Page 34 of My Fallen Saint

“I keep to myself,” he says. “I don’t make a point of being seen. And,” he adds with a slight tilt of his head, “if you play the game wisely, money can buy a surprising amount of privacy.”

I nod slowly, processing that. “I used to tell myself that they pulled you into witness protection after the drug dealer killed Uncle Peter. I thought maybe the only thing you’d been allowed to do was leave me that note.” I study his face. “It would explain the new you.”

“I suppose it would.”

I lick my lips. “Do you have to dye your beard?”

He reaches up and rubs his hand over it. It’s trimmed, probably about three days growth on his chin and jawline with a bit of a tab under his lower lip connecting to his chin as well as a mustache. I’ve heard it described in magazines as a hipster beard, and with his hair tied back, I guess that’s fair, though Devlin is the hottest, most put-together hipster I’ve ever seen.

“Oddly, no. It came in dark. The hair, though, I dye.” He leans back in his chair, then crosses his leg and looks down his nose at me. “Anything else you’d like to know?”

So many things.

“Your nose. It’s thinner than I remember.”

“I broke it. Decided to use that as an excuse to change it.”

“Did you decide to change your voice, too?” I don’t say that I like it. It’s lower and a bit rough, and though I’m trying not to, I could imagine him whispering to me in the dark.

“Not intentionally. Vocal cord scarring.”

“Oh.” I frown. “How?”

“Trauma to my neck,” he says, in the kind of tone that suggests I won’t learn more about that.

“Right. What about your face? How did you get that scar?” That roguish scar slicing down the right side of his face gives him such an air of savagery that I have to know how it came to be.

“I got caught on the wrong end of a hunting knife.” He lifts his hand, tracing the line of the scar over his brow, his eye, the mound of his cheek, and then finally the long, thin strip that cuts through his moustache and his upper lip.

I have to fight the urge to hug myself, because no matter how much I might want to hate Devlin Saint right now, I can’t wish that kind of injury on anyone. “Is that story true? Or was it done cosmetically? For camouflage?”

“It’s true. I’m not in witness protection, Ellie. I never have been.”

I lick my lips. “No, I suppose not. You could hardly come back here if you were in the program. And you certainly couldn’t run a high-profile foundation like the DSF.”

“That’s true.”

“It would make one hell of a story.”

The brow with the scar rises. “Is that a threat?”

I swallow, almost wishing I could be that woman. But I shake my head. “No.”

“Good.”

“Why? I knew you, Alex. And you wouldn’t have left me like that without a very good reason.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

I feel tears prick my eyes, and I hate myself for so desperately craving an answer. “No,” I say. “You wouldn’t.”

He steeples his hands and lowers his face, so that it almost looks as if he’s praying. He’s still looking down when he says, “The Alex Leto you knew was a child. A naive child who thought he could—”

“What?”

He lifts his head. “Play with fire. And not get burned.”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”