Again, why should she care, when he’d come here to kill her? I only want answers.
“At the moment.”
This time Kade wasn’t stripped down. He wore jeans and a blindfold. He turned to them as they approached.
“What, you decided to spare him the underwear humiliation?” she asked Jessup.
“Didn’t have any on.” He gave her a derisive look. “Do I want to know what happened to ’em?”
Kade said, “Look, we don’t have time to discuss my underwear. We?—”
“You sure damned don’t,” Jessup said.
Violet slapped his arm and mouthed, I’m handling this.
She stepped up onto the stool so she was face-to-face with him. “Kade, I told them the truth about how we met.” She lifted his blindfold, looking into his green eyes, thinking of how he’d shared his ambitions and how he’d sold his soul for the Guard. Was he that good an actor? “Now it’s time for you to tell me the truth about why you came here.”
A red mark marred the side of his face. He released a breath of surrender. “After you left headquarters, Ferro ordered me to take you out.”
“To kill me?” Her voice quivered.
“Yes.”
“That’s why you came here. To carry out that order. Then I caught you, and you had to come up with a story. Is that what everything you’ve said has been about? Maneuvering me into being…comfortable with you.” She wouldn’t say in love. Not here, not ever.
“No.” He held her gaze, dark mist swirling in his eyes, then shifted his gaze beyond her. “Didn’t you overhear the part about the assignment not feeling right from the beginning? That I was going with my gut?”
Jessup crossed his arms over his chest. “Nope.”
“Convenient,” Kade muttered. To her he said, “I questioned the order, even though we’re not supposed to. I was told that you were connected to the murders.”
She nearly choked at that. “Me? Behind the murders?”
“Now that I know you, it’s preposterous. Until yesterday, I only knew you as a Fringe hellcat. I came here to complete my assignment. You were sobbing, and my gut screamed that you weren’t responsible. I’ve never hesitated on a mission, never second-guessed my superior. So, I stood there like an idiot, and you reared up and kicked my ass.”
She glanced back at her brothers, who were listening to every word. About the sobbing. But at least about the kicking ass part, too. She turned to Kade again. “You’re as dedicated a Vega as they come. I’m supposed to believe that the sight of me crying made you disobey a command?”
“No, that made me see you as more than a crazy-assed Fringer. You were human…and vulnerable. The only thing I lied about was why I’d come in the first place. The more we talked, the more things sounded wrong about this whole situation, which corroborated my instinct. I’ve been putting off my boss with excuses while trying to figure this out. Now Ferro’s dragged my sister into it.”
“You never told her about your father?”
Kade shook his head. “I tried to protect her from that whole mess. Ferro is insinuating to Mia that I’m losing my head over a woman the same way he did.”
“But you’re not.” Thank gods it hadn’t come out as a question.
“Vee—”
“Violet. You don’t get to call me Vee.”
He released another breath. “Violet, I’ve never lost my head over a woman. But you…you?—”
“All right, that’s enough,” Jessup said, yanking her off the stepstool.
She pulled her arm away from him. “Let him finish.”
“What, so he can tell you how special you are, beautiful, or whatever other line he’s got in his arsenal? I can already see the flames flickering in your eyes. The man was going to execute you.”
“I do not have flickers in my eyes over him.” She blinked just in case.
