Page 155 of Modern Romance Collection December 2024 Books 1-4

I suddenly remember the report airing on the evening news of a raid at one of Walter’s warehouses in Dallas. The priceless Incan and Peruvian artifacts had been nothing compared to the women found in the back of a truck, half of them close to the point of starvation. Juliette’s article had been published a few days later.

She holds out her hand for the camera. I hand it to her, watch as she types something into the screen. She hands the camera back to me.

My throat tightens. Even though I know exactly what I’m looking at, it takes a moment for my brain to catch up. The empty shackles hanging from the roof of the van. An officer with his arms wrapped around a woman facing away from the camera, the hunching of her shoulders and desperate curl of her fingers in the folds of his shirt hitting me like a train.

“You were there.”

Her eyes glint for a moment before she turns away.

“Yes. I’d been tracking Walter for months. There was plenty of evidence to suggest he was engaged in the smuggling of artifacts. But that night...” Her voice trails off. She blinks, as if trying to banish the image of whatever she saw. “I was the one who called the police. One of the editors threw a fit because I phoned it in instead of going to the paper first.”

The idea of Juliette even being close to something so heinous, so evil, makes my blood run cold. My fingers curl into fists so I don’t reach out and touch her, reassure myself that she is truly sitting in front of me, safe and sound.

“I’d gotten a reliable tip that he was getting a shipment delivered that night. Took my photos, matched a license plate to a robbery that had taken place in Mexico City a week prior.” Her eyes grow distant. “The last truck. It took me a while to realize why it bothered me. The other trucks were enclosed. But that last one had vents all along the top.” She presses her lips together and looks me straight in the eye. “I knew something was wrong. I knew and I almost walked away so that I could have the exclusive on Peter Walter for art smuggling.”

She looks away, and I know the admission had cost her. I reach out, cover her hand with mine. I don’t know if she notices with how far back into the past she’s retreated, how deeply she’s sunk in her own guilt.

But I’m there. I won’t have her thinking that I’m judging her, that I’m finding her wanting. Not after what she risked, what she gave up to do the right thing.

“If I hadn’t listened to my instinct, if I hadn’t set aside my ego and my pride, those women would be lost to the network of sex trafficking.”

Revulsion hits me straight in the gut. The depravity of what humans are capable of, along with how close Juliette came to encountering monsters. I wait for a moment, trying not to let her see how much I’m affected by what she shared.

“But you didn’t.”

“I thought about it though.” She bites her lower lip. “I thought about ignoring that instinct because I wanted that exclusive.”

She suddenly sets her glass down so hard on the table I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter. I smile reassuringly at a nearby couple who are watching Juliette, as if wondering if she’s about to burst into tears.

“I wanted to be the one to unmask him. My pride nearly condemned those women to a fate worse than death. I was so blinded by my own past that I failed to see the people who were truly the heart of my work.”

I don’t even bother to question the compassion I feel for her in that moment. I simply offer it because I want to.

“And I thought about killing my father. But I didn’t. Just like you didn’t abandon those women.”

“No, I didn’t.” The shadows in her eyes make my chest ache. “But I hesitated. I hesitated and ignored what makes me a good reporter because for a moment, I did exactly what the people I hunt do. I put myself and my career first.”

“Thinking and doing are two very different things,” I counter.

“You were right, you know.” The look she gives me is full of a sadness so profound it takes everything I have not to stand up, sweep her into my arms and carry her back to the boat where I can hold her and comfort her. “I told myself for so long I do what I do so that what happened to my father doesn’t happen to someone else. But the more I published my work, the more I felt...powerful.”

She spits out the word. I hate the loathing in her voice. I hate hearing how much time and energy she has wasted beating herself up when she is worth so much more. She’s a far better person than the people I’ve rubbed shoulders with and sought the approval of for over twenty years.

The thought stops me cold. That hollow sensation rears up, widens. More than wealth, more than prestige, I’ve wanted power. Survived on what shards I could grasp as a child, then thrived on the steady streams that flowed in as I rose up the ranks. I considered it synonymous with control, with everything I’d dreamed of and been denied in my childhood.

But at what cost? Juliette’s not the monster she believes herself to be. Yet I can’t help but wonder what I would see if I looked in the mirror, if I looked at everything I’ve done to get where I am today.

My grasp on Juliette’s hand tightens. “You called the police. You published your story days later, giving up an exclusive so those women could be rescued. You did the right thing.”

She watches me for a moment, hope flaring in her eyes, before she looks away.

“It still made me question everything. All the stories I’ve written, the people I’ve ruined.”

“They ruined themselves.”

Rafe and I suspected for years that Lucifer was at the very least flirting with the edges of the law, if not outright breaking them. And we did nothing. It took one slip of a girl from the Olympic Coast to bring the devil to his knees.

As I watch her, berating herself for one moment where she contemplated pride over doing the right thing and still made a choice that saved the lives of the women trapped in that truck, as well as future lives who would have been consigned to a fate worse than death, I realize that I can’t even come close to being the kind of person Juliette is in her heart.

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