Page 42 of High Stakes and Soulmates
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
I grin at my pancakes, feeling oddly smug. Maybe I didn’t win the war… but I feel like I might have won a battle.
“Just… I wish I could tell you right now exactly how I feel, but I can’t.”
“Can I wait until you can?”
“What if you’re always waiting?” he asks. “What if I can never give you the answer you want?”
“I can wait a lifetime; I don’t mind.”
“I… really would prefer to figure this out before alifetimeis over. You were going to tell me about this… person in my family. What was his name?”
“Arturo.”
“Yeah? And he was a million times sweeter than me. I remember you saying that.”
I look over at him and grin. “Maybe not a million. But at least twice as sweet.”
He snorts. “I feel like it doesn’t take much.”
“You know I’m teasing you, right?”
“Oh, please trust me… I’m not going to take offense at someone saying that I’m not as ‘sweet’ as someone else.”
“I bet deep down, you’re the sweetest person around.”
Cyrus’s eyebrow quirks. “You keep believing that fantasy. Anyway. Go on. How did you meet him?”
“There was a group of radicals who were targeting political heads. They were pissed about certain regulations that started tofall into place and didn’t care who they targeted to make their statements. A political head they didn’t approve of would visit a hospital? They’d blow it up. They… they were awful men, but they were influential, and their ties were deep. So deep, it was hard to tell where the source was.
“So the army sent out a specialized group of soldiers to eradicate them… and I was part of that group. After some time, we’d figured out that some of their resources were being shifted throughout the country via the waterway that was a common trade route,” I say as I pull the pancakes off and plate them as well as some eggs. I slide it onto the table before grabbing the maple syrup. “I know milk goes with breakfast, but I don’t actually have any. I have cans of Coke, water, or blood.”
“Oh, tough choice,” Cyrus says. “That last one sure sounds appetizing, but I think I’m going to stick with the water.”
“You’re missing out,” I tease as I get him a glass and slide into the chair across from him before continuing.
“So knowing that they were moving along that trade route, we pinned down a man who had a ledger with some specific details on certain weaponry coming into that port. I was sent in to assassinate him in his home and return with the ledger…” I trail off as that night flashes back to me. The sound of the child crying for his father. I can still hear it two hundred years later. “I… wasn’t fond of being a soldier. It was what my brother became, and my father and his father… it was family tradition, and I was dragged into it from a young age. Even when I entered the army at the age of seventeen, I was well trained by my father. My whole life revolved around me joining the army. Honestly… the only difference between my life in the army and being raised in my family home was that I didn’t get hit as much and was actually praised for my work instead of being told that I would never amount to anything.”
I wave my hand. “Forget all that, anyway. I moved up in the ranks quite quickly, following my brother’s footsteps before I was placed into a special unit he was in charge of. Our job was to tear apart this organization until we could get to the very source. So we needed this ledger that spoke of some of the trade routes as well as what was coming in at what times. Sadly, I was the best at my job, so my brother would send me in for the assassinations. But that night… I didn’t realize there was a child in the house. I’m still convinced my brother knew but had refused to tell me, knowing I wouldn’t have gone in if I knew I’d be leaving a child without his father.
“I killed the man before his son came in and found what I’d done to his father, so with the ledger in my hand, I fled the house. I… I can still hear the way he cried for his father. And I began to spiral out of control. I fled out into the street and slammed right into Arturo. He gently led me over to a tree and centered me… and as days changed to weeks and months, I found myself falling further and further in love with him. I adored him. But I was afraid he wasn’t gay. We wasted so much time being uncertain of each other’s feelings. It took about four months before he even kissed me…
“I just…” I rub my face. “I’m not a killer but I was good at it. I wanted to be something else. I wanted to whisk him away and just live a normal life. I would have done anything to be a farmer, to be a woodcutter, to be anything other than what I was. To just live a life with him in it. But both of us were caught up in shit we couldn’t escape. I knew if I fled the army, they would consider me a deserter, and who knows if they’d let me live, knowing the things I did. And he… he was owned by a horrible man. By a man who wanted to manipulate us and destroy our lives.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EZIO
Past
“Ezio?”
I slowly open my eyes, lost in the bliss of my dreams. My arm is lying over Arturo and I immediately use it to draw him close. “Good morning, my treasure.”
“It’s definitely like six in the evening,” he says with a grin.
I glance at the window. “So it is.” My hand slides up his bare back as I find myself loving the feeling of him pressed against me. I really can’t get enough of him. His hand reaches up and brushes my hair back before he kisses my cheek and then beside my eye and up to my forehead. I close my eyes, prepared to fall back into bliss while he showers me with kisses.
