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“Always remember who are you. When you need to, use the past as your prologue and write a story of your life that shows you haven’t forgotten where you came from.” I recite verbatim, the charge my father recited to me when he gave me the necklace.
“Good. Milly, very good. Now, let me tell you the rest.” He looks so grave I feel my hands turn cold with fear.
“I found my blackmailer. Or the hacker did anyway. I found out he was dead. So, I knew I could home. I mean, I’ve been around, I’ve been watching you all since November. But it wasn’t until I found out my blackmailer was dead, just a week ago, when I let your mother see me. I traveled to Paris under one of my assumed passports and turned myself in there. I met your mother the first night you all were there.” My eyes widen as I remember my mother leaving dinner and then not being in our room when we got back.
“It was the first time I’d been able to touch her in so long. I know I’ve caused you all so much pain, but I had to protect you.”
“Dad, this is crazy. Does this mean you can come home? The lawyer said you’re not under arrest,” I ask. Eager to leave, I feel a sudden desperate need to see Dean, to get my hands on Anthony. I stand up and start to pace.
My father stands up to round the table and comes to stand in front of me, resting both hands on my shoulder.
“Milly, please, sit down. Because I'm about to tell you something I haven’t told anyone else, not even your mother. And you need to be sitting when I tell you.”
And when he’s done, my ears are ringing and my heart is hammering in my chest. My head spins with the ramifications of what he has told me. And then, mercifully, my world goes black as I faint, dead away in my father’ arms.
39
I’ve been pacing a hole into my carpet. I called Milly yesterday. She said I couldn’t come to Langley and that she wanted to come to my place when she got home. She asked for a day, and I gave it to her.
I’ve spent the last day trying to think of how I'm going to tell her. She was distant and short on the phone, and I can’t help but think she might already know. She has seen her father, maybe he knew all along who was blackmailing him.
I have also been thinking about what to do with the evidence I’ve found. I'm going to turn it over to the police. I don’t know if there are statute of limitations on blackmail, or if it’s even really a crime, since it was my father who actually did the blackmailing. But I want to see what Milly has to say, what if turning it over to the police gets her father into some sort of trouble.
The only real thing she said was that their dad was going to be able to come home in a few days. So, what if whatever the blackmail was about isn’t why he’s being held by the CIA.
I have so many questions, and I miss my woman, so much. This is the longest we’ve been apart since I found her again. I feel like my right arm is missing.
I’ve been working. And for the first time, in a long time, I’m grateful that there is so much to do. It’s what stopped me from getting into my car and driving to her house to force her to talk to me. But I know that I need to respect whatever boundaries she puts up. Even though I want not even a sliver of daylight between us.
If I have learned anything in the past few days it’s that this Milly, the woman I have gotten to know again, is at her core the same woman I knew back when we were kids. She still sees to the heart of me. She still forces me to lay myself open and be absolutely honest with her.
And the way I love her scares me because it’s not the kind of love you survive the end of. I don’t mean that I would literally die, but I think if I have to live without her, I would feel like a part of me was dead. But she needs my honesty, and she deserves my respect. So, I’ll tell her what I know and if she can’t look at me when I’m done, I’ll find a way . . .
No, fuck that. I won’t find a way. I will tie her ass up and not let her leave my apartment until she sees reason.
I run my hands through my hair for the hundredth time since she called to say she was on her way. The dye is cast. I can’t do anything but wait.
I take a quick shot of Patron and continue to pace.
Ten minutes later, I almost
jump out of my skin when the elevator that only stops on my floor dings. I walk over so that I'm standing there when it opens.
Milly walks in carrying a sleeping Anthony. He's draped over her like a monkey, legs wrapped around her waist and arms around her shoulders.
She smiles at me over his head and motions for me to take him.
“He wouldn’t let me come here without him. Said he had missed you. SSo, I brought him. I hope it’s okay,” she says as soon as he’s in my arms.
He's such a bundle of energy, and so incredibly clever. But right now, he's fast asleep and when I take him from his mother, he snuggles his soft head into my neck.
“Of course, it is. I’ll put him down in the spare room. Make yourself at home.” And I take my precious cargo and tuck him into the bed in my guest room.
I come back out to find Milly staring out of the window of my Crystal City penthouse. I’ve recently leased it until I can find something to buy, but it has spectacular views of the Potomac. I can see most of the monuments, the Kennedy Center, and the infamous Watergate apartments from here.
I walk to stand behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. Relief courses through me when she leans back into me. Her jeans can’t disguise her generous ass, and I can’t control the erection that immediately develops to press into her back.
“Miss me, did you?” She smiles at me over her shoulder and grinds that ass, the one I love and can’t stop looking at, into me.
