Questionable Loyalties

Vacation Part 3 and a Flashback

The rest of our week in the Dominican Republic goes pretty smoothly. The next day, we go back to Brian and Mia's and take the kids down to the beach. Mia and I end up under an umbrella, while the boys play down by the water. Bella is asleep on my shoulder.

"He seems good with kids," Mia comments as we watch Jack and Deckard attempting bury Brian in the sand.

I nod, "He is. You should have seen him when we had Little Brian." I pull out my phone and show her the picture that I took when I found them both passed out. "He'll be a good dad, if we ever decide that's what we want."

"Is that something you want?" Mia asks.

I shrug, "Not right now. We're getting used to domestic life. Well, as used to it as you can get when one of you is a mercenary for hire and the other does work for covert branches of the government."

"Fair, but you know that sometimes things just happen," she tells me, nodding to Bella.

"That's a bridge to cross if it ever happens," I retort.

"Oh, speaking of mercenary," Mia starts.

"I'm not sure I like where this is going," I mumble.

"Brian mentioned that when you guys first got picked up by Mr. Nobody's men, they got to ride comfortably. He said you got blindfolded and handcuffed for the whole ride. Why?" she asks, looking over at me.

I bite my lip and hesitate. There's only so much of this story I can tell. There's only so much she can actually know, and there's only so much I want to tell her without freaking her out too much.

"There's a lot about Deckard's past that I can't tell you, but suffice it to say that something went wrong and a lot of bad people wanted him dead," I explain. "I met him in the middle of all of what happened to him. He wanted to make sure that I could protect myself."

"That's noble, but why the handcuffs?" Mia insists.

"I'm getting there. I took a lot of martial arts classes when I was on my own in New York. At first, I wanted to be able to protect myself, but then I got really good at it. Most of what I learned on my own was how to incapacitate. When Deckard was teaching me, he taught me how to make what I already knew... lethal. One night, I was walking alone in London when a team of men attempted to kidnap me."

"Oh my god!" Mia shouts. The guys look up at us.

"We're fine!" I yell down to them. I look back at my sister. "Calm down. I'm sitting here now. There's clearly a happy ending to the story."

"Right," she nods.

"There were like five guys. I managed to incapacitate or kill all of them to get away," I tell her. "They weren't expecting all five foot five of me to even be able to put up a fight. One of them pointed a gun at me, thinking that I'd go quietly. I disarmed him and shot him with his own gun. I managed to shoot another one before I got disarmed. I had to get creative with the last three. I broke one guy's jaw, and cracked his neck just enough to knock him unconscious," I lie. He was unconscious because I broke his neck. He wasn't just unconscious, he was dead. "The other two I used a mixture of Judo and Aikido to render them unconscious. I ran away and called Deck. He met me and we went back to his hideout." I can't tell her the real story, or about the injuries I sustained in that fight. She'd freak if she knew I got beat to hell.

"Who were the men that came after you?" Mia asks.

"MI-5 agents, looking to get to Deckard," I reply. "In all of the time I lived alone, that was the only time I ever had to use martial arts for self-defense. Everything is fine, Mia."