Blood Purple by Ashley Nemer Page A

getting his abb riled, but he had not anticipated him being that upset with him. For all Haydar knew, he was innocent in this mess. Dominic turned to re-check the monitors. He needed to figure out who this mystery man was. Rewinding the footage from yesterday, he watched as this man entered the room and methodically took out each guard. He watched him come up from behind each one, his knife slicing their throats, his hands cracking their necks with ease. The man moved stealth like from one room to the other. He had to have had military training. Dominic watched on the screen as the blonde broke into the torture room. He came up behind Hamza, getting the upper hand quickly with a blow to the neck. Dominic marveled at their skill. The way Hamza countered and fought back. It looked like the mystery man was cut across the cheek. That should leave a scar, might help in identifying him later.
    Watching the final blow, he saw the mystery man stab Hamza in the kidneys, or what looked to be that general area, taking him to the ground and leaving him for dead. Dominic looked closer at the monitor; he noticed how easy the metal snapped free. Zooming in he saw the cause; the metal was being heated by something. “I’ll be damned, he controls fire too. Well isn’t this just perfect?”
    Dominic was told the last people alive who controlled the fire element were within the family; clearly his abb’s information was wrong. He walked around his room thinking about this new development. Maybe he could capture them both. He needed to learn to control his powers. He could make the stranger teach him. Dominic’s mind started racing at the possibilities.
    He realized he had gotten farther this week in over turning his abb’s control than any other attempt. His last efforts were still being laughed at. He remembered how he fought with his abb about wasting efforts with the humans. It was supposed to be an easy operation, but no, the Americans had to fuck it up.
    “Abb, why do you even bother with the oil? We don’t need it. What good is it to have useless power? Just kill them all and do what we want,” Dominic told Haydar.
    “Dom, listen, you never know when these resources are going to be needed. We need to keep the foothold here. Saddam is easy to control, you just show him money and he thinks it’s the best idea. Trust me; if Zayn is in America, they are going to need the oil to do anything over there.”
    Dominic continued to disagree. “We are wasting time, men, and money. If we want the crown, we have to strike where it hurts them most.”
    Haydar smiled at his ebn’. “Trust me; this will hurt them.”
    Dominic was unhappy with his abb’s plan to use Iraq as the weapon of choice in his operation. Dominic searched for a way to prove his abb wrong; he headed to America to start laying his influence on that presidential administration.
    Dominic laughed remembering how easy it was to convince Bush that Saddam was the man to take down. Fall of 1989, Bush couldn’t have been more excited about discussing Saddam and his Kuwait issues. Humans are all idiots, easy to manipulate if money and power are involved. He did understand some of the fun his abb had playing with Saddam like a toy. He thought back to that summer on August 2, 1990.
    “Son of a bitch!” Haydar bellowed. Dominic and Derrik came in from the other room.
    “Abb, what’s wrong?” Derrik asked.
    “Those fucking Americans are invading! Who the hell do they think they are? King of the fucking world? Now this is going to set us back years!” Haydar stormed about the room looking for things to throw. “We have to kill them all, nuke the whole fucking country.”
    Dominic held in his laugh. “I told you, abb, the Iraqis are nothing but a headache. Look what we have to do now.”
    “DOMINIC IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HELP LEAVE!” Haydar screamed.
    “It’s like taking candy from a baby some days,” Dominic said out loud to himself.
    No wonder in the last 200 years