Page 5 of Savage Assassin

Niall nods. “Aye, of course. I’d trust him to have my back any fuckin’ day, and I’d trust him with Elena, for certain.”

“Well then.” Connor looks around the table. “It’s settled then, men? We send backup to the Santiagos, and Levin uses that opportunity to get Elena out and back here to Boston. We’ll inform Ricardo of the plan shortly before he arrives, so he’s aware.”

There’s a murmur of assent, and I can see relief on Connor’s face, as well as most of the others. It’s been a long day, and it’s good to have the matter settled.

It’s not until I’m back in my hotel room, alone with a glass of vodka that I’m able to really think about what it is that I’ve signed myself up for–the job that I’ve agreed to do.

I know that it’s nothing that I’m not capable of. It’s dangerous, but I’ve done more dangerous things. It’s more the impulse that concerns me, the way I’d spoken up before I’d even really considered whether I wanted to be taking on this job.

Connor was right, of course. I’ve long had a knee-jerk reaction to women in need of help–especially a woman as young and innocent as Elena Santiago. I’d gamble that there are not many who would deserve Diego Gonzalez as their fate, but I feel confident that she doesn’t.

Still, itwasan impulse, and one that will take me back to a place that I’d thought I wouldn’t return to.

It was one thing to go to Greece, to Tokyo, to Paris in search of Anastasia, when Liam needed help finding the woman he loved. It was one thing to go back to Moscow to try and help Max save Sasha, to follow them to Italy and back to Santorini. But Mexico–

There are plenty of countries with memories of her, both good and bad. Moscow was the worst–but Moscow had been my home long before her. Tokyo, too, was a place where I can’t shake her ghost, even if I wanted to. I’d gone there because I’d had to, because I was already on the hunt, and it was too late to turn back.

It’s hard to say where I’d fallen in love with Lidiya, exactly. But I know of all the places that I’d least wanted to return to, to revisit the ghosts of the past; Mexico was the one that came to mind first.

“You’d want me to help.” I lay on my back, looking up at the ceiling as I tip the glass of vodka to my lips, an old familiar ache filling me at the memory of her. “You’re the reason I keep doing this. I see you, always. Needing me.”

Blonde hair and blue eyes. A laugh that could lift a man’s spirits in the worst of times, a sharp wit, and a sharper attitude. Words that could cut to the bone or ripple like silk over the skin. Desire so strong it hurt.

Happiness and grief, in equal measure.

I know it’s been too long for me to still talk to her aloud like this, in the dark silence of the night. Too often, I make sure that there’s someone else in the bed with me, so I don’t have to remember. So that there’s no silence to fill.

So that I can pretend that I’m a young man again, before I met her. So I can imagine that all of that is still yet to come.

All of the love and all of the pain. A pain so strong that sometimes, I wonder if I might have never done it at all, if I’d known how much it would hurt.

And then I remember her, every moment–on white hotel sheets and crisp golden sand, on a moonlit Tokyo night with drops of water from the onsen clinging to her skin. I know I’d do it all again, no matter how much it broke me.

No matter how clearly it divided my life in two–into the man I was before Lidiya Petrovna, and who I was after.

Elena

Iknow that things must be bad when my breakfast is sent up to me in my room, instead of my going downstairs for it. One of the maids brings it, looking pale and nervous, and leaves it by my bed. I catch a glimpse of José outside the door as she leaves, grabbing the maid’s arm as he whispers something to her in a low voice.

The atmosphere in the house is tense, like thunderclouds gathering before a storm. I can feel it even from inside my room, like a low hum that sets my teeth on edge and makes me feel fidgety and unable to concentrate on anything, even one of the new books I had delivered a few days ago.

I spend some of the morning pacing, picking at the food on my tray, and opening my bedroom window to try and get some kind of breeze, as the room gets hot and stuffy with the warmth of the oncoming afternoon. I find myself starting to wishsomethingwould happen just to break up the monotony.

If Isabella were here, we would have snuck out to the garden by now. She could never stand being cooped up like this, and she would never have listened to the supposed need to stay where she’d been put. But without her, I don’t have the gumption to sneak off on my own.

So I stay in my room, growing steadily and steadily more anxious, until I hear a sharp knock at my door. I know it’s my mother before she even opens it and walks in—I know how she knocks after all these years, quick and impatient, as if she resents even that much of her time being taken up.

“Your father wants to see you, Elena,” she says stiffly. I know that she hasn’t forgiven me for last night–or for not begging my father to send me to Diego to make up for Isabella failing to become his wife. “He asked for you to come down to his office.”

“For what?” I stand up, feeling my stomach tighten into a knot, and she purses her lips.

“Well, he didn’t tellme,” she says archly, stepping back out of the doorway. “Just come along. And try to do as you’re told.”

She doesn’t say another word to me all the way down the stairs and to the doorway of my father’s office. It hurts, though I do my best not to let on. Neither Isabella nor I ever felt particularly loved by our mother. Still, she’d always treated me with a bit more affection. It feels as if I’ve lost even those crumbs now, and it makes my chest ache with a lonely, grasping pang.

“Try not to make things worse,” she says dismissively as I walk into the office. I can tell, from the look on her face as I shut the door behind me, that she resents not being a part of whatever conversation my father wants to have with me.

“Elena. Come sit down.”

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