I shook my head, wishing I wasn’t hearing this. Right when I wanted to take a huge leap of faith and trust that Sergei and I could have a shot at a real future together, as a couple, or a family, instead of just being lovers, something like this had to explode in my face?
“It’s a shame,” one guard said. “It’s a shame every time any civilians are too close to danger. Any innocent life that’s lost too soon is an unfortunate side effect. But damn, could this be any more twisted? He finds the widow of a man he’d gotten killed as collateral? Just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? A damn shame.”
Blood sizzled through my veins. Sergei was responsible for Fitz’s death? The very idea rocked me so hard that I was amazed I was still standing, still here and breathing through the agony of pain and anger.
“Hey. It’s not likehekilled him,” the other man said.
“Well, he could have. With all the shots fired in a confrontation like that, who could begin to guess which shot killed or harmed which enemy?”
“I know, but still…” The other man seemed to lose his argument.
“Sergei was the one in charge of arranging that meeting with the Cartel that night. But he couldn’t have counted on anyone being too close to the building.”
That didn’t matter.
It couldn’t.
All that mattered was that Fitz was gone. He was dead—because of the man I wanted to move on to loving next.
No.
Fuck no.
Staggering back to get away from this conversation, I shook my head and willed myself to just breathe through it all. The pain and anger.
Sergei was a dangerous man, but I hadn’t considered that his lethal power and skill could be projected at me and my life, robbing me of the husband I thought I’d grow old with. That he could be something other than my hero, to be my enemy instead.
“No,” I whispered to myself, wishing all that I’d heard was false.
I bumped into the door, trembling with the intensity of my anger.
“Never.”
I couldn’t imagine a future with the man who’d taken my husband from me.
I couldn’t… daydream about living with him and loving him.
I can’t stay.
Maisie and I needed to leave now, right now, before Sergei would return and be able to spin this story in another way that would dupe me out of this anger that burned and flared so hot inside my heart.
I’ve been so stupid.
I knew he was dangerous.
I knew there had to be a catch.
As tears slipped free from my eyes, I regretted that I hadn’t counted on a catch likethis.
21
SERGEI
Natalie was supposed to be a random stranger. Just an ordinary woman I encountered in that crappy bar. There wasn’t supposed to be a link between us.
I never could have anticipated that I was connected to her. That I was linked to her husband’s death.
Death was something I delivered all the time. But the coincidence that I was involved in her husband’s was too hard of a detail to dismiss.
