Page 148 of Deceit

Releasing me, I hear some bags rustle as he makes his way out, but he causes the whole room to halt with his following comment.

“Then can you tell me all there is to know about a man named Chung-Ho Gwan?”

My brows immediately knit as my skin prickles in warning. “What?”

I turn to face him, locating him in the middle of the room with a blank expression on his face.

“You work for the United States government and I’m curious about the protocol for dealing in goods with other countries.”

My brain doesn’t fully compute what the fuck he’s even saying.

It’s not Alexander to make odd and out-of-the-ballpark jokes. Why in the hell would he need to learn about a North Korean man who deals in nuclear weapons, gas bombs, and futuristic warfare?

Red flags slowly begin to wave in my head, and my instincts know better. They see the signs, but they’re coming up with other alternatives and guesses about what he could possibly want to be educated on when it comes to Chung-Ho.

B723 has been hunting him down for well over a decade but Ledger refuses to let us set foot in North Korea. When Wade was President, he sent a Navy SEALs team to extract him from the country for prosecution, but they never returned.

Not many men and women know about Gwan. So my boyfriend bringing up a man that we’ve been half-ass hunting for years and waiting to step foot outside the threshold of his country isn’t normal dinner conversation.

“Gonna need you to be more specific there, Alexander,” I state through my teeth, attempting to sound at ease without the tenseness of my body sinking into my voice.

“I had a meeting with a colleague today.”

“Who?”

“Senator Evans.”

“A politician?” I pull myself and my paranoia back, twisting my voice to sound curious. “Since when do you meet with such company?” Alexander’s darkening gaze falls on the crib that is half-built, seeming to zone out of our conversation, or he’s ignoring me. So I turn it to sound teasing. “Most of them are boring, believe me.”

“I’ll finish that,” he says flatly. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself. There are too many pieces.”

No, there’s not.

“Alrighty.” I compose myself not to rip the onesie in half that I have in my hands.

“What did you want to eat?” He flicks his focus back to me, finding me standing there as patiently as I can. “Lemme guess, you wanna finish your work?”

I nod, and he smiles. The one that used to make me blush because it’s so perfect and nearly unfair to most of the population.

Alexander extends his arms for me to walk into them, and I comply even though I don’t want to.

Something is telling me to not take this lightly.

Chung-Ho Gwan is not a name passed around the dinner table. He’s allusive, dangerous, and not on many people’s radar.

“We’ll eat and finish tonight, deal?”

“Sounds good.”

“And we can talk over dinner.”

And we’re back…

“Why are you holding me so tightly?” He promptly releases me, possibly realizing that he fucked up or set up an alarm that he could’ve kept from sounding.

Except I’m not some secretary that works for a governor and served a President of the United States like he believes I have.

I’m a fucking assassin that has taken more men and women down than he has standing behind him on a daily basis.

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