Who the fuck he is, all I see is a snaked needed to be stroke!

"You are a dead man!" I said, crouching beside him, my eyes locked onto his... "Unless you give me something worth keeping you alive." I said.

He now understood me.

"Please... Please, Ethan," he stammered, panic tightening his voice.

"I was following orders... Elder Harrington told me to handle you... He said you were becoming a problem... He said Voss would take care of the details and I just needed to provide local support." He explained.

So Elder Harrington didn't know I was Ausura, he was only using his foreign connections to get rid of his poor son inlaw, but shockingly his son inlaw turned out to be Asura, nature just doing its work.

I honestly thought he was just a money monger but now I am sure that he is indeed worse.

"What kind of support?" I pressed, my patience thinning.

"Hospital access, photographs of Lily, security schedules, building layouts," he gulped, tears mingling with the blood on his face.

"I did not know they were going to shoot a child... I swear on my mother, Ethan, I did not know about the sniper." He said and I clearly understood him.

"But you knew they were sending men to kill me." I said to me and he hesitated, a slight pause that betrayed his guilt, and that hesitation was his confession.

I stood up, my gaze drifting to the sleek Mercedes parked nearby, the leather seats glistening under the dim light, and I caught sight of the Harrington Foundation logo on the registration document.

"Gemi, I am going to give you a choice."

"The same kind of choice your boss gave me when he blacklisted my daughter from every hospital in this city... You can tell me everything... Every conversation, every payment, every instruction Elder Harrington gave you and I mean everything... Or I can hand you over to Commander Drake... Drake spent four years in military intelligence and he has a very particular set of skills when it comes to extracting information." I threatened with kindness.

"I will talk... I will tell you everything," he blurted, desperation lacing his words.

"Good," I replied, my voice steady.

"Because I want names, dates, bank account numbers, and I want to know exactly when Voss is arriving in this city." I ordered.

Gemi looked up at me, his face a grotesque mask of blood, tears, and snot.

"He is already here." He said.

The garage went cold, a chill creeping up my spine.

"What?" I asked, disbelief tightening my throat.

"Voss arrived last night... He is staying at Elder Harrington's private estate." He said and my lips parted in shock.

"The one on Victoria Island...They had dinner together, Ethan... Voss is not just coming for you... He is coming for the girl too and he says she is leverage to getting more of your blood for a scientific program that I have no clue about." He confessed.

My vision turned red...not metaphorically.

The edges of my sight darkened and everything in the center sharpened, like peering through the scope of a rifle! So Voss was here, in the same city as my daughter, under the same roof as the man who called himself her grandfather! Ahh!

I grabbed Gemi's phone off the ground, scrolling to Voss's number, my heart pounding in my chest.

I pressed call.

It rang twice.

"Gemi? Is it done?" The voice came through, deep and laced with a German accent softened by years in the United statss. The voice of the man who had mentored me, betrayed me, and stolen my life.

"Hello Voss!" I said, the name tasting bitter on my tongue, so bitter it felt dead!

Dead silence hung between us...

Three seconds, four, five.

"Ethan," he finally breathed, a hint of disbelief coloring his tone... "So the rumors are true... Asura lives."

"Asura lives," I replied, my voice steady.

"And Asura is coming for you." I said.

I hung up, the weight of the moment settling over me like a shroud.

The war had officially begun!

When I found Victoria, she was sitting on the floor outside Room B7, her knees drawn up to her chest, the stuffed rabbit resting in her lap.

Her mascara had run, dark tracks streaking down her cheeks, and my heart twisted at the sight.

She looked up at me, her eyes wide and glistening.

"There is blood on your shirt."

I glanced down, seeing Gemi's blood smeared across my left sleeve. "It is not mine."

"That does not make it better, Ethan," she replied, her voice thick with emotion.

I sat down beside her, the corridor empty, silence enveloping us like a fog. It was 2:47 AM, the hospital operating on a skeleton crew.

The two nurses on this floor had been quietly informed by the Dr. that the patients in B7 and B8 were under military medical protection, and they did not ask questions... Military doctors tend to have that effect.

"How is Lily?" I asked, breaking the silence.

"Sleeping... Her color looks better." The nurse said her platelet count is up to 63,000."

"Good... That is moving in the right direction," I replied, relief flooding through me.

Victoria stared at me, not with the cold distance I had grown used to, not with the barely concealed disgust her mother had trained into her.

This was something rawer.

Something more dangerous.

"I need answers, Ethan!"

"Real answers!"

"Not deflections."

"Not 'I am Lily's father, that is all you need to know.' I watched you take control of this entire hospital tonight and I cannot lie that you're different."

"I watched my mother, the most terrifying woman I have ever known, turn white when you told her about a sniper and I watched nurses and doctors follow your orders like you outranked every person in this building." She said to me moving a bit close.

"Victoria..." I started, but she cut me off.

"Who are you?" She fired.