I look away for a second, toward the bedroom door where my daughter is sleeping. The reality of her in the next room makes everything sharper.
Fuck, what have I gotten myself into?
“You’re telling me you’re a criminal,” I say quietly.
“I’m telling you what I am,” he replies. “You can call it whatever you want.”
My hands curl into fists on my lap. “How powerful?”
He exhales through his nose. “Powerful enough that I have enemies who don’t care where I am, or who I’m near, or what collateral damage looks like.”
He says collateral damage like he hates the phrase.
I press my lips together. My mind flashes to the airport, the private corridor, the way doors opened, the way we were waved through without questions. I hate that it all makes sense now.
“What happened to your father?” I ask, and the question is out before I can stop it.
His jaw tightens. “He was killed. When I was seventeen.”
My stomach drops. I picture a teenage boy and I hate myself for even picturing it, because this man in front of me does not feel like someone who was ever a boy.
“What did you do?” I whisper.
He looks at me for a long moment. “I survived.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one that matters,” he says. Then, after a beat, he adds, “I was sent away at first. To keep me alive. It didn’t work. People still came looking. So I stopped running. I learned. I did what they expected of me, because the alternative was being dead.”
His voice stays even, but his eyes are not. There’s something old in them. Something that doesn’t soften when he talks about it.
“You killed people,” I say.
He doesn’t dodge. “Yes.”
The word lands in my chest like a weight. I can feel my throat tighten, my skin go cold.
“You’re not supposed to just say that,” I whisper.
“I’m not asking you to like it,” he says. “I’m not asking you to forgive it. I’m telling you because you’re sitting across from me and you deserve to know who you’re dealing with.”
I stare at him. “And you thought sleeping with me was fine.”
His face shifts, just slightly. That’s the closest I’ve seen him come to discomfort. “No. I thought it was a mistake I could keep separate.”
“A mistake,” I repeat, stung despite myself.
He doesn’t correct it. He doesn’t try to sweeten it either. “It was supposed to be one night. You were supposed to go back to your life. I was supposed to go back to mine.”
My heart beats once, hard. Because the next part is the part I’ve never said out loud.
“And then I disappeared,” I say.
He nods. “Yes.”
The quiet between us turns sharp.
“You didn’t come looking?” I ask, and I hate how small my voice sounds.
