“Jerry isn’t back yet,” I spit out.
His eyes are empathetic, but like he often does, he steels his jaw. “He’s not coming back, Zara.”
“No,” I gasp, fisting his gi as tears instantly stream down my cheeks. “What are you …”
His Adam’s apple bobs, and he clears his throat. “He botched the job, had to be replaced, and knew too much, so …”
“So, what?” I shriek in a voice that sounds nothing like my own, the force weakening my knees until I’m huddled on the mat in a pathetic plea. “You didn’t fight for him?”
He stoops before me, rubbing my arm. “That’s the job. It’s what being an assassin means. You know this.”
“Not Jerry.” A sob racks through my chest, a wail so alarming that I hear sniffs from a few of our ladies, which is almost unheard of. “We all loved him. He was family.”
“He was.” He drags me into a hug, squeezing me tight. “But this was the life he chose.”
I sit with that for a minute, wrestling with all that it means while also battling this overwhelming hollowness and grief. “So, if it were me who botched a job, what would that mean to you? To Tripp?”
“You know we’d always fight for you, like we already have. We’ll always do whatever is necessary to ensure you’re safe.” His tone is soothing, but because my father is unwavering in his vow to be forthright with people, he tacks on, “But I told you not to choose this life, angel.”
The recollection dissipates, sinking into my gut like a lead balloon, so I narrow my burning eyes. “You don’t even know why I’m here. Everything you have on me is based on absurd assumptions.”
“Perhaps,” he agrees, dusting his thumb over my battering pulse point. “But you haven’t revealed anything to combat my assumptions. You’ve avoided me since I called you out. And you still haven’t given me your word that you won’t be the face my family sees in their nightmares.”
I should tell him that I already swore to Tripp that I wouldn’t become any of their nightmares, but maybe not divulging everything until I understand this guy’s angle is a better bet.
“You’vebeen avoidingme,” I argue, though it’s weak.
We had a brief exchange, in a manner that wouldn’t make sense to most. I was flipping through a well-worn copy of Oscar Wilde’sThe Importance of Being Earnestfrom a library here for the members when I saw a line worth highlighting:The truth is rarely pure and never simple.I left it for him on his conference room table before a meeting.
That was my way of telling him that just because I’d arrived at a suspicious time, it didn’t render me guilty. I wasn’t sure if he’d see it or if he’d know it was me.
But then he left Nathaniel Hawthorne’sThe Scarlet Letteron my desk with a passage highlighted:No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
It certainly fit, but his message wasn’t entirely clear. Maybe he was issuing a censure, or maybe he was offering freedom. Every interaction with him has me in knots.
Including this one.
“I’ve been waiting.” There’s a genuineness to his delivery that stains this exchange with intimacy, far from the iciness we’re so inept at feigning.
My breath catches in my throat, parts of me that weren’t engaged in the grappling tingling from neglect. “Waiting for what?”
He studies me for a never-ending minute, his face devoid of emotion, but his eyes teeming with conflict, until he finally arrives at a conclusion he’s willing to share. “For you to trust me.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Are you done fighting?” he asks like he’s speaking to a petulant child, slowly releasing his hold on my shoulders.
Not ready for him to get up, I wriggle as though I’m going to flip him. It’s just enough to provoke him to gather my wrists and secure them above my head. Again, I could free myself. But I have a hunch that ensnaring Axel in this position—with a woman he deems too young and an enemy, but clearly wants—is the ultimate torture.
“You need to be done,” he commands, and the gruffness of it scrapes over me like the rough hemp of a rope, braided with strands of his bridled libido.
“I’ll ask again.” I buck against his constraint, prodding every inch of him. “Why would I trust you?”
He leans down, his chest pressing into mine and his scruff grazing my cheek to incite a full-body shiver as his lips tickle my earlobe. “Because I didn’t kill you, my darling Thorn. I kept you.”
Thorn. On one hand, I’m insulted by the insinuation that all I am is a thorn in his side when I could be a dagger to the chest.But on the other hand, he has a point.He kept me, which almost sounds sweet.
Leaving me breathing and letting me return with him does offer a seed of trust. The fact that he didn’t neutralize me when he suspected I might be a traitor could be enough to get him killed by KORT. I’m not familiar with their inner workings, but they are known for the importance they place on loyalty.
