Page 35 of How Much For a Life of Lies?

“I am fucking breathing,” I wheezed, gripping Kai’s arm and holding tight, staring right into his piercing sky-blue eyes.

“Have you looked at any photos of Charlie today?” he asked with a more pronounced drawl, pressing harder as I relaxed.

Charlie had the happiest life with Jax and his partner, Arlo. A safe life. And he was too precious to be mixed up in things I’d done, or hurt by decisions I’d made. I wanted to leave him be, but I couldn’t help wanting to know he was okay.

I missed him.

But cutting all ties was the best for him.

“Yes,” I managed after a while. After staying with them for that short time, I set up an encrypted app for them to upload photos, sent a letter with details, and hoped they’d let me see my son’s progress from a distance.

Charlie had taken his first steps, and there was a short video of him tottering between my twin and his partner, both men grinning and laughing and telling Charlie his daddy would be so proud of him. That was what I’d looked at last, and it calmed me, and Kai knew it did. Hence the question. Sometimes, I could stare at my brother and see me in the photo.

“Okay,” Kai murmured. How did he do this? How did he threaten me, but make me feel as though I could lose my shit and still feel safe? I knew he’d kissed me to keep our covers intact, but the way he’d gripped my hair, the way he’d made me kiss him, that was what I’d lashed out over.

He raised an eyebrow. I hated when he did that. One day I’d drug him and shave off those damn eyebrows. I inhaled and then lowered my shoulders, lessening the tension. Finally, he let me go.

“You kissed me,” I repeated. Why was he not sorry? Why wasn’t he apologizing for being an asshole? I wiped at my mouth as if I could remove the taste of him. “Like I was some kind of…”

“What?”

“Possession.”

For a second, he was confused, as if he didn’t know any other way. “Viper and Bulldog? Those guys? They don’t understand any other language.” He had a point. “It might not help at all, but it got us out of trouble.”

A familiar frustration coiled inside me, but I sighed because Kai would do whatever Kai needed to do, and whatever my feelings about him, he was my partner.

It wasn’t his fault I wanted him to kiss me,push me against a wall,and freaking claim me. The thing was, he wasn’t thinking this through.

“You realize you’ve put a spotlight on me, and now you’re vulnerable because they have leverage.”

Kai examined his nails as if he didn’t care, but I knew him well enough to see the tic in his jaw and the regret in his eyes. “I’m pretending that I’m fucking you. It’s not like my cover says I’m a guy who actually gives a fuck about you, or indeed, anything.”

“Well, not giving a fuck is true,” I muttered.

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll say it was one and done, and I’ll whine about how shit you were in bed.” He winked at me.

I had to curl my fingers into a fist to stop myself from hitting him again. “You… I… this…” I didn’t have the words.

He shrugged. “I won’t apologize.”

“Of course you won’t. Why change the habit of a lifetime?”

He winced again. “I reacted to the fact that unless I offered a connection to you, then you were a victim of a beatdown, dead, or worse.”

I snorted. “What’s worse than dead?”

He crossed to the table where I had my research organized and pulled out one file, opening it to the front photo and shoving it at me. I winced. Lucas Fraser.

He was part of the reason we were here, the final straw for a mayor on the edge who called in Shadow Team through the dark web. Lucas Fraser—twenty-three, a mechanic in his dad’s garage, lost to drugs, and tortured by someone at Kozlov’s enterprise, fingers gone, a hundred slices taken out of him, flayed, and left for dead in the middle of Main Street, much to the horror of the mayor and indeed any civilian who’d come across him. He’d been a warning, not subtle, and yeah, that much torture, that much pain, probably had had him begging for death.

“You think they wouldn’t have done that to you if they thought they could get away with it?”

“I’m a lethal freaking Navy SEAL,” I defended. “They wouldn’t have got the drop on me.”

He turned on the desk chair and straddled it, resting his chin on his hands and staring at me.

“Tell me you wouldn’t have taken the beating to keep your cover intact, Mr. the-mission-is-everything-and-I-have-a-death-wish.”

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