How could it not?
Oh, well, he wished that was the fun kind of fucking. Only, it wasn’t. He was hiding out, his ex was here, and now he had dead issues.
Honestly, he wasn’t equipped for this.
Not.
At.
All.
“Tell me about it. I was blindsided, and I reacted poorly,” he admitted. “I own that. The rest of this, I don’t know what to do. Yes, I spoke to Elizabeth, and I crossed a line, but she did too.”
Gryphen was to the point.
No, she actually didn’t.
So, he clued him in.
“Graham called me about four weeks ago to say goodbye. He’d had a hookup to self-destruct, and he was drunk, sexually battered, and left for dead in an alley. Tony said the guy worked him over pretty good, physically, and emotionally.”
Oh, Jesus.
“He’s gonna die like that. Graham is Black Watch. He’s not a pushover. He can take a guy in an alley. I’ve seen him take on five, and come out perfectly fine. Give him a blade, and he’s skewering someone.”
Oh, well, Gryphen was well aware. Only, he didn’t want to come out perfectly fine.
That was the point.
“He wanted to check out. He made a promise to me, and that was theONLYreason he called me, or the cops there would have found his body behind a dumpster days later.”
That hurt Michael’s heart.
How could it not?
“Since you’re there, he told me to tell you to look in his room if something happened to him, and then give the box to D’Artangnan Graves. Ironically, I know the man personally.”
He laughed.
“My dude, we don’t all use our real names. Raphael doesn’t, Uriel doesn’t, Muriel doesn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t broadcast to everyone that the nun at the orphanage clearly hated my guts and named me after some French characters.”
Yeah, he was aware.
That Michael was even telling him that was huge, and a clear sign that he was rattled.
Saint Michael of the Blackhawks didn’t talk about his past.
EVER.
“Well, despite that, he said that there’s a box in said apartment area, and he needed you to have it. He said you’d understand.”
He was honest.
And he wouldn’t understand.
Then again, it wasn’t like the man could find him. The military made sure of that when they made him Michael the Archangel.
Graham wouldn’t know to look for him as Michael Graves. He’d only kept his last name since he didn’t want to be some weirdo with only one name.
