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Beck didn’t hesitate. “No. But let’s be honest. You didn’t kill your family’s murderer that easily. There’s no way you popped in, had a ten-minute interrogation, blew his brains out, then whistled your way out the door.”
Just as Seth suspected, the doctor saw right through him. “I didn’t.”
“How long did you torture him for answers?”
Seth hesitated, then shook his head. The truth couldn’t lead anywhere good. “Why does it matter?”
Beck shrugged. “If you offed him in less than twenty-four hours, I’ll be disappointed.”
He should have guessed that the doctor, despite his Hippocratic Oath, was bloodthirsty. “Two hours shy of four days.”
And when he’d started peeling off the killer’s skin layer by layer, Silas Nichols had finally admitted everything he’d done.
“How did you feel afterward?”
He whirled at the sound of Heavenly’s question across the house. She stood just outside the powder bath, staring at him with big, uncertain eyes. Fuck, she’d heard his admission.
It took everything inside Seth not to rush across the space between them and wrap her in his arms. Instead, he swallowed and forced himself to be honest. “Exhausted. Empty. Soulless.”
She bit her lip. “But you would do it again?”
“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate, and he didn’t prevaricate. Neither would do him any good. As much as he hated to give her the truth, he’d come this far. She deserved as much as he dared to give her.
“I see.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he demanded in the softest voice he could manage with his guts twisting and his world falling apart.
“Logically, I know you’re a dangerous man. I think I’ve always known on some level. But the details…”
Were too much for her tender heart. He didn’t know how to be anyone else. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “On the other hand, you lived through something tragic. Of course it affected you. I suspect you even saw getting revenge as your duty.”
“I did.” For more reasons than she would ever know.
“Another way you take care of those you care about.”
What was she getting at? “Yes.”
“Do you love me, Seth? Really?” Heavenly looked so vulnerable, standing a dozen feet away, fingers clasped in front of her as if she was afraid of the answer.
Though conversation about his past had frozen his insides, the uncertainty in her words melted his heart. “You have no idea. I think I’ve been in love with you from the moment we met.”
She exhaled, releasing a pent-up breath, then she glanced at Beck. “Do you have anything to say?”
“Objections? Concerns?” The surgeon shook his head. “No. In his place, I probably would have done something very similar.”
“We’re men,” Seth felt compelled to add.
As soon as the words were out, he realized that might not explain anything to her at all. But seconds later, she proved he’d underestimated her.
“You’re protectors,” she murmured.
“Yes,” he rushed to agree, ridiculously grateful she grasped that fact.
“I know.”
But she was still hesitating, and Seth grappled to understand why. “If you think I would only go to such lengths for Autumn because she was my wife, you don’t understand.”
