“Keep your arms straight and lifted like this,” Marcus advised and arranged my arms with deft, confident hands before he settled them on my own and molded his fingers around mine. “Use the gun as an extension of your eyes.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Don’t think, just aim.”
His lips brushed against my ear and cheek before he straightened. Then I aimed. With his hands guiding my motions and his comforting body blanketing me in safety from behind, I almost forgot about the danger. I squinted, pointed, and fired three times in succession like James had done.
And to our collective surprise, I didn’t miss all the shots. The dark silhouette had a big chunk of its chest missing. I had shot my victim right in the heart.
My success didn’t bring me any modicum of satisfaction. I hoped I would never have to truly make use of the weapon I was presently holding.
“Beginner’s luck,” I tried to joke, but couldn’t quite bring a smile to my face.
“How did it feel?” James asked.
My forehead crinkled in concentration. “Strange,” I admitted. There were a million other words to describe the feeling, but none of them were diplomatic enough to voice out loud.
“Do you have something smaller for her?”
Nodding to Marcus, James turned to the armory and retrieved a black revolver with a polished wooden grip. He showed me its bullets and how it should be loaded. This time, Marcus stepped back beside James and winked at me almost conspiratorially.
The feeling of holding the revolver was completely different. It was smaller and weighed less. My fingers wrapped naturally around it, and its power didn’t seem as lethal as that of the first gun I had used. I had more control over it, which offered me confidence, but I didn’t fool myself—a gun was a gun, regardless of its size.
I took a deep breath, held it, and fired. This time, I hadn’t aimed for the heart, but for spots less fatal that could still cause enough damage to hold back a potential attacker. I missed a shot but hit a shoulder and a spleen. That had to grant me enough time to run or call for help.
“How was that, gentleman?” I put the revolver down and turned to Marcus with a pleased smile on my lips. His concentrated expression morphed instantly into a wide, congratulatory grin. He looked proud and somewhat relieved as he stepped forward and brushed his lips against mine.
“Good,” James said. “Although, I’m inclined to teach my students to take a shot for the heart.”
“No.” My answer was abrupt and curt, and I found myself flinching, but neither man seemed bothered by my reaction. They both nodded before urging me to keep practicing my technique.
Now and again my attention shifted to Marcus, who would wink playfully or nod approvingly, creating a good-natured complicity that had me smiling and relaxing. By the time it was his turn to practice, the muscles in my arms ached, yet I welcomed the discomfort. If sore muscles were what it took to make myself stronger, then I was willing to make the trade.
Marcus leaned to peck my cheek as he returned to his booth and took hold of his gun without blinking. I might not have liked violence, but I was capable of appreciating the sight of a man dressed in black and carrying a firearm. He looked dangerous and absolutely delicious.
Marcus didn't bother with a smaller weapon. I caught myself gasping and blushing when his head snapped back, and his fiery eyes found mine. Then I pinned him with an annoyed frown, but the devilish grin only widened and illuminated his whole face.
I was taken aback to see that the grin soon faded into a scowl, without any apparent reason. Marcus nodded to whatever instructor James had told him and turned to his shooting target with something akin to fury. He didn’t even breathe as he shot three times, much as Alexander James had done earlier—two shots to the heart, one shot to the head.
His breath came out raggedly, his hands lowered just a fraction, then the frown deepened, and he lifted the weapon and fired until there were no more bullets to fire. What had once been a regular sheet of paper was now just a frame with a massive hole where the heart of the target had been.
Marcus put the gun away, and the instructor removed it without making any comments or adding other instructions to what he had already said. Marcus’s body heaved and trembled, and his head hung low between his shoulders. I hadn’t realized how tightly I had been clinging to that sense of playful complicity or to the respite from anxiety it had created until it was completely and utterly gone.
His odd disposition hadn’t been a figment of my imagination. He was acting weird, he was distant, and he most definitely was hiding something—like the fact that today was not the first time he was using a gun.
He didn’t actually hide that, since you never asked, a voice in my head tried to rationalize with my better judgment. Or were those my hurt feelings?
I stifled the voice before it could go on defending him. Because finding excuses for his actions was the first step down a path of certain destruction.
I had told him that I couldn’t do things by halves. Once I was in, I was in—without holding back, without turning back. I needed to be treated as an equal. I needed to receive as much as I offered. I had warned him, so he most definitely didn’t have the right to lie to me or play me for a fool.
“Can you give us the papers now?” Although formed as a question, his words had been more of a command to which James merely nodded and gestured to be followed.
I walked out, without giving Marcus time to turn and catch a glimpse of my expression. I experienced a peculiar combination of anger and vulnerability, and I couldn’t quite predict how I would react if he denied my conclusions. But I was a fool to imagine that while he could so easily evade me, I was allowed to do the same.
“Charlotte?”
His hand circled my elbow and stopped me in place. He tugged at my hand, gently motioning me to face him, but my gaze remained stubbornly focused on Alexander James’s retreating form.
Only when he disappeared around a corner, and Marcus and I were the only ones left standing in the hallway that led to the reception area, did I sigh in defeat and meet his inquiring eyes. Apparently, he could pick up the changes in my mood as instinctually as I picked up his.
“Why are you upset?”
I sent him an incredulous look. Earlier on, I had actually believed that I had exaggerated, but the rage that had poured out of Marcus in waves, and the storm I was witnessing now in his eyes told me I had been right. So the moment he started acting as if he had no idea what was happening, betrayal stabbed at my chest. This very reaction was what worsened the whole situation.
“Sometimes it feels like I barely know you. Like right now.”
Marcus stiffened. His eyes were speaking a truth I could not decipher, but his lips were preparing for another lie. I sighed and took a step farther away—into my shell.
“We are still learning. I don’t know everything about you either, Charlotte.”
“You know I didn’t mean what’s your favorite food or where you like to go in your free time. How did you book this entire place, for instance? How can you get us permits in less than a day? Why do you know the things you do about Mitch Stewart?”
“A friend helped me.”
I scoffed and shook my head. This was just the type of elusive answer that made me suspicious, and eventually, it raised too many questions and an entire chaos in my head. With a heavy sigh that created an ache that ran all the way to my chest, I turned to leave. But he simply wouldn’t let me.
“Don’t,” I snapped, struggling to keep my voice down when his hand closed around my wrist and refused to let me go. “This is what I meant. I only know a man who saves me when I need him to, who impresses me with his charm and silver tongue, and who is a damn good lover. But I don’t know this man who is aloof and cold, and who is lying to me. Who are you really, Marcus King?”
“I’m not lying—”
The placating look he had been giving me for the last five minutes changed abruptly i
nto a warning glare. I was the one entitled to be mad, not him, and yet, the fury blended with a potent shade of hurt that I could see clearly in his stare sent my thoughts into a whirl of confusion. Was I the one making a mistake by picking a fight with him?
“Aren’t you?”
He did not deny my accusations and that did nothing to improve my mood. Releasing a bitter sigh, Marcus ran a hand over his tense features. When he made an attempt to cup my face, I avoided his hands and those inquisitive eyes that touched me more deeply than his hands could.
“I’m doing my best to be a better man for you, Charlotte, but you need to trust me.”
His hands settled on my waist, and his body caged me between its unyielding hardness and the wall. We were perfectly aligned, but he still found space between us to eradicate, so he inched closer. When he spoke next, his lips moved slowly, brushing against mine.
“Ever since you entered in my life, you turned me upside down. You make me want to do things for you that I never wanted to do for any other woman. It’s infuriating that you won’t let me.”
“Let you do what?”
“Let me protect you,” he cried in a whisper.
In his pleading eyes, there was despair, the kind of despair that drove sane men to do insane things.
“How?” I demanded with a similarly broken voice. “What have you done, Marcus?”
I had stopped thinking that there was something wrong he was hiding from me. I was starting to believe that he was hiding something actually dangerous. And that caused my heart to constrict with worry and my lungs to burn as I forgot to breathe.
Marcus watched me for so long that I thought he had gone into some sort of stupor. In the end, after gnashing his teeth and glaring at nothing in particular, he rested his forehead against mine with a long, heavy sigh of defeat. When he massaged my lips with his and wrapped his arms around my waist, I found myself unable to deny him.
“You won’t stop until you know the truth, will you? Not even if I tell you it’s not safe if you know?”
This time it was he who refused to meet my eyes.
“If you are trying to make me stop asking questions, you are failing.”
There was no way now he would walk out of that building without telling me what he had done. I only hoped that whatever it was could still be repaired.
“Charlotte—I—I was offered a deal.”
That definitely did not sound good. A thousand thoughts ran through my head, and each one was worse than the last.
“What kind of deal?” I eventually asked, nearly not wanting to hear the answer.
“A deal to bring down Mitch Stewart.”
“Has Leon Holden propositioned you? Why would he choose you to—”
“No. It was the FBI.”
My mouth opened and closed, but my tongue remained lax and unable to form words. This was definitely much worse than what I had been imagining. The FBI, just like any other government agency, was like an octopus that seized you and never let you go.
They didn’t make deals. They recruited, then they infiltrated your life until you had no life of your own. And that was the time when you were their perfect agent. I didn’t want that for Marcus or for us, not even if he was doing it in good faith.
“Did you accept it?”
“No,” Marcus answered curtly, but although he did not accept the deal, it was evident that he was considering it.
“Who exactly made you this deal?”
“Julian Hudson. He runs an operation meant to bring to light all of Stewart’s dirty affairs. That’s how I know about the mayor’s business, and whether his son is guilty or not, he is only a small piece of the whole dark puzzle. There is an organization behind them to back up their actions. If they are not stopped, they will continue killing and destroying lives. If the power is not stripped from Mitch Stewart, if he is not put behind bars, you won’t be safe. The only way to ensure that is to break their organization from the inside.”
“That would be your job?”
It seemed I was too numb to properly express how outraged or panicked I was. I realized my hands had been clenched in his jacket only when Marcus took them gently, covered them with his, then cradled them to his chest.
“Yes,” he answered like that was the simplest, most obvious thing in the world.
“Why? Why you?”
“Can’t you see? I’d be invested in this operation more than anybody else. I couldn’t care less about the mayor or his business, but I do care about you, and it seems the only way to ensure your safety.”
“Marcus, you don’t have to accept the deal. I’ll admit I am not safe, and you have no idea what it means to me that you care so much as to want to protect me, but you can do that by being by my side, by supporting me—”
“That is not enough, Charlotte. I’d love to spend every living moment next to you, but it’s not realistic, and it’s not healthy to think that I would. You will never be safe as long as Mitch Stewart is running free. He and his people know you have been meddling in their affairs. They haven’t taken it well.”
“But—I can hire a security detail. You don’t have to get involved with the FBI. You don’t understand—”
My voice grew thinner and shakier. My heart beat rapidly with undiluted anxiety. I was panicking. While Marcus was trying to protect me, it seemed I was completely unable to do anything to protect him.
If he got involved with the FBI, I was terrified that he would become another disposable body they buried under a made-up story. And if that happened, I would be the only one to blame.
“It’s just this one time.”
I scoffed and looked away, suddenly as weary as if I hadn’t been resting for weeks. His intentions were right, but I was afraid that time would prove him wrong. Perhaps what I dreaded as much as him failing was him succeeding. Because then, there was no way the FBI would simply let him go.
Marcus placed his hands once more on the wall, on each side of my head, and nudged my nose with his, urging me to look at him. Through words and gestures, he was trying to appease me, but right now nothing truly could.
“Say something, Charlotte,” he pleaded.
“There’s no such thing as one time.”
“I promise you.”
I shook my head hopelessly and pushed against his restraining arms. He didn’t offer resistance.
“It is not you I don’t trust. It’s them.”
I walked away before he changed his mind and took me in his arms again. When I was so close to him, and when he had me so tightly wrapped in his arms, I couldn’t stop feeling. And at the moment, I dreaded feeling.
I waited by the car, and Marcus followed me outside in less than ten minutes. He carried the permits, a handgun, and the revolver. At the sight of them, I groaned, shook my head, and finally decided on staring out the window.
We drove back to my apartment in silence, and for once, Marcus didn’t press me. Then it hit me like a bulldozer right upside the head.
“It was you, wasn’t it? You asked this Hudson person to interfere and have me removed from Jack Stewart’s case. How did he manage it? Who did he threaten?”
“I don’t know, and really, I don’t even care. All I care about is keeping you safe, and I will do that even when you don’t want me to. Even when you don’t like how I do it.”
Marcus spoke without even looking at me. We had worked ourselves into a foul state that we didn’t know how to come back from. I was not upset about not working on Jack’s case anymore. In fact, I was grateful, but what Marcus failed to understand was that I couldn’t stop now. I couldn’t in good conscious walk away when I knew that another woman’s life was threatened.
I didn’t miss that on our way up to my apartment, Marcus didn’t even try to hold my hand or otherwise touch me. He had grown forlorn, and if his distance was any indication, he was as upset about my reluctance as I was about his decision to accept Julian Hudson’s deal.
Marcus held the door and stepped in
side my apartment only after I did. An expensive sweet perfume assaulted my nostrils before I swiped a glance around the living room and finally saw her.
She was perched on the edge of the loveseat, her hands resting on her knees and her knowing brown eyes studying me with a kind, serene beam. In the light that filtered through the windows, her red hair shone, and her skin glowed a healthy shade of honey.
She stood from her seat, lean, tall, and gracious on her enormous heels and opened her arms wide, just like she used to do when I was little.
“Mom,” I whispered and walked over to hug her. She seemed changed, happier, more serene, and yet the same nurturing, sophisticated woman I had always known.
“Oh, Charlotte,” she sighed and squeezed me in her arms. For such a frail-looking woman, she was unexpectedly strong.
“I thought you were waiting for me to visit on Christmas,” I admonished gently but kissed both her cheeks to temper the reproach.
She rolled her eyes and made an impatient gesture with her hands. “You didn’t actually believe that I would stay away while my daughter was in a hospital.”
“I’m alright,” I assured her and made a pirouette just to appease her. “Besides, you’re in a hospital all the time.”
“That’s different, young lady, and you know it,” she said, pointing a finger at me.
Throughout the whole exchange, Marcus’s eyes never strayed from us. Mom cupped my cheek, apparently coming to the conclusion that I was indeed safe and sound, then bypassed me to get a long look at him. Although composed and expressionless, I could tell that Marcus was uncomfortable.
“We are quite disrespectful,” Mom said and offered Marcus her special smile that seemed to immediately put him at ease. Mom had that way about her that made her agreeable and that ease of interacting that charmed you. “Who is your friend?”
“I’m Marcus King, ma’am.”
Marcus stepped forward and kissed her hand, making her wink at me and giggle.
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