Page 20 of Targeted By Fate
I gave him the stink eye.
“I swear, I wasn’t. It’s just… you’re so full of surprises, and it made me happy. You’re mine, Keane, and I can’t believe I’m this lucky.” He stood up, held his hand out for me, and I tentatively took it, unsure what was going on.
“Let’s go. I’ll train you. I was just scared.”
Scared. My big sexy alpha was scared. I stood up and wrapped my arms around him.
“This should make you less scared.”
He grabbed my hand.
“Because it means we can be the kind of team that no one can come between.”
He dragged me out, barking at everyone waiting in the hallway about “continuing this discussion later,” and brought me straight to the car.
We ended up at a very nondescript building. If anything, it looked like an abandoned storefront, with apartments on top like something out of an old movie. But as we stepped inside, I realized it was so much more.
“This place is mine. It’s where I train. I don’t go to the public ranges or gyms. I never want people to see my weakness.”
“I don’t think you have one.” At least none I could see.
“I do. And it’s you.”
I cringed, not wanting to be his Achilles heel. I was a shitty actor, despite trying to school my face. He must’ve sensed what I was feeling, because he brought his hand up to my cheek and pressed his forehead to mine.
“It’s not a bad thing. If anything, it’s a good one. Because it means that I will no longer be reckless, no longer rush into things without worrying if it’ll be my last mission.”
Down the stairs we went into a homemade shooting range. I’d never seen anything like it. Boaz opened what I thought was a closet and turned out to be a small room, a room filled with guns.
So many guns.
Were they automatics? Hunting guns? BB guns? Air guns? They could’ve been anything—though I highly doubted they were BB or air, since the mafia didn’t mess around.
“What do you want to start with?” he asked as if that were a reasonable question.
I looked around. They were all so overwhelming, knowing that the second I picked one up, I’d hold the power of life and death in my hand, something my beast didn’t have on his own. Maybe if I'd been a dragon, it wouldn’t feel so life-changing. But I wasn’t. I was a freaking housecat.
“What gun did you start with?”
He walked to the back of the room, opened a box I hadn’t noticed, and pulled out a little gun. Little compared to the others, anyway.
“This one.” It was orange camo, hardly fierce-looking.
“A BB gun, then.” I could handle a BB gun.
“No. Not a BB gun.” As we walked into the main room, he told me the story of how he got the gun as a young boy—how he’d been fearful of them and didn’t want to pick one up. And the orange was chosen to make him less nervous, to make him comfortable enough to give it a try.
From there he went into full-on school teacher mode, that was if school teachers taught you how to destroy your enemies. He explained the gun’s components, one by one. Showed me how to take it apart. How to put it back together. He went through every single safety lesson that could possibly exist. And then tested me on the information. All of that before I was able to pick it up and try it for myself.
“Okay, I’m going to guide your arms and show you how to hold it. Then I want you to aim at the number one over there. And when you’re ready, ease the trigger.”
I wasn’t expecting it to be easy or for the force of it to be so strong—nearly knocking me off balance. But I did it. I shot it and stayed on my feet. I didn’t, however, even come close to hitting the number one… but I’d done it. And that was something more than I was able to say when I first stepped foot in here.
We spent the next hour with him helping me, aiding me, guiding me, until eventually I hit my target. It was a huge target, but a win was a win.
Just when I felt accomplished, he gave me a new target. And another. And another, until I could barely stand and my arms were like jelly.
“That’s enough for today. You did so well.”
