Another sigh. “Sometimes. I don’t think I’d be human if I didn’t. But sometimes it’s easier to keep doing what you’re doing than it is to try something else. I know that sounds defeatist and I don’t mean it that way. I’m good at what I do and while some days are better than others, what else would I do? There isn’t exactly a career path for an ex-operative unless I want to go into private security, and believe me, I do not want to go into private security.”
“You have a high opinion of them, don’t you?” Alexis teased.
Serena snorted. “Some of them are okay, but they all rely on teamwork and do I strike you as a woman who works well in a team?”
At that, Alexis laughed out loud. If one was going to be a lifelong spy, then at least one could be self-aware about it.
Chapter Fifteen
The dogs were beside themselves. There was no other way to put it. Well, all of them except Red, who hung back each time the doorbell rang, but still stayed close enough to keep an eye on things. And Isiah, who she’d clearly decided was her person. Not that Alexis could fault her taste.
Alexis glanced back at the staircase to where Red stood watching her and Isiah make their way to the door for the third time in ten minutes—a novelty not just for the four-legged residents of the house but for Alexis, too. Damian and Charlotte were already out on the patio, sipping wine and taking in the view and, as anticipated, Dominic had made himself at home in the pool.
Alexis swung the door open as Howdy, George, and Allie skidded to a stop beside her. Jake and Beni stood on the other side, Beni carrying a bottle of something and, surprisingly, Jake held a bouquet of flowers. A bouquet he promptly tossed at her before striding into the foyer and dropping to the ground.
“Dogs! You have dogs!” he exclaimed as he flopped onto his back, welcoming all the wet noses poking and prodding him as they clearly identified him as a person on their mental wavelength. Tails wagged, nails clattered on the tile, and Jake laughed as he rubbed and roughhoused with each.
Beni stepped in and handed Isiah the bottle she carried as she nodded toward Jake. “It’s too bad your trainer can’t do anything with him.” They all looked at the agent who now had Howdy standing on his stomach as she bathed his face in kisses.
“He told you about my dog trainer?” Alexis asked, stepping around her colleague and leading Beni upstairs. Isiah followed behind them and she figured Jake would make his way up when he no longer had an audience.
“It’s all he could talk about on the way over here. Apparently, he had the world’s best dog growing up. One that used to surf with him all the time. He died just after Jake decided to retire from the pro tour. Don’t get me wrong, he clearly loves dogs, but I think some of his love is wrapped up with the memories of being on the surfing circuit.”
They hit the landing and made their way to the kitchen. Alexis continued to the pantry to grab a vase as she spoke. “You’re starting to sound like me, Beni. You never know, maybe you’ll even start analyzing your own issues soon.”
Beni snorted. “Ha, don’t count on it. That would imply I have issues. Which I don’t.”
“Right. And neither do I,” Alexis said, rejoining them in the kitchen just as Isiah handed Beni a beer.
Beni took a sip then shrugged. “You seem pretty well adjusted to me. I mean, other than the fact that you never mentioned you have staff, or live in a mansion, or rescue dogs in your spare time. Other than that, you’re almost as much a sharer as Damian.”
Alexis laughed. “You’re so full of shit.” No one was as much of a sharer as Damian. And speaking of Damian, the three made their way to the patio and joined him and Charlotte on the couches and chairs scattered around a low-set table.
To Alexis’s surprise, Jake didn’t join them for a full ten minutes—maybe he missed dogs more than she and Beni gave him credit for. And maybe she should introduce him to her friends at the shelter—he couldn’t have a dog because of his schedule, but she’d bet he’d enjoy hanging out with them when his schedule allowed.
As the sun started to sink, they sipped their drinks, snacked on the food that Eric kept delivering, and caught up. Dominic joined them at some point during that time, but when Eric popped his head out to give them a twenty-minute heads-up for dinner, it didn’t surprise Alexis that Beni was the one to call out the elephant in the room.
“So are you going to tell us why we’re all here, Lex?” she asked. The rest of her teammates fell silent. Charlotte shot her a sympathetic look and Isiah’s hand came to rest along the back of her neck.
“Actually, it’s not why we’re here that I want to know, it’s why we’ve never been here before that I think is the more interesting of the two questions,” Beni clarified. And she was more right than she knew.
“You don’t have to tell us now,” Charlotte said as Damian picked up her hand. Charlotte had lived a very different life from Alexis, but of all the people sitting around her patio, she might be the one most able to understand.
Alexis cleared her throat. “No, it’s good timing. Mostly because dinner will be ready in twenty minutes and that will force an end to what is likely going to be an awkward conversation.”
“Awkward for us or you?” Dominic asked.
“Me. Almost no one knows what I’m going to tell you except my parents, my therapist, and a few members of law enforcement. It’s not something I talk about, so I’m probably going to be a little rusty,” she said.
Jake put his feet up on the table and adjusted Howdy, who’d crawled into his lap ten minutes earlier. Howdy wasn’t usually allowed up on furniture, but at this point, Alexis didn’t feel like laying down the law.
“So just jump in,” Jake said. “May not be the most graceful, but it is faster and less painful. Usually.”
He had a point. And so, taking a deep breath, she proceeded to share with them a story she hadn’t spoken out loud in years.
“When I was eleven, my parents bought an apartment in New York City,” she started. “We spent a lot of time in Sweden where my mom is from, and a lot of time in Georgia where my dad is from, but that year they decided they wanted to spend a little time in New York. There was a music studio there that my dad was interested in working with and it was easy for my mom to pop over to Europe when she needed to, that kind of thing.”
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Isiah’s brows draw together. She hesitated, wondering at the reaction, then realized that he had no idea who her parents were—he’d traveled with her and stayed in her home, but had never once asked. “My parents are Jasper and Vera Wright,” she said to him. She studied his face as he processed the information. A beat passed then his eyes widened and his head drew back as he connected the dots.
“The Jasper Wright? The famous R&B singer?” he asked.
Her dad was a musician as well, but she nodded.
“And your mom is a supermodel,” he said, more than asked.
Again she nodded. “Well, she’s not doing much modeling now, but she still works in the industry. She has a clothing line and a small agency.”
Isiah stared blankly at her for a moment, then swallowed and nodded. “Okay, that explains a few things. Why don’t you finish your story, or keep starting it, or whatever…”
She almost smiled at his nonplussed response. But when she turned back to her teammates, the moment of lightness faded.
“Anyway,” she continued. “I enrolled in school there for the year and became friends with a girl in our building. She was a year older, but we were the only kids our age in the co-op and so we ended up spending a lot of time together.
“Her mom wasn’t in the picture and her dad wasn’t around a lot. He was a banker of sorts, or so we thought…”
This was when the story got hard. As if sensing her wavering resolve, Isiah slipped his hand from her neck and, much like Damian had done with Charlotte, he twined his fingers with hers and gave her a good squeeze.
Focusing on the feel of his hand, she tamped down her emoti
ons and continued. “The following spring, my friend and her father invited me to go on a vacation with them to Costa Rica. We’d known the family for seven months by then, and my parents felt pretty comfortable with them so they agreed. Turned out it wasn’t such a good idea.”
She stilled for a moment, welcoming the rapid beating of her heart and her shallow breathing. Her physical reaction to retelling the story wasn’t comfortable, but in its discomfort, it reminded her that she was still alive—not only alive, but surrounded by people who cared about her.
Her hands shook with the memories, but Isiah wrapped his around hers, giving her his warmth and strength.
“Two days into the trip, I was kidnapped and held for ransom. My friend’s father turned out not to be such a great banker and owed a lot of people—dodgy people—a lot of money. He’d encouraged his daughter to cultivate her friendship with me. I think originally, he thought maybe he could borrow money from my parents or get them to invest in something, but somewhere along the way, his plans changed.”
She took another deep breath and let it out slowly. Keeping her gaze fixed on her hands entwined with Isiah’s, she finished her story. “Of course my parents paid the ransom. But then there was a second demand. They paid that, too, and it wasn’t until the third that the private security team my parents hired was able to find me.” She paused as her teammates uttered various sentiments, but she was too lost in the memory to distinguish them.
Clearing her throat, she continued. “The man—my friend’s father—was prosecuted and found guilty, but because I was a minor, almost none of this came out publicly. Which is why you’ve never read or heard about it. My parents also wanted it to remain as private as possible both for my sake and for the sake of other kids like me, kids who might be in a position to be used for ransom—or as the kidnap and ransom teams call us, high-value targets. The records were sealed and after that, we moved to Sweden to be closer to my grandparents and out of the public eye as much as possible. We stayed there for two years.”
Everything around her felt suddenly very still. Unlike moments ago, none of her guests spoke or even moved, even the dogs seemed to sense the weight of her words. Forcing herself to find one more ounce of strength, she looked up and met her friends’ eyes.
“After that, security became the top priority of the family. As you can imagine, I wasn’t in a place to determine what was reasonable and what wasn’t, and the level of security my parents instituted just became how we lived. And ever since then, it’s been hard for me to invite people into my life and most especially into my home. I know I was only eleven when it happened, but the consequences of trusting someone were so extreme that even though I know I’m not that child anymore, it’s still hard to overcome. And at this point, I think my way of life is more habit than logic. But that isn’t how I want to live.
“And so here you are. I’m not going to make any excuses for why it took me so long to invite you over and I’m not going to pretend that now that I’ve told you the reason that suddenly everything is okay. But I do hope you’ll see this evening for what it is and know that I’m trying. I’m trying to break the habit—not entirely, but at least with people I know I can trust.”
With that, she let out another long exhale then did what she most needed at that moment. She grabbed her beer and took a nice long sip. When she set the bottle back down, the reality of the moment hit her and she looked first to Beni then to Damian.
“How long were you kept?” Damian asked softly.
Despite having just taken a drink, her throat dried. She cleared it before answering. “A little over a month.”
Both Jake and Dominic uttered a few choice curses while Beni said something in Spanish that caused both Damian and Charlotte to raise their eyebrows.
“How much over a month?” Isiah asked.
She looked at him. There was curiosity in his expression…and something more. Then in a flash, she understood what he was truly asking of her. “I was kept in a cage. A ten-by-by ten cage in someone’s basement. In total, it was four weeks, three days, and eight and a half hours.” There, she’d said it. She’d said the words, but she’d also told everyone surrounding her how much she remembered. How much the events of that spring still affected her.
Isiah rubbed his thumb along her hand, then raised it to his lips. “You’ll be okay. We’ve all got you.”
At his simple words, tears sprang to her eyes. He’d voiced what she’d needed to hear. In her heart, she’d known her team, and he, wouldn’t let her down, but hearing it was something else altogether.
“He’s right, Lex,” Dominic said. “We’ve all got your back and I’m glad you know it.”
Everyone murmured their agreement and Charlotte reached over to give her arm a little squeeze of solidarity. They’d both been victims of betrayals and violence—in much different ways, but it was a bond they shared.
Jake scratched Howdy’s ears and reached for his beer as he spoke. “I get it and all. I mean, I see why it’s taken you so long to have us over and I totally get why you don’t trust a lot of people. But seriously, could you at least have told me about the dogs?”
“You’re such an ass, McMullen,” Beni said, throwing a pillow at him, careful to miss Howdy. But his comment had the impact Alexis knew he’d intended when suddenly, everyone was laughing.
Isiah closed the door on the last of Alexis’s guests to leave. He’d thought Jake or Dominic would be the stragglers, but as it turned out, Damian and Charlotte had stayed a good hour after the others—including Eric—had left. But there was a lightness to Alexis’s expression now that he’d not seen on her before. And she wore it well.
“Did you and Charlotte have a good talk?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her. He knew nothing about Charlotte’s background, but shortly after Beni, Jake, and Dominic had left, the two women had slipped off for a good long chat in a cozy little outdoor seating area tucked away in the trees on the other side of the pool. He and Damian had had another beer while they cleaned up the last of the dishes, and chatted about their respective times serving their country—not that Damian wasn’t still serving his country, but the armed forces was a little different than the FBI.
“We did.” Alexis leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m a little wiped out, but it was good.”
He leaned back to look down at her. “I know this isn’t much, but I’m sorry you went through all that.”
She didn’t look up but nodded against his shoulder. “Thank you. I was lucky to have the parents I did and the extended family I had. We spent those years in Sweden completely out of the limelight. I mean, I was never really in it—my parents were always pretty good about protecting me from their public lives—but after that, they put everything but me on hold. And then, of course, there were my grandparents and cousins who helped, too.”
Releasing her, he slipped his hand into hers and they started toward the staircase. “How many cousins do you have?” he asked. He caught a flash of a smile before she answered.
“My mom is one of four and my dad is one of five. I have nine cousins on my mom’s side and eight on my dad’s.”
“And are you all close?”
Her smile lingered this time. “Yes. I don’t know how my parents and aunts and uncles figured it out—we, the cousins—sometimes think they planned it, but on both sides, there’s only a four year age gap between the oldest and the youngest. I’m the youngest on my mom’s side and in the middle on my dad’s. What about you?” she asked as they continued up to the third floor.
“Just me and my sister. My dad’s been out of my life—out of our lives—since I was seventeen. I think he might have a brother somewhere, but I don’t know. My mom had a younger sister who got caught up with the wrong crowd and died of a drug overdose when she was twenty-three.” It felt weird, almost awkward, telling his brief family history after hearing Alexis’s. She’d had everything as a kid—still had it if the way she talked about her family was an
y indication. A large, loving extended family, supportive parents, financial security. With the big exception of having been kidnapped, her life almost seemed a fairytale. It was a fairytale compared to his. But even though he wondered what Alexis might think of his upbringing—and he hadn’t even told her the half of it—he wasn’t worried about it. And that was the telling part. Because in truth, with the exception of his mom and sister, both of whom he loved dearly, he’d always felt a niggling sense of shame about his family.
More specifically, shame about his alcoholic abusive father who Isiah hadn’t been able to protect his mom from for years.
But standing on the third-floor landing of Alexis’s Tildas Island mansion—which was one of god knew how many homes her family owned—he, strangely enough, felt none of the embarrassment that had plagued him for years. She wouldn’t judge him, of that he was certain. And so pulling up some of the same bravery she’d shown earlier, he told her.
“My home life wasn’t great. In fact it was pretty shitty.” He dropped her hand and walked to the railing to look down on the living area below them. After a beat, Alexis joined him, but stayed out of reach, giving him space.
“My dad drank. A lot. And when he did, he got violent. Mostly, he went after my mom, occasionally, me. Thankfully, never my sister who is eight years younger than I am. That kind of uncertainty and betrayal—because that’s what it is when someone, like a parent, who is supposed to protect you, does the opposite—doesn’t make for a healthy way to grow up.”
He paused and looked through the windows and out into the night. “It made me angry, as you can imagine. I was a bit of a volatile kid. But the good news was that by the time I was sixteen, I was finally big enough to stop him. The first time I took him down, he thought it was a fluke. But then it happened again. He left the Bahamas and went back to the States a month after that. We never saw him again. Thankfully,” he added.
“What happened after he left?” Alexis asked, her voice quiet in the night.
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