Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
A woman who’s been lying to me from the start.
A woman I told we could start over.
Forty-five minutes.
What the fuck takes forty-five minutes?
You know what takes forty-five minutes.
The voice in my head isn’t quite mine anymore. Sometimes it sounds like static. Sometimes it sounds like orders. Right now it sounds like the worst version of myself, the one I keep locked in a box wrapped in police caution tape.
She’s yours. He touched what’s yours.
“She’s not mine,” I say out loud. The penthouse swallows the words. “She was never mine.”
Then why does it feel like someone’s ripping your guts out?
I don’t have an answer for that.
What I have is a balcony door and a city between me and her hotel room.
The flight takes four minutes. I spend every second of it trying to talk myself out of what I’m about to do.
Her curtains are drawn but I can see the lights are on. I land on the balcony harder than I mean to, hard enough that the glass rattles in its frame, hard enough that she’ll know I’m here before I even touch the door. The best warning I can give.
The lock gives under my hand with a grinding shriek of metal, my strength overpowering my intention. I step inside and the smell of her hits me first, the scent that’s made a nest in my bones.
She spins from where she’s standing by the bed, still in that white robe, her hair loose around her shoulders in soft waves. Her eyes are already wide, her body having shifted into something defensive, feet apart, weight balanced. Ready to run or fight. I know she can do the latter.
“Who is he?”
The words come out steadier than I feel and I chalk that up to my own training. Decades of learning to keep my voice level while everything inside me screams.
“Who is who?” She doesn’t move, doesn’t blink.
I stride over to her, fists clenched, but she holds her ground, chin up, those dark eyes tracking my every movement. “The man who was here tonight. Dark hair. Stayed for almost an hour.” I stop close enough to see her pupils contract. “Who. Is. He?”
“You’re spying on me?” she asks, her posture stiffening.
“Don’t make me ask you again,” I say, my voice quieter now.
“Or what? You going to throw me off a different roof this time?”
I only stare at her. She eyes my fists, then takes in the expression on my face. Something in her concedes.
“His name is Cal,” she says. “He’s SOE. He’s a colleague.”
“A colleague,” I sneer. I know how ugly I must sound. “That’s what we’re calling it?”
“That’s what it is,” she says, defiant fire in her eyes. “He’s an agent and a friend.”
“Julia sent me the surveillance footage.” I tap my watch and the holographic screen rises in front of her face, the scene replaying. “I watched him walk into your room, Mia. I watched you let him in wearing nothing but a fucking bathrobe while I was—”
I stop. Swallow. My watch hand is shaking, making the screen blur, and I hate that she can see it.
“While you were what?” Her voice is quiet.
While I was sitting in my penthouse trying to figure out how to deserve you.
“Nothing happened,” she goes on, her forehead scrunching up. “He came to check on me, as a colleague, as a friend. I went dark for three days—my team was worried and he was sent in to find out why.”
I tap the watch so the footage disappears. “So worried he had to come all the way from London? You can’t talk on the phone?”
“It’s his job.”
“His job.” I’m pacing now, back and forth across her hotel room, too much energy in my body and nowhere for it to go. “What else is his job, Mia? What else does he do for you?”
Her jaw tightens. “Oh, give me a fucking break. Are you seriously jealous? Over nothing?”
“So what if I am jealous?” I say, hating that I have to admit it. “What if I don’t like the idea of some guy, some so-called friend, just showing up at your door when you’re half-dressed.”
“Then you have to bloody deal with it because he’s just a friend and nothing happened.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you? You’re a fucking spy.” I jab my finger at her.
“Then don’t trust me,” she says, throwing out her arms. “I don’t really care at this point. Either you take me at my word or you don’t, and frankly, I don’t think you even have a right to be jealous since whatever we were, whatever we had, is no more. You said it yourself. We start over.”
I grind my teeth together, knowing that she is right, that even if she’s lying, I still don’t have a right to be angry about who she spends her time with.