Page 114 of Outside The Wire

The whole drive was tense. I knew shit was about to get a lot worse the moment we walked through her door. She would want answers to a lot of things, and my past was about to rear its ugly head. There was no more keeping secrets from her. Everything about me was about to be split wide open for her to see. And if she didn’t like what she saw, this could be the end.

As soon as the door snicked shut when we walked inside, I felt the temperature go up about ten degrees. She tossed her shrug on the couch and started to pace her small living room, shoving her fingers through her hair as she took a deep breath.

“So, that was Jade.”

“Yeah,” I answered, still unable to believe it myself.

She spun to face me. “I’m only going to ask this one time, but I’m pretty sure I already know the answer.” I nodded for her to continue. “Did you know she was alive?”

“No,” I answered calmly. “I buried her. I—” I didn’t even have anything else to say. I didn’t know how to explain it. And until I talked to her, I wouldn’t be able to. But I couldn’t listen to it tonight. It was all too much to take in after years of self-loathing and destruction.

She blew out a breath and rushed forward, wrapping her arms around my waist. “I knew it. The way you reacted, I just knew you had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“Baby, I’m the one who’s sorry. The way this happened is?—”

“Don’t. That was crappy. I don’t know what happened and I’m not asking for you to be pissed at her. But I’m pissed on your behalf. For her to show up at a restaurant and approach you like that—” Her nostrils flared in anger and she turned away with amuffled scream. “I just want to kill her! I mean, if she hadn’t just come back from the dead. God, that’s a horrible thing to say.”

My lips turned up in a smile. Even at the worst times, this woman could bring a smile to my face. “It’s not horrible. It’s a natural reaction.”

“I know, but—how the hell did this even happen?”

“I have no idea.”

She blew out a breath and sat down with a plop on the couch. “Okay, I think we both know what comes now, Asher.”

I nodded, taking a seat beside her. “Yeah.”

“I need to know. I get that you don’t want to tell me, but?—”

“I’ll tell you. It was wrong of me to keep it from you anyway. But now that she’s alive, it’s gonna come out. It’s all connected to her.”

“In what way?”

Fuck, I really hated dredging up the past, but there was no ignoring it any longer. The old me—all the ugliness that followed after Jade’s supposed death—was all coming roaring back, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

“You know I was in the military.”

“Yes, you told me.”

“When I got out, I worked with Chase and Patrick—the two men you saw tonight. We worked a job for this guy called Rafe, and along the way, we ran into his brother, Cash, though we didn’t know they were brothers at the time. Anyway, we started working for Cash at his protection agency.”

“Wait, protection…like bodyguards?” she asked, her face filled with confusion.

“Yeah.”

“Well, that explains that massive change in your behavior when you saw me being attacked. Honestly, I never saw that side of you before then.”

“That’s because I did my best to leave who I was behind.” I swore, just talking about it left a bad taste in my mouth. “Rafe wanted us for a job—infiltrating part of The Syndicate. It was this massive crime organization.”

“Like the mafia?”

“Think bigger. They had their hands in every piece of the pie and spanned every part of the country with contacts all over the world. I don’t even know the extent because I got out when?—”

“When you thought Jade died.”

I nodded. “It was my job to infiltrate one of the organizations and take over. Rafe already had one picked out for me. I had to kill an arms dealer and take over his business, which I did. And after that, I met Ambrose Buchanan, Jade’s father. He owned the most prestigious banks in the country and used them to launder money for The Syndicate. It was the meeting I needed to secure ties within The Syndicate, but what he wanted from me was help in expanding his territory in The Syndicate, and I would have to prove my loyalty to him by marrying Jade.”

A slight gasp slipped from her lips. “And you agreed to that?”

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