Page 24 of Archangel

He led the way, stepping into his office and behind his desk while I sprawled in the chair in front of him, scrubbing a hand over my face.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning.” El Diablo didn’t believe in wasting time. He wasn’t above toying with someone before the real interrogation began, but only for his own amusement. Not when the conversation was this important.

“Of which story? Because I have more than one you need to hear.”

“Start with the woman outside. Not how you being with her came about or all the circumstances surrounding the meet. That’s between you and Sonya. What I want to know is the plan for her and her involvement with you up to this point.”

“I haven’t seen or communicated in any way with her in at least four years. Probably closer to five. We were supposed to meet to sign papers to get our marriage dissolved, but she never showed.”

“Who had the papers? You or her?”

“I did. Still have them in my footlocker.”

“I’m assuming Shotgun is taking care of everything with regard to the divorce? Or are you staying with her now that she’s come home?”

“No, I’m not staying with her. I did everything in my power to make sure she was taken care of. I reached out to her once after she didn’t turn up. I was kind of concerned something had happened to her. All she said was that she was fine and would call me later. After that, nothing. I was too busy to worry about her after that. There was no expectation I’d ever want a woman of my own since my life was too damned dangerous to bring anyone else into it.”

“Then you met Sonya.”

“Then Sonya met me.” I wanted to make this perfectly clear. “I had no intention of ever going after her, El Diablo. The second I realized I saw her as more than a child, I kept as far away from her as I could.”

“Why?” There was no mistaking I didn’t have the option of not answering his question.

“You know the life I’ve led. Why would I want to expose any woman to that kind of life?”

“Not what I want to know. Why would you believe you’d be exposing her to your past life?” I knew exactly where the bastard was going. He was going to make me admit my feelings for Sonya and to gauge how deep they ran.

“Because the first time I saw her after she came home from her first semester of college, I knew I’d never look at another woman the way I looked at Sonya. I couldn’t have her, and she’d never want me. Seeing her living her life and playing around with some hapless boy unable to resist her would have… not ended well. For the boy.”

“So, you’re telling me you stayed away from her because you wanted her to be yours. Am I understanding you correctly?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you agree to bring her to the Oasis when Thorn asked you to help her channel her energies and find her future?”

“What was I supposed to say, Liam?” I snapped angrily. “‘Sorry, Thorn. I can’t help your daughter out because I’d rather be fuckin’ her’? I can imagine how fuckin’ well that’d go over.”

To my surprise, El Diablo laughed. Not a sinister laugh that said I was getting ready to die, but one of genuine humor. “Yes. I can see where that would have been a problem. So, what about you and Sonya?”

“She’s going to be mine.”

“Unless Thorn kills you first.”

“There’s that.”

El Diablo studied me for a long time, then sighed. “Only you could ever get so caught up in something you forgot you were married.” There were equal parts irritation and amusement in his expression. “But I suppose it never had an occasion to come up.”

“It did not. After she didn’t show to sign the papers and basically said don’t call me, I’ll call you, I didn’t try to contact her again. She knew how to find me, as evidenced by her showing up here for her bad timing award, and I had more important things to worry about.”

“Yes. As I recall you were hunting a particularly nasty drug lord.”

“Which is yet another reason I suppressed it all. I have no family, Liam. Only you and Black Reign. If the tie between Gloria and me had gotten out back then, she’d have been as good as dead.”

“And Sonya?”

I stood abruptly, glaring down at the man I considered a brother. “I’ll kill anyone who comes near her.”

El Diablo raised an eyebrow. “Don’t growl at me. I’d never hurt that girl.”

---