Counterfeit Conscience

by Helena Maeve

  “I think he’s been watching me,” Will replied vaguely.

  “Seems like the type. Controlling, arrogant…extremely full of himself. No wonder he and Castro got along so well.”

  It took Will a moment to recall that Jennings hadn’t worked the South American office back in the day. Whatever contact he’d had with Ignacio must have been sparse at best. He might not even have known the precise nature of Will’s relationship with him. Reports, after all, only covered easily quantifiable facts.

  “You may be called to make certain sacrifices for your country,” Jennings said diplomatically, gazing at the first of the two Bentleys rather than Will.

  “Sir?”

  “You’ve been in this business long enough. You understand that, sometimes, ravens and swallows are every bit as necessary as more…predatory species.”

  Will considered the shiny, crumbling sidewalk. A puddle glistened with oily rainbow swirls not far from the toe of his right shoe. “I do.” For a second there, he’d made the mistake of giving Jennings the benefit of the doubt.

  At least Karim had couched the request in easy sentimentality.

  “As long as we understand each other.”

  “Of course… How’s the family?” Will asked.

  Confusion creased Jennings’ brow. “Fine. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering how your son is adjusting. He relocated to Florida recently, didn’t he?” You expect me to prostitute myself for queen and country while your kid gets the safest office in the world and cozies up to our special friends across the pond.

  “Have that report ready tomorrow,” Jennings repeated, a parting shot that did nothing to allay Will’s wounded pride.

  His superior officer disappeared into the Bentley in short order, stooped silhouette concealed by tinted windows. The matter of his son’s convenient posting floundered, as Will had expected it would. He waited on the sidewalk until the car had begun pulling out of the alley. It wouldn’t do to appear as though he was dragging his feet, but eagerness was a red flag.

  He thought of going back into the nightclub and shaking Ignacio by the lapels until he returned to his senses. He thought, too, of calling Jennings and arranging a meeting so he could tell him everything—about Karim, about his relationship with Ignacio all those years back. Coming clean appealed on a purely self-serving level. Will wasn’t about to take leave of his senses.

  “Can you take me to the house?” Will heard himself ask as he slid into the back seat of his chauffeured ride.

  The driver glanced up, their eyes meeting in the rear view mirror.

  “I’m taking you home, sir.”

  “Call your boss. Tell him you’re taking me to the villa in Peruibe.”

  “My orders—”

  “Orders change,” Will said, sinking into the leather back seat. “He’ll want to see me.”

  They had unfinished business to attend to.

  Chapter Eight

  The house was empty as they pulled up in the driveway—or as empty as lavish mansions on the Atlantic coast were ever likely to get. A white-clad valet led Will to the sitting room he’d spied on his previous visit. The massive fireplace seemed as out of place now as it had then, but Will was more interested in the framed watercolors that took up a vast chunk of the walls.

  “Would you like something to drink, sir? Or dinner, perhaps?”

  The valet hadn’t given a name, but whatever instructions he’d received from Ignacio seemed to involve making Will feel at home.

  “When does Ignacio eat?”

  The valet arched his thin brows, clearly bemused. “In the afternoons, sometimes when he returns from the city…” Obviously he hadn’t been given orders to deprive Will of trivial intelligence.

  “I’ll have something when he gets back,” Will decided.

  Experience told him it wouldn’t be long.

  “Very well, sir.”

  “These are very good. Do you know who painted them?” Will pointed to the luminous landscapes. They all seemed to be the work of the same artist. “They’re not Ignacio’s, are they?”

  The thought of a gangster wielding a paintbrush wasn’t so absurd in the abstract, but this was Ignacio. Will knew how little patience he had, how ill he tolerated mistakes. He’d sooner tear a canvas to pieces than work to finish the tableau.

  The valet hesitated. “Senhora paints. Sometimes.” He bowed and left the room with a speedy tread, as though afraid that he’d said too much.

  So Mrs. Ignacio Macias does occasionally see the sun.

  Will filed the information away for later study. It wasn’t that he believed Ignacio would lock his wife up in an attic, but he had wondered why she was nowhere to be seen. She didn’t seem to be at the house. Ignacio never mentioned her.

  It would have been nice if Will, as the spy in this equation, could be the only one with secrets.

  Scanning the paintings, he tried to get a sense of what their author might be like. There were no photographs of the happy couple anywhere in sight—although perhaps they weren’t that happy.

  Will didn’t remember Ignacio wearing his wedding ring when he stroked him off.

  He had only vague recollections of what Ignacio’s wife had looked like ten years ago, before Ignacio was a speck of dust on her radar. Before she was even close to taking over the family affairs. Will had never had the pleasure, but surveillance of the family meant surveillance of all its members, including the bright-eyed, hopeful ones enrolled in Catholic school.

  Fine art seemed a paltry but predictable refuge from the life she’d surely come to lead after her father and her brothers’ deaths.

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

  Will turned. He hadn’t heard the click of the front door, much less the rumbling of an engine as Ignacio’s car pulled up in the driveway. He must have been distracted.

  “Very,” he agreed. “They’re your wife’s?”

  Ignacio nodded, unmoving in the doorway. “After the baby, she found it therapeutic. She’s quite the accomplished artist.”

  “The baby.” It wasn’t a question. Will would have known if this was public information, or if he’d bothered to do a little more digging. At first glance, Ignacio remained without an heir—at least officially.

  Not for the first time, Will was forced to acknowledge that he had thrown himself back into Ignacio’s clutches without taking the necessary precautions. His sole hope was that with SIS and Karim both watching from the shadows, he wouldn’t find himself in too deep over his head.

  “We had a son,” Ignacio replied. “Complications at birth, unfortunately. Such is the way of chance.” He looked past Will to the paintings, a flicker of emotion dashing through his eyes. “But you didn’t come here to talk about my family.”

  Will couldn’t deny it. “Don’t really know why I came.”

  “You must be cross that I went over your head.”

  “I’m past anger,” he confessed. “I’m exhausted.”

  Ignacio hitched up his shoulders, the white suit jacket draped over his shoulders fluttering against his tan forearms like a cape. His Rolex gleamed under the discreet lamplight. “So rest.”

  “I was hoping to, but now I have to write you a proposal saying we’re willing to give you an arm and a leg just so you won’t leave us in the dust.”

  The mistake was entirely theirs, for outsourcing so much surveillance work to Ignacio in the first place, for using his hotels and casinos as a honey-trap. Now they needed his cooperation and couldn’t afford to lose him as a friendly.

  Ignacio scoffed. “You can keep the limbs.”

  “You want something else?”

  “Sosa’s extradition, Foley’s head in a box.” The smile on Ignacio’s lips sharpened. “And you.”

  “Two of those things aren’t in my power to give.” The third, Will thought, scared him like nothing in this world.

  “We’ll see. Have you eaten?”

  “I said I’d wait for you,” Will replied, aware
how domestic, how uncannily subservient he sounded. Something inside him rebelled at the notion, but it was a short-lived mutiny. He’d barely slept last night. He had skipped lunch.

  When Ignacio beckoned with the flick of a hand, he went, as obedient as a well-trained dog. He didn’t shake off Ignacio’s hold as it slid to the small of his back, nudging him this way and that.

  The dining room was already laid out for their use, two place settings arranged at one end of the long glass table. Cutlery gleamed like silver. Will resisted the impulse to ask. He wasn’t going to think about how Ignacio seemed to live a life of uninhibited luxury while he got to drink himself to sleep every night. He wasn’t going to wonder why it was that loyal service to his country had left him isolated and untethered at the ripe age of forty-eight when, judging by the number of people that milled around him at the club, Ignacio had friends by the dozen.

  “Won’t Ruben be joining us?” Will wondered over a bowl of gazpacho. “I hope I didn’t run him off.”

  “Ruben preferred to stay at the club.”

  Will sucked his cheeks to contain a smirk. “Is that what you told him?”

  “Are you under the impression that he can be controlled? Perhaps you haven’t had the time to take the measure of the man…”

  “Man?” Will chuckled. “I do know he doesn’t appreciate my being around.”

  “He’s young,” said Ignacio, a touch dismissive. “He still believes that love is enough.”

  “For a happily ever after?” Will guessed.

  “For a happy now.”

  “Spoken like a cantankerous old man.” Will raised his wineglass. He liked the vintage, though he hadn’t asked the year. It was tart and fruity, and it lingered pleasantly on the tongue. Ignacio’s staff had served it chilled. The glass sweated in Will’s palm, dripping condensation onto the woven placemat.

  Ignacio smiled. “I’m younger than you are.”

  “You don’t look it. Much.”

  On impulse, Will tipped forward and brushed his fingertips through the gray at Ignacio’s temple. He didn’t realize he was doing it until he heard Ignacio exhale. He couldn’t retract his hand fast enough, heart jackrabbiting in his throat. It was the wine. He needed to lay off alcohol.

  “Some of us grow up quickly out of necessity,” Ignacio said, ignoring his discomfort.

  “Lucky Ruben. With you to back him, he doesn’t need to. He can be a real-life Peter Pan.”

  It came out a little more rancorously than intended. Will didn’t hold it against Ruben—truly. For a young man in his position, there were worse arrangements than one that put him in Ignacio’s bed day in, day out.

  Will glanced up at the sound of Ignacio’s huffing snigger. “What did I say?”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “Of whom? Ruben? Oh, yes. Absolutely. It’s always been my dream to be some mafioso’s squeeze. How did you guess?”

  Ignacio looked at him with indulgence, his smile tender and warm, but brittle. It didn’t last. Will stuffed his mouth with olive and sun-dried tomato bread to stop himself talking.

  “It was never like that,” Ignacio murmured, “between the two of us. You were always the queen’s man.”

  “And you were always a go-getter.” We were both liars.

  They still were, judging by that little spectacle at the Blue Dragon. Will didn’t regret it. He’d done what he needed to. He doubted Ignacio felt otherwise.

  “How did you get to run the show?” he wondered, scraping the bottom of the bowl with his spoon. “I was abroad, so I missed your rise to power. Was it very bloody?”

  “Fishing for a confession?”

  “A bedtime story,” Will corrected.

  “Then wait until we’re in bed before you ask.”

  Oh. Suspecting his presence here would trigger another tryst was one thing. Confirmation, especially when it was delivered so flippantly, as though Ignacio obviously intended to make the most of his company, left a bitter taste in Will’s mouth.

  They ate the second course in silence, both of them turning down dessert when it was offered. Will didn’t bother guessing at Ignacio’s motives, but he’d always been a great believer in biting the bullet. He slid his chair back as soon as he’d peeled off the contents of his wineglass. “Are you done?”

  Ignacio arched his eyebrows.

  “Are you ready to turn in?” Will clarified.

  “So eager…” Despite the mocking rasp in his voice, Ignacio stood. This time he didn’t reach for Will, didn’t touch him at all on the way upstairs.

  It was kind of him to trust Will not to trip over the carpet runner—or worse, turn tail and run. Faith like that had to be rewarded.

  Ignacio’s bedroom overlooked the rear of the property, with a view over the little inlet that Will had seen under the bright flash of lightning the other night, the same view that had been reproduced in Mrs. Macias’ artwork. He suspected it was magnificent to behold in daylight. It wasn’t so much the case at night, though a timid moon peeked between the bands of cloud to reflect light onto the churning waters.

  Will registered the splash of waves against the rocky shore before he noticed the massive king-sized bed that dominated the room. Like almost every other part of the house, the master displayed the same mix of old and new, clean minimalist lines clashing pointedly with lace curtains.

  “Is this where your wife sleeps?” Will wondered.

  “It was.”

  “And Ruben?”

  Ignacio turned to face him, his shirt half unbuttoned already. “I thought you weren’t jealous.”

  “I’m curious.” Why are you here, with me, when you could be with either one of them? Hell, maybe even both?

  If it was adoration Ignacio wanted, then Ruben seemed like the sort to offer it willingly. If it was familiarity and the comfort of the known, then Ignacio couldn’t go wrong by renewing ties with his wife.

  And yet here he was, slowly approaching Will as he tugged his shirt loose and discarded it to the hardwood floor. The last time they’d been together, in the sunroom, he had kept all of his clothes on. He’d left Will to put himself on display while he took and took, and didn’t stop until the foundations of Will’s world had become rickety once again.

  “I’ve had Ruben in that bed,” Ignacio confirmed. “And I have had my wife…and others. Many others. I could give you a list, if that would satisfy you.”

  “It wouldn’t.”

  Ignacio hooked a finger into the gap between belt and shirt and yanked Will a step closer. “You can’t tell me you’ve been celibate all these years.” He spoke with certainty, but Will noticed the wrinkle between his eyebrows, a subtle inkling that his all-knowing spiel had limits.

  Will leered, torn between looking into Ignacio’s eyes to sell the lie and watching the curve of his lips, wondering what it might be like to kiss him again. “I can give you a list too.”

  He knew he would be met with refusal long before Ignacio caught hold of his chin.

  “Or you could find something better to do with that wicked mouth.”

  Will rocked forward on the balls of his feet, content to obey, to be shoved to his knees. He changed tactics at the last moment.

  He steadied himself with both hands at Ignacio’s hips, stomach doing backflips as he reached for the belt buckle. Ignacio’s body had changed with age, which he’d expected, but he was no less handsome, which he hadn’t. Will couldn’t resist pressing his mouth to his bare stomach while he fumbled the fastenings on his trousers, breaths heaving in and out of his throat as anticipation mounted. Finally, he got the hang of the button fly. He tugged down trousers and underwear in one go, too far gone to tease. He wanted this—for himself, for the way things used to be.

  For old times’ sake, because the present seemed so fragile.

  Ignacio was thin and long, his cock resting heavily on Will’s tongue as he wrapped his lips around him and gave a tentative suck. It had been a while, but Will remembered to keep his teeth sheathed, t
o turn his head fractionally to avoid gagging when Ignacio began to move. He remembered the tight clutch of Ignacio’s hands in his hair before Ignacio anchored his fists just behind Will’s ears.

  Heat flooded Will’s face with the first thrust. It didn’t hurt and he wasn’t in any danger of choking, but the sensation of being used, of being there for Ignacio’s pleasure and nothing more, scalded his insides.

  He slid a hand up and down Ignacio’s length, prolonging the arrested stroke of his mouth to heighten the sensation. Once, the sheer heat of his mouth around Ignacio had been enough to get him off. Now his preferences were slightly more sophisticated. He didn’t moan until Will cupped his sac and tugged lightly, rolling his balls. It was a heady thought—that he was holding the most fragile part of him—even as Ignacio fucked his mouth with increasingly rough strokes.

  Will pressed a hand between his legs, aware of his own need but unwilling to act. It didn’t feel right. He wanted to give Ignacio pleasure more than he wanted to take it for himself.

  And that’s what they call a beta male… All those rubbish websites he was ashamed to read in the dead of night when he couldn’t sleep, all those forums he haunted with the certitude that somewhere some back office tech was compiling a history of his browser search queries—they argued that he should have been slamming Ignacio face-first into the mattress and riding him to completion. The way a man would. What a load of tripe.

  Ignacio’s fingers tightened in his hair, the only warning he’d ever given Will that he was close.

  Will eased up until only the head of his erection perched on his tongue. It didn’t stop him struggling not to cough and didn’t mean he succeeded in swallowing, but the sounds Ignacio made as he found release were well worth the effort. Will stroked his thighs, concentrating only on giving him what he craved.

  He didn’t have to think about anywhere else. His own arousal was an afterthought.

  “You…that was…” Ignacio seemed beyond speech. He held Will back as he pulled out and staggered back a pace, kicking off his trousers in the process. His spent cock hung shiny and wet between his legs.

  Will nearly crawled after him. He arrested the impulse because Ignacio was looking at him strangely, as if he’d never seen him before.