Page 58 of Covert Temptation

He went on, his voice low and rough. “Our team doesn’t exist on paper. We’re ghosts.”

That statement shocked her and at the same time, filled in so many blanks. The secretiveness surrounding the team became totally clear. She also grew aware that he wasn’t supposed to share this with anybody, let alone someone under suspicion.

“You know about Charlie, and now Echo too, but there are many teams under Blackout. When we join, we are dead to the world.”

“But you go into the public. You were in that courtroom.”

He nodded, the stubble on his jaw catching in the strands of her hair, linking them through a filament. “We can walk in the open. Fight. But we give up our identities…and that means leaving behind any family we have too.”

A lump formed in her throat at the idea of Dante’s family out there, believing he was dead. She couldn’t imagine a world without Dante King.

“Your family?” Her whisper was almost snatched by the wind, but he heard it.

“My team is my family. But I have three brothers and a sister out there in the world. We were taken from our parents and put in foster care. I was the oldest, so I remember the most. My siblings…they got adopted. But nobody wanted an angsty preteen who couldn’t adapt. I wasn’t a bad kid—no trouble. I just didn’t fit anywhere.”

Her heart broke at the thought of Dante as a young man, lost and alone, drifting like a ghost in the world even back then.

“We didn’t keep in touch. It…hurt too much. I joined the military, made a SEAL team. Then I was recruited into Blackout and things changed. Leaving my brothers and sister behind was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. But I still check on them…just like you check on your parents.”

She lifted her fingers to his jaw just to feel the warm steel of him, to offer some sort of comfort. “When did you last see them?”

“It’s been years…but I still miss them.”

In this quiet moment between them, the truth settled in her chest like a stone.

They were more alike than she’d ever realized.

Wounded. Hardened. Still standing somehow.

The only difference was he had a brotherhood. A team. People who’d bleed for him and trusted him without question, who would come back for him no matter what.

She had none of that.

No team. No foundation. No one but herself.

It’s just me.

And when this mission ended—when she wasn’t in danger or of use anymore—what then? Dante would vanish from her life, and this tenuous connection she felt to him would snap.

The fire crackled, but the silence between them stretched, too weighted for words.

He was staring into the flames now, his profile sharp, tired, his expression contained. Like a man built to hold up the weight of others.

God, she could fall for him so easily.

And that terrified her.

She hadn’t let herself want anyone insolong that she’d forgotten what it felt like to ache for someone this way.

But tonight, in this strange pause between the chaos, she let herself lean toward the feeling. Just a little.

Let herselffeelit.

Let herselfhope,even if she knew nothing would come of it.

For now, she just clung to him in the firelight, her chest tight…and her heart wide open.

And maybe, just maybe, he could hear it beating for him.

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