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Once I made it to the bedroom, I left the door open a few inches. I walked to the side of the bed where Ten had slept last night and slipped under the quilt and top sheet. His scent lingered there, and I closed my eyes as I breathed deeply.

Anton.

An invisible vise squeezed my chest so hard. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t make any tears come. I was frozen in fear, my mind racing as I thought of all the ways this could end. A knife? A gun? Either one could end Ten in a heartbeat.

No. That’s not going to happen.

I had lost too much. I had endured too much. I had been to hell and back, and now I finally had a taste of real happiness with my Anton. He loved me, and I loved him. We both deserved a life together.

Ten had survived prison. He was quick-witted and tough. He was a fighter, and he would do whatever it took to come back to me.

Chapter Twenty-One

“WhydoyouthinkI lied about killing Tony?” Ten eyed his captor in the rearview mirror. The man had taken a more comfortable position on the seat directly behind him but kept his gun and knife at the ready.

“Your booking photos,” the man said as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. “You had bruises on your hands, but they were old. You were a fighter. You trained with Ivan Markovic. I know you fought underground in the bare-knuckle circuit.”

“And?”

“And I saw Tony’s autopsy photos. Hands didn’t cause that damage, and if you had beaten him with a piece of computer equipment, you would have caved his entire skull in,” the man reasoned. “So, no, you didn’t kill him.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” Ten replied. “I did kill him. The cops walked in on me with my hand over his mouth, smothering him.”

The man regarded him a moment. “You didn’t do it alone.”

“There was no one else there but me.”

“Maybe,” the man allowed, “but there was someone else there before you. They found a partial fingerprint at the scene, and it was much smaller than yours. There was also a DNA profile. Female.”

“So?” Ten shrugged. “Adrian and Tony probably had girls in and out of that place all the time.”

The man shook his head. “You must care about the person you’re protecting.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tired of dredging up the past, he said, “You know what’s going to happen when Kostya finds us.”

“I don’t plan to be alive that long.”

“What does that mean?” Ten kept his focus on the traffic in front of him. Houston drivers were the worst he had ever experienced. Everyone slamming the accelerator over 80. Swerving in and out of lanes like they were driving in a fucking NASCAR race. Paper plates everywhere he looked.

“It means exactly what I said.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Ten switched lanes to avoid a Subaru weaving across the line. “What do you even want with me or Nisha?”

“I don’t want you or Nisha. I want Kiki.”

“Get in line.” Ten eyed him again in the mirror. “He killed someone you loved.”

The man nodded stiffly. “My daughter. JoJo.”

Ten felt bad for not knowing which victim that was. “I’m sorry.”

“It was my fault. I didn’t understand her. I was too busy with my work, chasing after the Zetas and trying to make our home safer. I sent her to live with my mother across the border. I thought she would be better off there.”

“You couldn’t have possibly known what would happen.”

“I should have.” He was looking right at the back of Ten’s head, but his gaze was far away, someplace in the past. “She wasn’t like other kids. Even when she was little.”

Ten wasn’t sure what to say to that so he stayed quiet and kept driving. After he refused to take the asshole to Nisha, the man ordered him to get on the loop. They were circling aimlessly, and he had to piss.

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