She went still, as if the slight idea of my wanting her for good was something that could stun her.
“You’re too passionate about your job. You won’t give it up. You can’t. It’s part of your mission, like you said, to make the world a better place. And truly, I admire that.” I stepped back again. “I could claim the same thing myself, wishing to do my part in removing the rotten parts of society.”
“Emil, don’t do this. Not like this.”
“It has to be like this, my little agent?—”
“Don’t call me that.” She growled, gritting her teeth.
“But you are. Youarean agent. And I’m… me.” I shrugged again. “You can’t fit in with me. With my world. You wouldn’t want to.”
“Emil, don’t leave me like this.” She stared at me with frustration and something else I didn’t want to interpret. Something harsher, like pain.
“Too late.” I reached for the door and opened it. “I’m already gone.”
Before I could give her another chance to speak, I exited and closed the door.
Waiting for a moment, I closed my eyes and paused at the door.
“It’s not love,” I reminded myself one last time. “It can’t be.”
Because if she were the one I was supposed to love, I was making the biggest mistake of my life as I turned and walked away. Setting her up like this couldn’t be a mistake. I stood by every word of my short speech. She didn’t belong in my world, and she’d never give up hers. That made us incompatible, and I refused to believe that I would be fated to love someone who wouldn’t adapt.
Without a look back, I left the hotel and strolled down the sidewalk, sweating under the tropical sun.
I pulled my phone out and called Simon.
“Yes,” he greeted dully, as if he literally could read my mind, “I’ve wiped your trail. And hers.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Need anything else, Boss?” he asked.
Sure. How about some advice to completely forget about Agent Sadie Langer ever being in my life?
“No.”
I hung up and headed home, feeling empty but stubborn to deny that I couldn’t be whole again.
16
SADIE
Six months later…
I tapped my fingers against the edge of the tabletop at a coffee shop halfway across the city from my old office. My former workplace. Shaking my head at the concept that I was no longer an agent, I tamped down the anger, shock, and hurt that swirled any time I recalled my last days as an employee of the FBI.
Almost a month had passed since Special Agent Hufford called me into his office to speak with me. In hindsight, I should’ve been quicker to react to the sight of security, members of human resources, and a lawyer in Hufford’s office. Seeing all those others should’ve triggered me to be prepared for something serious going on.
But I hadn’t. All I could remember of that fateful day two months ago was walking through a haze of confusion and utter surprise. Hufford summoned me to his office to fire me that day. It was precisely one day, just one spin of the earth in twenty-four hours, since I’d taken a pregnancy test and realized I was pregnant.
Pregnant by the Mafia man I failed to arrest and bring in for questioning.
Knocked up by the lethal assassin who’d wanted to call me his good girl.
I hadn’t sobered from the earth-shattering news that I was carrying a baby by the time Hufford asked me to speak with him in his office. The identity shift that would force me from being just a single woman into becoming a mother hadn’t yet taken root and settled in my brain. In my psyche.
In the blink of the eye, after taking one test, my whole life had changed so drastically.
