Page 133 of Covert Mission

The sound of my real name on his lips makes me shiver. My unease grows until I have to glance at the table. Anywhere but at him.

For some reason, my throat feels really tight. I wish there was water on the table.

“Quit stalling.”

I pick up the menu, but he playfully knocks it down. “I know how to get answers out of you.”

Lord, he does!

“Trust me, I know.”

“No use fighting it. You might as well tell me. I’ll find out what I want one way or another.”

I fold my hands on top of the table and decide to let go. “Okay.”

He lifts a brow. The one he always lifts when he’s surprised.

“I need a second here. I’m feeling kind of emotional.”

He watches as I swallow a few times, fiddle with my hands. Look at the ceiling.

When I get my nerves and my heart together, I finally speak. “I wasn’t supposed to be anything.”

Everything about Lucas intensifies.

Knowing he’s not going to let me leave it at that, I push forward. “My father always told me I was a whore like my mother. Which she wasn’t, by the way. She was a teenage girl he got drunk and forced to have sex. But anyway, he said I’d never be anybody. That I wasn’t smart. That I wasn’t pretty. That I would never get away from our small town. I was destined to repeat the cycle if you listened to him.”

Lucas is eerily still. His tone drops low. “He’s going to pay for that.”

I let that rumbly, growled threat wash over me.

I don’t know if my father will ever pay, but just hearing Lucas take up for me makes my heart tremble.

I’ve never truly had anyone in my corner. Until now.

I draw a shaky breath. “Since I was fifteen, I’ve been determined to prove him wrong in every way I can. My friend, who called me Poppy, used to daydream with me about getting out of the ramshackle mining town we lived in. He watched all kinds of crime shows. He was telling me about them, and that’s how I came up with my plan. As soon as I found out about the FBI and CIA, I wanted to be that. I wanted to destroy criminals like those my father surrounded himself with. I wanted to use my brain to deliver justice.”

“Was your father a sheep or a shepherd?”

I know exactly what Lucas is asking.

“He was never smart enough to be the ringleader, funny, given that he was always knocking my intelligence. But he was always in the thick of whatever scam, organized crime, or scheme he could find. If we’d have lived where there was a mafia, he’d have been a made man. Instead, he hopped from one thing to another, skipping through life stealing, conning, and ruining other people’s lives. Including mine.”

I lean back in my chair. Just thinking about him makes me exhausted.

Lucas spreads his hands on the table, almost as if he’s doing so to keep himself from making fists. “So, that’s how you got to PCI.”

This part of the story is what really hurts. I nod. “It turns out…” But I can’t finish. My words get tangled up with the knot in my throat.

He reaches for my hand, stretching his arm across the table, wrapping my fingers in his warm hold. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“You know, don’t you?”

His eyes soften. He gives a single nod.

I refuse to let the stinging in my throat reach my eyes. I’ve already cried enough over this. But the pain is etched there. Deep. Where it always will be. “I couldn’t get a job like I wanted because of my father’s criminal history.”

Lucas’s eyes harden, his breath comes out of flared nostrils.

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