Sean’s laughter echoed behind us as we left the room, but I wasn’t paying attention. My thoughts were fixed on two things: how to find out who was coming after Hana, and how to get her to forgive me and fall for me as hard as I’d fallen for her.
57
HANA
We stopped at my place,and my armed bodyguards accompanied me inside while I collected some clothes and toiletries before we went back to Roman’s.
“God, that feels better,” he announced as he walked out of the bedroom where he’d been in the ensuite shower. “Next time you pretend to be kidnapped, can you tell me to bring a change of clothes so I don’t have to wear the same ones for three days?”
I flipped him my middle finger, turning my attention back to my phone, trying to remember where I’d seen that woman who’d been writing to Jean Wolf. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I hadn’t found anything that helped. Instead, I looked up, letting out a long groan before I could squash it.
Roman stood there in the tiniest pair of athletic shorts and no top, his tattooed, ripped body glistening with droplets of water where he’d not dried himself properly.
He was tormenting me deliberately, I knew he was, but it didn’t make his attempts any less effective. I was so turned on I could barely think about anything but him stuffing me full of his cock.
“Are you alright there?” he asked with a chuckle as he walked to the fridge and took out a beer. “Want one?”
I nodded, and he cracked open two bottles, the lids dropping to the counter with a clatter before he brought the beers over and sat next to me, close enough that the heat of his skin seeped into mine.
“You hate me?” he asked bluntly as he handed me my drink.
I took a long sip before I answered, “You had cameras on me for six years. Why?”
Roman twisted in his seat, and I mirrored his position. “Because Tony asked me to.”
“Did he pay you?” I presumed he’d paid him something.
He shook his head as he ran his tongue over his lips, removing the white foam from his beer. “No.”
“No? You and my brother were that close that you just did him a favour?” I sounded disbelieving.
“We were close. We met when I was in a bad place. Getting bullied at school, hating my life. He offered me a purpose, and I thrived in it. We talked about stuff, but I obviously didn’t know him past the surface level stuff because I didn’t know about Preston, I didn’t know about you, but we were close… or so I thought. When that job went wrong, he told me to run, and I did, while he got caught. I always felt like it was my fault he went to prison, and so my fault he died. I owed him.”
I hated how sad he sounded and how he carried this guilt for as long as I’d carried Tony’s loss. I’d always felt like Ro was a kindred spirit, and I never understood why, but maybe we were more alike than I wanted to admit—alone in the world, coerced to do things out of duty rather than choice, holding our secrets close to our chests because we had no one we trusted.
Roman’s hand lifted, his fingers grazing the side of my face before he buried them in my hair and brought his forehead to mine. “I am sorry for your loss, Hana. Tony was great.”
My heart ached as it dawned on me that Ro knew him too. There was someone else who had memories of my brother,someone I could talk about him with, someone who could tell me stories about him I’d never heard.
Roman leaned back but kept his hand wrapped around the nape of my neck.
“He asked me to watch you, and I did. It started as a job. You weren’t the only one I had under surveillance, but you got under my skin. The more I watched, the more obsessed I got. The longer it went on, the more of your life I needed access to. But it wasn’t until Thomas cut my cameras that I realised I was head over heels in love with you. I was obsessed. I craved seeing you like I craved my next breath.”
He shifted in his seat as he put his bottle on the coffee table before cradling my head in his palms like he didn’t want me to look away.
“I love you.”
I scoffed. “You’re not in love with me, Ro. It’s like reverse Stockholm Syndrome or something.”
He leaned in and pressed a soft, brief kiss to my lips that made my body explode like he’d pulsed an electric current through me.
“I love you,” he repeated, like he wasn’t letting this go, and the urge to say it back proved that I was as unhinged as him. I replied with anger instead.
“Yeah, yeah. Did you have the footage of me in bed playing in the background while you were fucking other women?”
He pressed another kiss to my lips, lingering longer this time, applying more pressure that teased but didn’t give me what my body craved: full access to him.
“I haven’t been with anyone else,” he murmured against my lips.
