Page 23 of Centurion

“Can’t. He’s the one who shall not be named.” That was obviously something Brando didn’t understand. He wouldn’t stop until Mr. Grumpy Ass stopped. Tit for tat and all that. He laughed at his own rhyme.

“Again, he isn’t a fictional book character.” Brando sighed.

“I don’t know. When you talk about him, he appears.” Con snorted. “Hey, lock down the comms. I want to ask you a question.”

“Hold on.” He could hear Brando typing, although the video feed only showed his head and shoulders. “Okay. No one is coming on unless we let them. What’s up?”

“Remember me telling you about how I was going to find Ronnie?”

“Only every other day for the last … It’s been, what? A year?” Brando looked up at the camera. “Why?”

“I’m on this mission with her.” Con glanced at the door. “Dude, she’s … she’s fucking everything I could ever want, and I think I just fucked it up. Royally.” He shook his head. How in the hell he’d done that, he wasn’t too sure, but the cold shoulder after their conversation in the car was not the direction he was hoping to take the relationship.

“Okay, so you’ll have to fill in the gaps. I’m not a mind reader.” Brando propped his chin on his fist. “Talk.”

“Things were going well. I mean, we had a date, or at least that’s what she called it. And those kisses …”

Brando’s head popped up. “Hold up. You’ve had sex with her?”

Con frowned at his little brother. “No, asshat. I said kisses. She’s a lady. Not someone you’d pick up and fuck on a strange mattress.”

Brando held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Dude, I asked a question. Do not chew off my head, or I’m hanging up. I can get this abuse from Matt or Rob.” Brando threw their older brothers’ name at him. He and Brando were seven and eight years younger than their brothers, respectively. So, he and Brando hung out with each other, and Matt and Rob did the same thing. They were cool but way too stuffy for Con’s liking. The stiff upper lip type who loved to dress in suits and went afterthe thrill of mergers and acquisitions. They were very much like their mother, while Con and Brando were raised primarily by their dad and were much less the pressed suit and silk tie club.

Con sighed. “Sorry. She’s not like that, though. She’s … man, she’s everything I remembered and more.”

“She seemed nice on the island, but I was too freaking busy to notice much of anything except that explosion as we left. So, tell me, how do you think you fucked it all up?”

“We were talking in the car on the way here to her flat, which, by the way, is a museum with antiquities Mom would give her eyeteeth to own. Anyway, she asked me if I was afraid of her.”

Brando burst out laughing. “Did you say yes? She’s a fucking assassin, dude.”

“No, asshat. I told her I wasn’t afraid of her because I’d seen her in action. She’s compassionate and so fucking smart.” He glanced at the books in the alcoves. “I told her I respected her, and I saw the person behind the façade she puts up. I told her she wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, but she was the best at what she did.”

Brando frowned. “Okay, so what’s the problem?”

Con inhaled deeply and then blew out a breath. “It was like a barrier went up. She stopped smiling and gave me the cold shoulder. I asked what I did; I mean, at that point, I had no idea.”

“True, and I still have no idea, sospill.” Brando motioned with his hand for Con to hurry up.

“She said I got too close, and she had no idea how to deal with it. And then she walked away.”

Brando stared at him. “Could be she’s telling the truth, and she needs to process what you said.”

“But what in the hell did I say that made her feel vulnerable?” Con dropped back in his seat and stared at his brother.

“Well, let’s look at this another way. You’re an assassin. Someone you know, not intimately yet, tells you, an assassin, you’re actually compassionate and not a blood-thirsty killer.”

“Stone-cold,” Con corrected him.

“Whatever. She lives her life by not being herself. By not letting people see who she is. You bust in the door and say, hey, you’re a sweetie, and while you’re good at your job, you’re not the killer you make people think you are.” Brando made the sound of an explosion, and his hands blew apart. “Talk about nuking her world, bro.”

Con stared at the video screen as his brother stared back. “I did do that, didn’t I?”

“Ah, yeah, asshat. You did that.” Brando nodded as he spoke.

“So, what do I do to make that better?”

Brando shrugged. “You’re at her apartment, right? I think if she were really upset, you’d be on your ass at a hotel.”

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