by Kaye Blue
“I know,” he said, looking chastened and sincere. “You love this place.”
“I did,” I replied, sadness in my tone despite my efforts to hide it. I met his eyes. “And I’ll always appreciate you making it happen.”
The words had a weight, a finality, that I hadn’t intended, but I recognized it nonetheless.
I may not have wanted to acknowledge it, but that didn’t the change truth.
The bakery was gone, and in a lot of ways, so was the woman who had loved it so.
Which meant I needed to figure out who I was and what I wanted now.
Here, in the rubble of my past, wasn’t a place where that could happen.
My gaze had drifted, but I looked at Howard again. “I have your number. I’ll give you a call,” I said.
For a moment, he looked like he wanted to argue, but then, after, he nodded.
I walked away.
I might not know who I was now, what I would do, but I knew exactly what I wanted.
What I needed.
Him.
Sixteen
Mikhail
She hadn’t wanted me leave.
And I hadn’t wanted to leave, so I was grateful at least one of us held a little bit of common sense.
Even now, hours after I’d seen her last, I hadn’t been able to dislodge thoughts of her out of my brain.
And now that I’d been inside her, I didn’t know that I ever would.
“Dumb fuck,” I muttered as I pulled to a stop.
A glance around the block confirmed that there were guards set up outside, which confirmed Etienne was here.
We met away from the restaurant, an indication of how serious this was, not that I needed one.
The Commander was around, and that told me all I needed to know. And reminded me that I needed to get my head in the game.
My feelings for Adora couldn’t be a reason for me to let my guard down, to fail the Brotherhood.
So, as much as my thoughts kept turning back to her, I focused on the matter at hand.
I entered the building as Riker was leaving.
“You leaving?” I asked.
He practically growled. “Says I need to look after her. So he’s keeping me from my real work for some bullshit.”
“That bullshit keeps the zeroes in the bank,” I said.
“What the fuck ever,” he said. But after that, he dropped the matter and focused on something else. “The Commander is in town.”
“Apparently,” I said, not surprised Riker knew who he was.
He gave the impression of being a brute, and in a lot of ways he was, but he was also smarter, more thorough than he let on.
“You two have history,” Riker said.
It wasn’t a question.
“We do,” I responded, and I didn’t expand.
He didn’t ask me to and instead continued.
“You and a lot of other people. But makes sense for a garden-variety asshole like him.”
“You think he’s garden variety?” I asked, curious.
“Came up through a corrupt as fuck military government. Went underground after a coup, and like all other good and greedy capitalists, he moved on to more illicit and more profitable business. Like I said, garden variety,” Riker said, rolling his eyes.
I knew all this, could quote it chapter and verse, but listened to Riker with fresh ears without letting my emotion, my past, cloud my judgment.
“So, what is he into now?” I asked.
Riker shrugged. “Standard stuff. Drugs, guns. Human trafficking, which fits for a scumbag like him. Some other specialized stuff like government destabilization.”
I knew the last well. I’d been trained by the man, after all.
“Other shit designed to look legitimate, but I don’t buy it,” Riker said.
“All consistent with what I know of him,” I said.
“But it’s been quiet,” Riker said.
“Too quiet?”
“Yeah. Outside of those fires, there’s been nothing. Which makes no sense with Denis Federov being out of the picture.”
“Etienne has that deal with the leaders in the old country.”
“And I hope it sticks, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Me either. And we need to keep an eye on the Commander. We can’t underestimate him, and we need to be prepared.”
“Always,” Riker said.
I appreciated his competence and his confidence, but I knew from personal experience of the devastation that the Commander could bring.
“This gonna be a problem, Ghost?” he asked.
His tone didn’t change, but I knew the question was more than it seemed and as close to an inquiry about my well-being that I would ever get.
Would I be okay?
I would.
Especially now that I had Adora to think about.
I nodded. “I’m fine. The past is over. What’s important now is keeping him contained.”
“And your other distraction?”
Riker looked at me skeptically.
“What distraction?” I asked.
“What distraction?” he mimicked. “You think I don’t know you stashed some girl in one of the safe houses?”
“Was it supposed to be a secret?” I countered.
“You’re acting like it, or you didn’t think that was worth a mention?”
“I think it’s my business.”
“Make sure it doesn’t affect mine,” he said.
I didn’t bother to respond, knowing that this was more than Riker being a jerk. He’d been as happy for Sasha as he could be for anyone, but like Etienne, he had no patience for affairs of the heart.
Given how turned around I was now, I was inclined to agree with him.
“It won’t be a problem,” I finally responded.
“Good. I’ll let you know what I find out. You do the same.”
I nodded then went inside to speak to Etienne.
The conversation was direct and to the point, something about Etienne I had never appreciated as much as I did now.
I left within fifteen minutes, practically running to her.
I’d told Riker it wouldn’t be a problem.
Wondered if that could still be true.
Seventeen
Mikhail
“Something on your mind?” Adora asked later.
She was exactly where she should have been. Exactly where I wanted her.
In my arms.
I didn’t respond. She waited, and I knew if I looked at her, I would see the look of patience and expectation.
“You trying to read me?” I asked.
There was no hostility in the words, or at least I didn’t intend any, but with the roughness in my voice, especially when contrasting with intimacy of a moment, I could see how she I might think there was.
But if she did, she didn’t show it.
Instead, she traced a finger down my side, the touch familiar, intimate, unlike any I’d felt before.
Given what we had done together, it was strange to think of a touch that way, but it struck me that this is exactly what this was.
Intimacy.
Me and her lying in bed together about to talk.
It was amazing, as amazing as the sex I couldn’t get enough of.
“I’m not reading you. Just asking a question. After that conversation earlier today, a talk seemed in order.”
Yeah, I probably did need to explain.
When I’d heard she’d seen Howard, I hadn’t been too upset. Had expected it even.
The bakery was his, at least on paper, so there was no reason not to expect him to be involved.
But after my conversation with Riker and an entire day spent thinking about her, I’d been on edge, and thinking of Howard had pushed me over.
“Do my questions bother you?”
“That’s not an answer, but no. Why would they?”
“I get the sense you don’t like being questioned. Actually, I think you’
d do anything you can to avoid it.”
“Maybe, but not with you. And to answer your question, I maybe overreacted about you and Howard,” I said.
“Maybe just a little,” she responded, laughing.
“So you gave me the basics, but tell me more about what happened with you and Howard.”
“You really want to talk about this? Now?”
In truth, I hated even mentioning him, let alone now. But I felt like learning more about her and Howard would give me more about her. So, I was willing, even eager to talk.
And besides, she was with me now, which was what counted.
She sighed, the sound deep, and waited a moment.
“That bad?” I asked.
She smiled and then pulled away slightly.
My arm was still looped around her shoulder, but she propped herself up on her elbow so she could look into my face as I did my best not to get distracted by her bare breasts.
I didn’t like the distance, but I appreciated being able to see her expression.
“He asked me to marry him.”
Maybe Howard was smarter than I gave him credit for. Even he had been able to see that she was the kind of woman to build a life with.
“So you ended things?” I asked.
She looked at me a moment, then nodded. “I did.”
“And broke his heart?”
“Nothing nearly as dramatic as that. We had a familiarity between us, friendliness. In a way, I could see his point. But no.”
“You don’t believe in marriage?”
“Yeah. I believe in it with everything I have,” she said.
Her voice didn’t change, but there was an ardor and vehemence that made me look at her again.
“Explain.”
“My parents…”
She trailed off, the flash of pain in her face one I couldn’t miss.
But she covered quickly and then started again.
“They loved each other deeply, completely. Gave me the best example of what a marriage should be. They weren’t perfect, and they never pretended to be. But they loved each other. For real.”
She went quiet then met my eyes again.
“It would be disrespectful to everything they taught me, everything they showed me, to accept anything less than what they had.”
“So you didn’t love Howard enough?”
“See, simple?” she replied.
“But is there something more?” I asked.
“Yeah. It wasn’t about Howard. Not really. My parents have been gone for ten years, and I still hurt for them. I refuse to ever hurt for anyone,” she said.
“You don’t want the pain, so you don’t allow love.”
“It sounds kind of awful when you say it like that, but yeah.”
I didn’t say anything, and she looked at me expectantly.
“You got nothing?”
“I understand,” I said, shrugging.
“How so?”
“You’re the first person I’ve slept with in nearly eleven years,” I said.
I hadn’t intended to make that confession, hadn’t intended to tell her anything, but the words came on their own volition.
“You holding out for true love?”
Her words, her expression, weren’t judgmental, just interested.
“Just the opposite.”
“You don’t want to get hurt?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was more worried about hurting someone else, and besides, that wasn’t the point.
“No, it has nothing to do with anyone else. I just…”
“Why?” she asked, her expression softening.
“I did something I needed to be punished for.”
“So you’ve cut yourself off from people?”
“Yeah.”
I could have expanded, told her how I’d pushed myself to the brink trying to make amends—exercising, celibacy, living a maniacal, monastic lifestyle.
It was only when Etienne had told me I would be of no use to him in that state did I finally relax a little.
Over time, I’d gotten better, started eating regular meals again, but the exercise and celibacy had stuck. Desire for physical release had been there, but I’d held out.
Of course, it had kicked into overdrive the first time I saw her.
“That makes me sad,” she whispered.
“Don’t be sad.”
“Why are you punishing yourself?”
“Trust me, I deserve it. I deserve worse.”
“Still…almost eleven years is a long time.”
“And yet you’ve been punishing yourself for that long,” I pointed out.
She shook her head, her expression certain.
“That’s different. I don’t punish myself, don’t deny myself things.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you can have fun, live, but keep things from getting too deep. What Howard was proposing, marriage, trying to build the life, no,” she said, shaking her head.
“So you keep it casual, fun, but avoid getting too deep.”
“Exactly.”
“What happened to them?” I asked, shifting topics.
Her expression darkened immediately, and I again saw the flash of pain, but this time she tried to cover it with a smile.
“You gotta work on your pillow talk,” she said.
I said nothing, and after a moment she smiled.
“But it’s been ten years, so I guess I’ll cut you some slack.”
She sighed again, looked off to the distance, then looked at me.
“My mom yearned to travel. She knew there was an entire world out there, one that circumstances had kept her from experiencing, but there was one thing she always wanted.”
She went quiet, but a smile softened her lips.
“She was obsessed with Greece. Had been my entire life. She said she read something about it when she was elementary school, and the idea of it had never shaken loose.”
She smiled more deeply, clearly remembering now.
“She and my dad saved for that trip for who knows how long. Ten years ago, they finally did it. A dream trip to the Mediterranean. Cruise, resort, the whole shebang.”
Her expression darkened, and my heart started to pound.
“They were taking a flight out Athens after seeing the Acropolis. It was small, less than fifty people. The plane crashed.”
Her shoulders slumped, and she tightened her arm around me.
I didn’t act immediately, for a moment too stunned, but then I reached for, held her close.
Felt that sadness.
“In a way, I guess it was right. She died doing something she’d always wanted to do. And he was with her. Neither of them would have had it any other way.”
I could hear the rationalization in her voice, the sadness, but once again I couldn’t react.
I wanted to curse, scream, but I couldn’t do anything but hold her close.
“I never cried the way I did after I got that phone call. And I swore to myself I never would again.”
She slid down my body and pressed her face into my side, but I still didn’t speak, couldn’t speak.
Because even though it could be coincidence, I hadn’t stayed alive in this world as long as I had by believing in those.
So no, it was no coincidence.
Adora’s parents’ plane hadn’t crashed.
It had been shot down.
By me.
Mikhail
Ten years ago
“Understood?”
He looked at the man who sat across from him and nodded.
The question was perfunctory.
Of course, he understood.
He always understood his assignments and always carried them out.
He knew this was why he had been chosen for this one.
As hard as he tried, it was impossible for him to ignore the trepidation.
There was no place for it.
He’d been trained since he was a teen
to follow orders, to do so without pause.
And this one was no different.
But it felt different.
The Commander looked at him, waiting for the response.
Still, though his instinct was to say yes, something held him back.
He wouldn’t call it conscience.
Not exactly.
He couldn’t recall the last time such a thing had even occurred to him.
Still, he didn’t answer, not immediately.
“Have you forgotten your training?”
The Commander didn’t raise his voice.
He never did, and he never had to.
The question, the implication, was clear.
“No, sir.”
After he spoke the words, he felt something shift, felt like something irretrievable I just happened.
“Good.”
The Commander took two steps toward him and extended his hand, a capsule in his palm.
“This will help.”
He shook his head, the motion occurring without thought.
“Not necessary,” he said.
He knew the others often partook.
To stay awake for as long as it took to complete the mission.
To suppress any conscience that might crop up. To shut down any thoughts of deviating from orders.
But he didn’t need that.
He did his work.
He followed orders.
Always.
“That wasn’t a question.”
The Commander kept his arm extended, his expression again not changing, but again, the necessity of it doing so absent.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
He took the capsule, and as he had seen so many others do, snapped in half, took deep inhale, and it was over.
He hated this feeling, being out of control, but there was something to it.
Everything felt soft around the edges, fuzzy, like he was moving through warm water.
Swimming.
The urge to laugh almost overtook him, but he held it back.
The Commander looked at him and after a long moment nodded.
“Report back when it’s done.”
He nodded, not wanting to speak, certain he would slur his words.
After he was dismissed, he went with that soft, fuzzy feeling instead of fighting against it, and made his way through the motions.