Page 89 of The Art of You

Focus up.I sent the message to myself, hoping it’d download and compute as a directive. But the order didn’t seem to be registering as Bella and I made our way down the stairs to meet up with everyone.

Because did I really just tell Bella I wouldn’t mind her carrying my child? The words had fallen so fast from my mouth, it appeared her lack of filter was rubbing off on me. She’d probably thought I’d meant my last comment to her as a joke, but I had a feeling she’d be wrong.

Christ, we hadn’t even had sex yet, and I was already mentally building us a house and constructing a crib for our child.

No.Children.Plural.And whenever my ticket was punched, Bella would have our kids in her life to love and protect her.

She reached for my hand, locking our palms together, and I went dead still on the bottom step. Had she overheard my thoughts somehow? Did she know I was imagining our dreamhouse together? Me, the guy who didn’t do relationships, who fucked just to fuck. Well, at least until this woman kissed me in Rome.

“You okay?” Her soft tone implored me to look her in the eyes and hide the fact I was un-fucking-raveling. I’d vaulted right over a few relationship steps up in my office. Went straight for what I really wanted deep down and didn’t truly understand. Not until recently. Not until I’d almost lost her. Not until I’d almost lost everything.

A family. With her.

“I’m sorry for . . .”What I said?I left those last three words in my head, because wouldn’t they be a lie? I wasn’t sorry for my words. Maybe for the timing, but that was about it.

“Ready?” Enzo’s simple question was a backhand over a bruise, stealing my attention back to reality.

Maybe that was for the better. I didn’t trust myself not to go ahead and skip another step. Drop to my knee right there and ask her to marry me. Make it as official in real life as it was in my head.

Yeah, consider me awake now. Eyes wide open.All I saw was her and our future. Fuck everyone and anything that tried to get in our way.Especiallymy own damnwhat-iffears.

“Yeah, we’re ready,” I finally spat out, taking that last step down, which felt entirely too symbolic of something much bigger.

Bella let go of my hand only once we were in the former living room we’d converted to a war room a few months back.

Alessandro and Callie joined us a minute later. He was in the process of tucking his shirt into his pants, not giving a damn everyone knew what he’d just been up to in his office.

The second Alessandro’s foot passed the threshold, Adelina cut right to it. “Seth Maverick delivered the classified files to Agent Clarke because he wasthreatened.”

“Start from the beginning of what you told me,” Constantine prompted, arms folded with his back to the wall opposite me.

Adelina had my undivided attention as she brought us up to speed. “Sydney spoke with her ex-husband for us, and when he wasn’t cooperative, she took a less traditional approach to get him to share the information we needed.”

“Moves fast. I like it,” Alessandro remarked, looping his arm around his wife.

“She waterboard him?” Enzo asked. “I would’ve loved to have done that and then some to Maria’s ex.”

The fact he’d shown mercy to Maria’s ex-husband still went down in my book as one of the greatest shocks of my lifetime. It was also proof people could evolve.

“No, but she got fairly agitated with him and may have lost her temper at one point. I can’t say I blame her.” Adelina opened her phone and motioned to Constantine to turn on the TV, and she screenshared the video to it. “She filmed a message for you.”

In the video, Seth was seated in a dark room with his hands behind his back, ankles taped to the chair. A blonde version of Lara Croft, with a bow at her back, stalked behind him, grabbed his hair, then forced his head up so he was staring at the camera.

“I like her,” Callie commented, and Alessandro kissed the top of his wife’s head.

I focused back on the screen as Sydney said, “Say word for word what you told me. Don’t leave out anything.”

Seth hissed a curse or two before speaking. “Three weeks ago I received a zip file from an unknown address. Just a string of numbers and letters. I sent it to trash, assuming it was spam. Next day, the same email. This time the subject line read: Urgent, and the subject line included my son’s name, so Iopened it.” He paused to catch his breath, but Sydney kept hold of his hair, ensuring his eyes remained on the camera. “I was ordered to download the files and wait for instructions. I would’ve reported the email to the Pentagon, but there was a photo inside the email that didn’t require downloading. It was of my son outside his school. I opened the image and checked the location and time. It’d been taken a minute before the email was sent.”

“Ourson,” Sydney rasped.

Now I understood why she was pissed. Seth had kept her in the dark on something involving their child. I’d have gone ahead and tortured him. Forget waterboarding. I’d use a scalpel to get the answers from him.

“Go on,” Sydney prompted, and Seth gritted out something about his pain level, which she ignored.

“Another email came a second later. They must’ve tracked the email and knew it’d been opened. They informed me our son had eyes on him, and a sniper could easily take a head shot. If I were to report the email or tell anyone, especially mylovelyex-wife here,” he said while forcibly twisting his head to try and look up at her, “they’d take the shot.”

Sydney peered at the screen. “There were twenty classified documents in the folder. I had a look at them an hour ago. Only one file pertained to the 2010 SEAL op. The rest were all other examples of how bad intelorthe CIA’s lack of action led to military deaths.”

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