“No.” He pinched her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You were a child, and your first instinct was to survive. A little girl against a grown man. You were right to do whatever it took to survive.”
She smiled, but her chin was trembling. “That’s why I can’t let everything that’s happened to me, all those attacks…I can’t let them stop me. If I give up because it hurts and I’m scared, then everything I’ve done, everything I’ve become, means nothing.”
“No, Nikki, no.” He pulled her against his chest, feeling oddly frantic with the need to reverse her words. “That’s not what it means. Baby, you need…a lot of therapy.”
Nikolett snort-laughed in surprise. “I need therapy?”
“No, you needa lotof therapy.”
“Now that you’ve gone to therapy, you’re an expert?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.” Eric rubbed her arms.
Once more the smile faded. “He broke my ribs.”
Eric closed his eyes, making a mental note to have someone find Nikolett’s father, dead or alive. If he was dead and buried, Eric would beat the headstone into sand then salt the fucking earth.
“That’s why I didn’t give up and agree to get married. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t catch my breath and get the words out. After… Later, I finally let myself be angry. And then I made a plan. It turns out, I was too young to get married, and so I used the law to protect myself.” She winced. “Mostly. He beat me again once I started involving the authorities. When the police came after I sent letters, they told my father I couldn’t marry anyone, then lectured me about obedience to my father while I sat there barely able to see them because my eyes were swollen shut.” Another fragile smile touched her face. “But I didn’t marry, and my grandmother and I moved away to live with her sister. We were poor, but we survived.”
“You did more than survive, Nikki. You thrived. You’re the smartest, strongest woman I know.”
He wanted to kiss her, but hesitated, not knowing what she needed. Her gaze slid from his eyes to his lips and back.
“Eric?”
“Yes, Nikki?”
“Are you thinking of ways to kill my father?”
“Right now? No. That was five minutes ago.”
“I think you need more therapy.”
Eric shifted her off his lap then rose, offering her a hand. Once she was on her feet, he swept her into his arms. They were only going to the bed, which was literally beside them, but he felt better holding her, like she was safer here in his arms than anywhere else.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Nikolett was going for a walk and Eric was going to kill someone. Probably one of the people in this room.
Eric leaned back in the sleek chair, staring at the map of Paris. The living area of the larger suite was crowded with people from Hungary, France, and now his Spartan Guard. The task force trying to lure the Spaniard to Paris had grown. This room was only the on-the-ground group and didn’t account for all the people working on the digital fork of the plan, trying to make the job Colum’s new friend had attempted to hire the Spaniard for look more attractive.
Something was working because several hours ago, the Spaniard replied to the job inquiry with a request for more details.
Grigoris had knocked on their bedroom door just as they were falling asleep after the emotionally charged confessions about their childhoods, both of them still in their clothes and on top of rather than under the duvet.
Grigoris told them the Spaniard was interested, and there was a plan to make sure he came to Paris. Grigoris had needed Nikolett for ten minutes to explain her part. Ten minutes had turned into this hour-long meeting.
It was nearing midnight, and according to the worst plan in the world, in six hours, Nikolett would be going for a fifteen-minute precisely planned walk.
There was no way to know what had swayed the Spaniard—Nikolett’s presence, or the adjustments they’d made to the espionage job, so they were working both angles. They wanted their bait strolling through Paris in the bright light of morning.
Grigoris and Raphael, the French security minister, had gone over the plan for Nikolett’s morning walk in excruciating detail. Nikolett’s doctor weighed in via conference call, and a French doctor checked her bandages—which he’d hastily, and apparently badly, helped her reapply after they got wet in the shower.
Nikolett was on the other side of the room, trying out canes. Part of the plan was to make it look like she was doing physical therapy as she transitioned out of the cast. She’d be walking with a cane and nothing on her leg.
He waited for the meeting to near its end, as the world’s worst plan was fully fleshed out.
“I have a question.” Eric didn’t realize how much anger had seeped into his tone until the room collectively winced as he spoke. “Are you all morons, or just those two?” He pointed at Grigoris and Raphael.
