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“Why didn’t you tell—how could you—you hurt me! You let William touch me.”
“I never let him touch you,” he snarled, his voice dark.
“You were going to rape me. Why didn’t you tell me from the beginning? Why didn’t—”
“Because I don’t know how long I have to be in this fucked-up life, Briar. I am undercover; this has to be my life. I have to play my part. Until you, I’d done my job flawlessly. Since you, I have failed every goddamn step because I couldn’t stand the thought of hurting you. But if William or any of the other men suspected anything, it would ruin everything.”
“You should have told me,” I cried out.
“Do you think I haven’t wanted to? Do you think I wanted to do any of that to you?” He was breathing roughly, and his eyes were wild.
I didn’t know what to think.
This was destroying him . . . I could see that—I wanted to believe that. But it had been a lie. Every part of the last four months with him had been. He’d been playing me from the beginning—using me. Once again, I’d been a pawn to someone else’s gain. And it hurt. It hurt so much.
“When I was approached by the FBI four years ago, they told me they needed help busting a drug lord. Easy. I never wanted to be part of that world again because I had just spent years trying to escape it, but fucking easy. And then I was thrown into this. I was told I had no choice but to keep going deeper and deeper, and then I bought you . . . and no matter how much it killed me, I knew I had to do what William had trained me to. Even though it’s against the rules, my biggest fear was that at any moment, William would show up unannounced. I knew if that happened I had to be prepared; I knew my life and my house had to be convincing, including my bond with you.
“And then that morning happened, and I realized what he was doing, how he’d tricked me into leaving you alone so he could get to you. I fucking panicked and nearly ruined everything with the way I reacted when I found him in that room with you because you—” He let loose a harsh breath, his chest rising and falling quickly as he gripped his hair. “Because you’d already buried yourself so deeply under my skin, and I didn’t know how to do my job anymore. A job that I’d more or less been doing my entire life,” he whispered, his voice dripping with exhaustion.
My head was shaking absentmindedly. Whether to try to block out and deny what he was saying, or because I couldn’t understand, I didn’t know.
“I don’t understand,” I said numbly. I didn’t recognize my voice, and felt so detached from it. “How was it a job you’d been doing your entire life if you said it had just been a few years, and what did you mean that it was a world you never wanted to be a part of again?”
He grimaced then glanced at me for only a second before looking down again—his hand immediately trailing over the tattoo on his left forearm. “I’m not a good guy, Briar. I’m not a cop, or detective, or someone who saves women and children from this kind of stuff. But because I’m none of those things, that’s why I was able to slip in with William.” He stretched out his legs in front of him and blew out a deep b
reath before continuing. “They’d been trying for years to get someone in, and no one had ever been able to. I . . . I was supposed to go into witness protection but was stopped before I was transferred. They came to me with the situation and why they thought I might work, and I agreed to try.”
When he didn’t continue, I asked, “But why did you work, Luca—or . . . what’s your name?”
“I can’t tell you,” he mumbled. When he spoke again, there was no emotion in his voice. “I’d been in a gang most of my life, and after years of trying, I had finally escaped. That was when the FBI came to me. I felt like I couldn’t say no to helping them because I was getting a chance at a new life when I should have been rotting away in a cell or in the ground. Half of my crew made and sold drugs. That’s why they thought I would work.”
His mouth curled into a wry smile, and he gestured to the large tattoo that twisted up his left forearm. “That’s why my tattoos don’t fit with this life, as you said, because they’re from a different life. This one covers the symbol of that gang I was in. And my scars? That’s where they’re all from. I’d been forced into the gang, and I’d been forced to do all the dirty work for my leader for years. I was the one who sent messages to people or other crews if they messed with us. I was the one they were afraid of showing up. I was the one who had to carry out the hits. If I’d refused to kill someone, my leader would’ve killed me. That’s just how it was. But in our crew, we did drugs and passed around women, even if the women didn’t necessarily want to be there. Again, something that had to be done if we wanted to stay in the crew—stay alive.” When a shuddering breath ripped from my lungs, he said, “Before you ask . . . I’m clean. I’ve been tested numerous times, and I haven’t had to use in almost five years.”
My mouth slowly fell open as another wave of denial crashed over me.
Everything he was saying—the man he was explaining—couldn’t be real.
He finally looked up and nodded when he saw the horror on my face.
“They needed someone to take down William—not realizing the extent of what he was involved in—and found a guy who had been perfectly groomed for this world. I’ve been trying to escape it for just as long.” He smiled, but there was no amusement behind it. “Guys like me don’t get second chances, Briar, and I’ve gotten third and fourth and fifth chances. But guys like me also don’t fall in love.” He dipped his head toward me, and said, “It wasn’t that I thought I couldn’t love anyone, it was that I didn’t deserve to, and because I didn’t think I could handle letting myself. Because I knew one day I would break your heart when I was forced to buy the second girl, or it would come down to this, and you would hate me. And because I refused to go through the pain of losing the girl again.”
Through my confusion and horror and heart ache as he slowly, slowly broke it, my chest seized as something new gripped at my heart and refused to let go. It was as if the man in front of me was holding my heart in his hands, shattering it to find and tear out the love and happiness he had given me. Because I was positive I hadn’t heard him wrong, and after the high of finding out that my devil loved me, the low of knowing he had loved someone else was a long fall.
“W-what?”
“I’d been charged with taking a girl hostage. I wanted no part in it, I’d never wanted a part in any of that life, and I swore to protect her because I’d fallen in love with her. Only problem was, we were holding her hostage because her fiancé was an undercover detective who had infiltrated our crew years before. She only ever wanted him and went back to him when we got her out. But she made sure her fiancé and his partner got me into witness protection because of what I’d done to the remaining members of my crew to get her out—that shootout with my brothers. After her, I never wanted to put myself in the position where I could lose the girl again. Then I ended up here, undercover, in another place and life I didn’t want to be with a girl I want more than my next breath. And she’s engaged, and I’m not supposed to want her.” One of his eyebrows ticked up. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
This wasn’t ironic; it was a morbid joke.
It had to be.
But as I pushed myself back until I was pressed against the cabinets and watched as acknowledgment mixed with a pain so great on his face it made the ache in my own chest magnify, I knew it wasn’t.
“As I’ve said, Blackbird. You do not love me.” Each word was laced with pain and seemed to take all of his strength.
I wanted to deny it, but I didn’t know how to. I didn’t know who was sitting in front of me anymore. He’d told me—he’d tried to warn me, but I couldn’t take the stories he’d told me when I’d thought of him as Lucas and connect them to what I’d just heard.
Everything I knew now felt so heavy and hard to handle.
