Page 132 of Vow Of Fire

“Was that you?” Evelyn asked me as we drove back to my place. Her voice was soft, but there was an edge to it.

I glanced at her. “You really want me to answer that?”

She shut her mouth.

I sighed. This wasn’t the time to have an attack of conscience.

“These were the men sent to kill you,” I reminded her. “They deserved what was coming to them.”

She gnawed on her lip, drawing my eye. I wondered how she would feel if I leaned over and did the same thing.

“How do you know?” she asked, her voice wavering.

“Because they arrived a few days before the break-in, stayed at a nearby hotel, and according to the CCTV footage out front, left at two o’clock in the morning the night after I… took you. I think it’s safe to surmise they were headed to your place.”

I didn’t tell her they’d also been clocked buying plastic sheeting, duct tape, and bleach at a hardware store earlier that day, or that they appeared on footage of Los Santos Rotos that Marco had obtained from a source in Bogotá. She didn’t need to know how close she’d been to death.

Just the thought of it made my blood boil, and I felt another surge of pleasure at the fate that had befallen them.

In my opinion, they’d had it easy. Rocco and I had shot them rather than making them suffer—something we’d both have preferred. Except we were trying to make it look like Malakov’s men had done the dirty work, and the Bratva weren’t known for their creativity.

“You hacked into the CCTV outside their hotel?” Her eyes were huge in the dim light in the back of the SUV.

“Technically Nico did,” I corrected. “But that’s just semantics.”

She drew in a breath and I watched her chest rise. As usual, she looked beautiful and so goddamn sexy in a tailored, cream-colored pantsuit with a body-hugging, navy-blue tank top underneath. I couldn’t wait to get her out of it.

Last night, after the shooting in the garage, I’d made love to her in a way I’d never thought I would. It had been gentler, more reverent, the thought of losing her still fresh in my mind.

She’d responded in kind, worshiping my body with an urgency I hadn’t seen in her before. Like she couldn’t stand to lose me either. Like I was worth saving. It was fucking heady, and had I not been so goddamn relieved that she was alive, I might have taken a moment to think about that.

My Ophelia. Not so tragic, after all.

Her hair was pulled up in a neat twist, making her neck appear even longer. In her ears were two diamanté studs, probably cubic zirconia judging by the quality, but they sparkled elegantly.

I made a promise to myself that one day I’d buy her the real deal. She’d wear my diamonds in her lobes.

I felt myself stir and adjusted my position. I was permanently turned on and at half-mast whenever she was close to me. Like my body refused to behave normally.

“Then it was really them?” she asked, oblivious to the effect she was having on me. That she always had on me.

I gave a definitive nod. “They were also the ones who opened fire on us in the garage yesterday.”

She gasped. “How do you know that? More CCTV?”

“Our surveillance cameras at the garage exit picked them up.” The images had been blurry, but enough for a facial rec. Nico had done what he did best and matched them to the two that had left the hotel. “Seems the intermediary, Ricardo, was a lot more than just an art buyer.”

What I didn’t tell her was Nico had also picked up a third man in the shooters’ car. He’d been sitting in the back seat, had never gotten out, and the footage had been too dark to see his features.

I knew she was looking for ways to justify murder, but she’d be disappointed. There weren’t any. She might not have pulled the trigger, but she’d known this was going to happen, and had done nothing to stop it.

I remembered when I’d first found out my father had killed someone. I’d felt tainted by association. Consumed with guilt for not putting a stop to it. For letting it happen.

It had gotten easier as the years went by, and easier still when I’d been trained to kill on the battlefield, but there were always psychological consequences.

That was the life I’d chosen. The life I still chose. And so I had to live with it.

We pulled into the underground garage and I saw Evelyn tense, last night’s attack still fresh in her mind. She glanced around nervously.