“And I thought being abandoned at birth was bad,” I mumbled, wrapping my arms around myself to ward off the unpleasant air.
“What?” Kieran’s sharp voice brought my head up.
“What?” I echoed.
“You were abandoned at birth?” he asked, stare roaming my face.
“I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” I muttered around my fingers.
Kieran snatched my nails from my teeth. “Is it true?”
I nodded. “Yeah. My birth mother left me on the steps of the hospital when I was just a couple hours old.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Didn’t want me, I guess.”
“I can’t imagine anyone not wanting you.”
The unexpected words turned me gooey inside, melting away some of the tension and distress from this heavy conversation. “Really?”
Lifting my hand, he pressed a kiss to the back. “I want you so much that I’m spilling all my secrets.”
I climbed into his lap, sitting sideways, and laid my cheek on his shoulder. “You’ve been through a lot.”
“Most people have.”
“The government hasn’t tried to kill most people,” I countered.
He paused. Then quietly, “They’ve killed more than you know.”
Realization dawned. “You’re a hitman for the government. That’s the dirty work they have you doing.”
He hummed. “The official term is sanctioned operative.”
“So you’re allowed to kill because the government says you can?” I asked.
“I have official approval to carry out sanctioned missions.”
I made a sound because that sounded like something right out of a handbook.Oooh, does he have a hitman handbook?“That’s the same thing!”
“Technically, it’s not. I can’t just go down the street and kill someone. The people I assassinate are not random nobodies or cheating partners. I take out high-level threats like terrorists, weapons dealers, spies, global criminal kingpins, and sometimes even crooked politicians.”
“So you kill the bad guys.”
He made another of those grunting sounds. “Just because you’re making me a good guy in your story doesn’t mean I’m not a bad guy in others.”
“But those people you named are all bad,” I argued.
“The government once ordered a hit on me and my unit. Does that make us bad too?” he asked.
“Of course not.”
“Then who’s to say everyone I’ve taken out is as bad as they say?”
It was like he wanted me to think bad of him.Maybe he feels bad about himself.The thought filled me with sadness. I might not have known Kieran for very long—and he was really grumpy, super bossy, and almost killed Cliff and Atlas—but he wasn’t a bad guy. Complicated and morally gray? Check and check. But he was also so much more.
“Do you feel guilty?” I wondered, plucking at the blankets covering my lower half.
