Page 77 of Killer Secrets (Tempting SEALs 5)

The door opened to reveal Diego. As impeccably dressed as ever. White slacks and a white cotton shirt tucked neatly into the waistband. Leather shoes and a gold watch. His black and silver hair was combed back and his patrician features were inquisitive.

"Have you learned much from the interrogation?" he asked as he stepped into the office and closed the door behind him.

"Not enough." Ian shrugged.

He moved ahead of Diego and casually closed the video before the other man could reach his side.

"If you were not my son, I would have killed you by now." Diego stared back at him ruthlessly.

"You didn't let brotherhood stop you, why let fatherhood?" Ian asked as he closed the folders on his desk before looking up once again.

The pain that flashed in Diego's eyes surprised him. It surprised him even more that he acknowledged it.

"You are amazingly adept at going for the jugular, Ian," he said quietly, his voice bitter as he sat down in one of the leather chairs placed in front of the desk. "Perhaps in that, you are more like me than I would have wished."

"Perhaps," Ian acknowledged, and it didn't sit well with him, seeing parts of Diego in himself, recognizing that heredity played more of a role in what shaped him than he liked.

His gaze locked with Diego's as the other man stared back at him intently. Black eyes, bottomless, deep, merciless. Diego Fuentes wasn't known for his softness or his mercy.

"You do not find pride in being my son, do you, Ian?" he finally asked soberly. "It is a source of disgrace rather than pride. All I have built." He lifted his hands to encompass the study. "It is as nothing to you, is this not true?"

Ian leaned back in the chair slowly and regarded the cartel lord.

"I'm here," he finally answered, his voice firm, cool. "As I promised, doing the job I promised."

"For the lives of your friends who have turned their backs on you and revile you. For women who would spit on you should they have the chance. For this, you are a part of all you have fought against, all your life. With the man whose responsibility it was to protect you and your mother as a child and failed. For this, you reward me by being my son?"

There was sadness in his voice and for a moment, just for a moment, regret flashed through Ian as well. As a child he had dreamed of his father rescuing him and his mother from the hell their lives had become. Always running, always fighting to live, to survive.

Once he had realized who and what his father was, the betrayal he had felt had nearly crushed him.

Diego frowned as he watched him.

"As a young man, I thought I knew all I needed to know of human nature." He broke the stare they had maintained, blinking at a suspicious moisture in his eyes before glancing down at his still hands as they lay on his lap. "I thought I knew the shades of betrayal and a man's honor, and how to categorize each." His gaze lifted then. "I learned I was not nearly so intelligent as I believed. And by the time I learned this lesson, it was too late. Those who could have comforted me, who could have been the family I so long for now, are no more."

Ian crossed his arms over his chest and flattened his lips at the hidden message there. Had Diego figured out the reason he was there? There wasn't a chance. He would have been dead had he figured that out.

"There's a point to all this?" Ian asked him.

Diego shook his head, his eyes drifting closed for a second. "There is a message in all things, Ian. Just remember, the mistakes you make at this moment in time will follow you always. Not just into your nightmares, but into your future, and into your soul. There is no greater pain than the realization that you have destroyed the ties that would maintain you as you age. Those ties are important."

"Diego, you're making about as much sense now as Sorrell's terrorist rhetoric does." It also struck at the heart of this mission. Diego's and Sorrell's heads. He would deliver them personally to Nathan. Payback. Atonement. Monsters didn't deserve to live, did they?

Diego sighed wearily before a bitter smile pulled at his lips. "You handle the business as though I have retired and have no say in it. You ask for no advice, you prefer I know nothing of the plans you implement. You are aware, are you not, that this is not working?"

They had no choice but to make it work. When the mission was over, the cartel would come down. Ian had made that vow to himself and, silently, to the friends who had always backed him. It would come down, no matter the price.

"I know your fingers are still in there." Ian glowered back at him. He didn't need Diego's fingers there.

"You cannot reform an old lion from striking out at those who threaten his territory," Diego pointed out. "Those who have died by my hand, those who have suffered, were there to destroy me. I protect only that which is mine."

An old lion. As though the drugs he sold had no effects, no liabilities. Hell no, he was the candy man selling sweets, that was all, and the big bad SEALs and terrorists just wanted to smack him down.

Son of a bitch, was this how monsters justified their evil? Was this how he had justified the blood he had spilled while he had been here? Defending territory? He could feel the blood staining his hands, hear the wails of the dead in his ears, and fought to remember that they hadn't been innocents. They had been drug dealers, murderers, rapists, and animals. No more than Diego himself was. No more than his father was. His chest clenched at the involuntary thought.

Ian leaned forward, laying his forearms on the desk, and replied coldly, "Good men die to protect the innocent. You deal in death, Diego. Just as I deal in it now. Don't try to spray perfume on shit here to make it more presentable. You're a drug lord. We sell death to children. We prostitute them, we dope them up, and we make a profit from it. Period. We aren't lions protecting our home. We're snakes devouring the eggs of humanity."

Diego blinked back at him as though in surprise. "You have given this much thought, I see. Why then are you here?"

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