Page 40 of The Wrecked One

I’d never admitted that to him, but it wasn’t such a hard conclusion to draw considering I’d taken off from Singapore.

“You forget you’re talking to a man who murdered over two dozen people to avenge my first wife’s death.”

“They were all bad guys,” I reminded him, looking down at my hand. In my head, like always, the blood was still there. I could never seem to wash away the evidence of what I’d done. The sin. The evil.

“I’d burn a city to the ground to stop a man from touching my wife. No fucks given. Zero regret,” he remarked in a low, bitter voice.

“All the fucks given and you know it,” I shot back. “You’re not the heartless bastard you let everyone think you are.”

He was quiet for a moment before pushing back with a quick, “Guilt for it, yes. Regret? No.”

That I believed. Because I took the life of a man to protect Mya, and I’d do it a hundred times over. But I’d spend my life feeling beyond guilty for it. It was a feeling I wasn’t quite sure how to pin down to one word.

“You’re not me. You’re a better man, and it’s time you move on. Forgive yourself and come back to the team.”

I stood and paced again. And damn, my feet still hurt with each step, but I did what I’d learned to do so well and ignored the pain.

“So, if you won’t send her back with my team that’s on standby, you’re stuck with her there, being a pain in your ass like I anticipate she will be until we can come for her.”

“She’s not going to get through to me.” That harsh truth pained me to say, but I felt it in my bones. Seeing her today had been both the best and worst thing to happen to me in four months.

“I guess we’ll find out.”

I stopped walking, knowing he was seconds away from ending the call. “Are you sure she wasn’t followed? That the Sorens can’t trace me from the hotel back here?”

“Yes, but we have that hacker in their camp who will give us the heads-up if they managed to track your real location.”

Too bad this hacker didn’t know the identities of who they worked for. It’d sure as hell make things a lot simpler.

“Gwen didn’t erase the evidence you were at the hotel, but she digitally altered where it appears you went after. So, with any luck, these fuckers are looking for you in Siberia, and we’ll have a team waiting to intercept them if they go hunting.”

Some good news. “I need one promise from you. One thing you owe me after this BS you’re putting me through.” I stepped on an exposed floorboard nail and snarled. Insult to fucking injury. “Hugo Soren,” I began once I stopped inwardly cursing, “is mine. I’m killing him myself.”

“I thought you were done. Not coming back.”

“I’m not, this is different.” I closed my eyes. “This is revenge.”

14

OLIVER

Mya stared blankly at me after I leveled her with the news I’d secretly been keeping in touch with my former boss. I’d also shared why I was really at The Sapphire, along with the fact she’d never really ditched her security detail on her trip to find me, and that Gwen was in on the plan with Carter.

“We were both played by Carter and Gwen. Duped,” I said when she’d yet to chime in.

“I guess some part of me figured I’d escaped a bit too easily, and everything lined up too perfectly.” She huffed out a deep breath. “Then again, another part of me secretly hoped I had a few angels watching over me on this trip, because I don’t have a death wish.” She lifted her shoulder in a small shrug before she added, “As long as no one tried to stop me from getting to you, I didn’t care much about anything else.”

You shouldn’t care about me. But I didn’t waste my breath telling her that. It’d only further piss her off. I did drop the other hammer on her, though. “Your team is in Switzerland, not wherever they told you they were off to. Carter’s going to try and buy The Sapphire and draw out the Sorens. I’m not sure if they’ll really take the bait, but I don’t blame Carter for trying.”

Carter was also currently the only one in charge. Falcon’s co-team leader, Grayson Chandler, was spending time with his wife and newborn. Probably with Secret Service protection, too, given his father was Secretary of Defense, and Gray’s name was on the Sorens’s, aka The Collective’s, hit list.

Had Gray been working right now, I highly doubted he’d let Carter pull the shit he had, tricking Mya and me into winding up together.

Falcon was also short one other team member aside from me and Gray. Jack London, Gray’s best friend, was sticking close by the side of his very pregnant wife, Charlotte, choosing not to operate until after their baby was born.

Mya took a seat on the couch. “I don’t understand.”

I went ahead and helped her understand, spitting out the details from my conversation with Carter in bullet-point fashion.

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