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He stepped aside and gestured to the table. “Okay. After you.”
Her legs somehow took her across the spongy green, the soles of her low-heeled ankle boots temporarily crushing the blades. Adrían walked close behind her, his hand hovering near her elbow, and she could see his head moving about from the outline of his shadow on the ground.
While the sun was out, the air was cool. Having come from the tropics, she had to wear a sweater or light jacket everywhere, and she layered Theo until he complained. However, in about another year, they would better appreciate weather this agreeable.
Adrían sat across from her, facing the sun, his hair dancing in the wind. There was more of a shadow on his jaw than when she’d last seen him, along with a strained element to his expression. He was one of the lucky few who hadn’t so much as a freckle, his face unscarred and unblemished while she still wore parts of her teen years on her cheeks.
“What do these ‘people’ want with me?” she asked.
He squinted, his thick brows lowering and his thumb moving along the tabletop near her fingers. “Curtis used to be part of an elite tactical unit,” he said, and she remained quiet, fine with letting him assume she knew nothing about what Curtis used to do. “One of the men you’ve been seen with before, Gage Wolfe, is part of that unit.”
He blinked slowly, looking at her the same way he did all those years ago, so intense she felt the knots in the rope that kept her gaze tethered to his.
“I’m also part of a similar tactical Black Ops team,” he went on. “The ‘people’ watching you are my men, the men inmyunit, and they’ve been watching you for a while now.”
“Because I’m Curtis’ widow.”
“Yes.”
“What do they want?”
“They wanted to kill you.”
She bristled and took a moment to rearrange the parts of herself his revelation had knocked out of order.
“But I stopped it, querida. I told them the truth, that you didn’t know anything about what your husband did.”
“Did they want to kill meandmy boys?”
“Yes.”
Dez sent her a text asking if she was okay, and she quickly responded that she was fine and would be done in a minute. There was no point in pretending she didn’t know he was watching. What she didn’t know was whether he’d reported her current “situation” back to Joel without knowing the full story of everything she and Joel had been dealing with related to this man.
“Do these men still want to kill me?”
Adrían leaned closer. “Even if they did, I wouldn’t let them.”
“Aren’t they part of your team or unit or whatever it’s called?”
“Yes, but that won’t stop me from killing them when it comes to you.”
He looked away, and she moved her hand to her lap when she felt his thumb brush her pinky.
“Ayesha, I didn’t lie to you back then. I fell in love with you. I…I’m still in love with you.”
“You can’t be.”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Ah.” He laughed, and the slightest tint of red colored his olive skin. “It’s difficult for me to explain, but I’ll be honest. When we met, it was because my job was to keep tabs on you. Quickly,veryquickly, I stopped caring about the job and started only to care about you. I’ve noticed that it’s those who get labeled as monsters that often fall the quickest. We’ve spent our lives being seen as a threat, so when someone sees the human inside us, naturally, love follows.”
It made her think of Giorgio.
Until Mo, everyone assumed he used his skill to exert power. Instead, having had a target on his back his entire life, he’d defaulted to defending himself with violence. It was even how he showed affection; if someone threatened those he loved, he hunted them. If someone threatened a child, he tortured them. The lucky ones were those who quickly met the end of his blade.
“You still haven’t answered the question, Adrían,” she said. “Why should I believe you? You obviously want me to take comfort in the fact that you’ve got my back, but it’s been years. We haven’t seen each other in all that time.”
