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“Emilio.”
I couldn’t help it. As soon as he said my name, I looked right into his green eyes. X was so damn hot, so powerful, so commanding, so everything I wasn’t and everything I craved.
“I didn’t want Lane to grow up the way I had, with expectations to say the right thing and look the right way from toddlerhood. I wanted him to have a chance not to be in the spotlight.”
I relaxed a little since X seemed more at ease now. “Is that why you haven’t had more kids?” Fuck. Could I ask anything but inappropriate questions?
X’s face didn’t turn red this time; he just nodded.
“I think you’re doing great. I mean, a lot of parents are… Well, a lot of people couldn’t do what you did, and it seems like he and Giorgio…”
X’s brow furrowed, and his mouth went thin.
“You don’t like to talk about that.”
“I don’t like to think about it. I know Giorgio too well.” He shook his head.
“Just focus on how well he can keep Lane safe like you’re doing for me.”
“No. It’s not…”
Heat filled my cheeks. Did he think I meant that we would… That I wanted… I did, but that was beside the point.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant you are as capable as Giorgio, probably more, I don’t know. Everyone says you’re scary as fuck, so…”
He smiled, his concern gone. “I am scary, or I can be, and I do get what I want. I can keep you safe no matter who is after you.”
“You’re that sure of yourself?”
“Aren’t you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t even—”
“When you’re behind your computer?”
“Oh, yes. Then I am.”
“Exactly. That’s your special skill set.”
“So what’s yours? Everything?”
X smiled. “You know that can’t be true. If it was, I wouldn’t need you.”
Need me? Fuck. That sounded way too hot. “Even without me, you’d still—”
“Never have accomplished all I have since I came back to Boston.”
“I just make it faster for you… The things you do—” I realized how dreamy my voice sounded and cleared my throat.
“I have skills that are rare, and I am fucking good at what I do, but there are things I need others for. I am partly such a good commander because I understand when things need to be delegated to those whose skills in an area far exceed mine. This has to be a team effort.”
“How do you manage that?”
He studied me for a moment. “Manage what?”
“Being humble and so fucking sure of yourself at the same time.”
“I’m not humble. I’m smart enough to know how to get others to help me, whether it’s giving money to the Carrington Foundation or killing someone who deserves it.”
My breath caught at his last words, and my mind replayed the scene from… the night before? I’d never had a very good sense of time, and it was totally screwed up now. I remembered the sight of Swain’s body on the ground, his neck obviously broken. I saw the other man dead beside him, a bullet hole in his chest, and Leo looking so hurt, yet he’d still been strong enough to kill with his bare hands.
I knew my work had led to plenty of deaths. I tried not to think too hard about it, and I’d worked to take fewer clients whose motives went against everything I believed in. I’d done what I had to in order to get myself and my foster siblings out of poverty and give us a chance, but now I could make better choices.
Vigilance and the Marchesi family worked outside the law. They killed, seemingly without remorse, but they had a moral code. Maybe it was one most people wouldn’t understand, but as a criminal myself and one who’d witnessed firsthand some of the worst humanity has to offer, I understood it. I was more than happy to help them bring down men who were far worse than X, his team, or even Devil Marchesi on his worst day.
That was why when X had asked—insisted—I keep going deeper, that I do anything necessary, no matter how risky, to find where Swain was hiding, I did it. With anyone else I would have told them to fuck off. I didn’t need any single job badly enough to risk my life, but what Swain had done, what I knew he would keep doing, made stopping him worth the risk.
“Are you okay?”
It took a moment for me to comprehend X’s words. “I, um… Yes.”
“You’re thinking about what you saw.”
I nodded. “I don’t know why it hit me so hard. I’ve been on surveillance when you’ve killed people before, but…”
“It’s different in person. It’s visceral, and you have to confront it in a more real way.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“You have to shut a part of yourself off. Some people never figure out how to turn it on again.”
