23. Tiia
The dog adores Christabelle, resting his head on her lap and grinning when she absentmindedly strokes his ear. If animals could smile, I know with the way his lips curl and his eyes dance, Bastard is doing that right now.
She’s not Felix’s girl.
She’s his.
“He’s more sensitive than his brothers, ya know? Quieter.” Her voice chatters somewhere in the back of my skull. Her words, barely penetrating as I look at the doorway and wait. Wait for Micah to come back. For him to hold me again. For his hands to touch my skin and his heart to keep time with mine.
He’s not mine to keep forever. It’s impossible. But until that inevitable moment of disaster, I willingly set fire to my career, fall in love, and push the pending explosion aside.
“He has a million things happening beneath the surface, I mean, and unless you’re paying really close attention, I’m not sure most even realize.” Christabelle moves in my peripherals. Waves her hand. “Tiia? You in there?”
“What?” My mind slingshots back to her. To this room. And away from the buzzing in my ears and the ache in my heart. Because I’m a liar. A traitor. I’m here inside the Malone home, when I really, really shouldn’t be. “Huh?”
“Micah,” she snickers, glancing back at the doorway where my gaze continues to jump to. “Felix is loud and brash. If he has something on his mind, he tends to shout about it. But not Micah. He’s more subtle than that.”
“Why do you think that is?” I slide a hand over my turning stomach. Soothing the ache of what was a too-near miss today. “When he was raised in the same home, under the same circumstances; how could he and Felix be so different?”
“Expectations, I suppose. They knew their roles from the outset. Felix would always be the leader, and Micah would always have his back. It was ingrained from the start.”
Footsteps echo on the tile in the hall. Shuffling feet that promise Micah’s return. I know, in theory, I’m not in danger when he’s not around. If Christabelle is left unattended, then Felix deems the home safe. That means I’m safe. But Micah not being by my side, still, makes my palms sweat. His absence makes my head spin.
“To be a leader, I figure a man has to be heard,” Christabelle continues. “To be a protecter, stealthy movements are where it’s at. They were bred for their parts within this family.”
“Are you okay with who Felix is?” I drag my eyes from the still vacant doorway and meet Christabelle’s silver stare instead. “I know who you are, Christabelle. The whole city knows you’re Cannon newspaper royalty. And now you’re Felix Malone’s betrothed. His reputation precedes him.”
“His heart is larger than his name.” She unscrews the cap from her bottle of water and sets it on the stone counter. “When a woman is loved the way he loves me…” Thoughtful, she looks across and gives a small smile. “Then she’ll do whatever she needs to maintain it. To protect that heart. Because it’s so pure. So rare. I think you’re beginning to understand the kind of love I mean.”
I peek down to my lap and study the fabric of my shorts. I chose denim cutoffs today. No fancy sundress. No formal attire. I’m me, and denim is what makes me comfortable. “Yeah.” I drag my bottom lip between my teeth and nibble, while my fingers play with the fraying cuff of my shorts. I wish I’d brought my new pendant with me. I wish I’d picked it up on my way out the door instead of leaving it on my kitchen counter for safekeeping. “I understand the love you mean,” I sigh. “It’s pretty terrifying.”
She snorts, picking up her water and drinking. Though she takes it a bit like a shot. “Sure is.”
“Tiia?”
I spin on my stool and stare across at the men who wait in the doorway. Micah’s hard glare and firm lips. His glacial eyes that remind me of the man I thought him to be way back when we ran into each other that first time outside CeCe’s.
My stomach dips because he seems so cold. So distant. But in the same breath, that vise that wraps around my heart and squeezes for every second he’s gone, releases.
It’s a conflicting experience. Much like that of my entire existence with a man who was only ever supposed to be my mark.
“Let’s go for a walk.” He extends his hand and starts my way, wrapping his palm around the back of my neck when he’s close enough to touch. Guiding me off my stool, he pulls me under his arm and shares a long, heated look with his brother, who remains rooted to the spot at the opening of the hall. “You guys start dinner without us. We’ll be back later.”
Felix’s face is hard. Mean. Not at all like the playful man I’ve come to know over the last few days. But he dips his chin in acquiescence and meanders toward Christabelle. “You want Michaels to walk with you guys?”
Michaels?
I look at the guard by the door. But Micah bites out a hard “No,” and turns us toward the pool patio. “We’ll stay on the property. Let’s go, Grá. I have someplace I wanna show you.”
He leads me outside, from air-conditioned cool to humid warmth as another day comes to an end, but the sun is not yet retired. The heat is still in the eighties, maybe the nineties, even with the evening breeze setting in. But with Micah’s body warmth draped over mine, his hand firm around the back of my neck, sweat beads along my skin.
“I haven’t taken you on a tour of the grounds yet.” He presses a kiss to my temple. Though it’s hard. Rough. “There’s a lot out here.”
“The gardens are beautiful.” I catch rolling acres of yellow and red. Green. Purple. White. Flowers in every color of the rainbow. Some in bushes, others in the trees. Roses. Vines. And so many others that I have no names for. “You did all this yourself?”
“Most of it.” He turns us along a path, surprising me as my feet were heading toward the grass. He steers us, a clear destination already mapped out in his mind. “There was always a garden here. Lots of trees and stuff. But when I needed something to do with my mind that had nothing to do with Timothy Malone, I came out here and worked with my hands.” He turns us again, off the brickwork path and onto dirt.
Curious, I glance over my shoulder as we leave the garden he was supposed to be showing off and into the trees surrounding his property.
“I added the architecture,” he continues. “Shaped the flower beds. Created the symmetry where it was needed.” He lets go of my neck and drapes his arm over my shoulders. Reaching out with the other, he snaps a flower from a bush and hands it to me.
Stunned, I look up. And though he smiles, the emotion doesn’t reach his eyes.
“For you, Grá.”
“T-thank you.” Taking it between two shaking fingers, I bring it up to my nose and inhale in search of a pretty scent. Though this one doesn’t really smell like much of anything except, perhaps, moisture. “Where are we going, anyway?” I look out at the trees, and the well-worn path in the dirt. “We won’t get lost, will we?”
“Never. I’ve been out this way a million times since I was a kid. Gotta admit, I’ve never brought a woman out here though.”
My heart wants to swell. It wants to take his words and fly.
But there’s something here that doesn’t match his easy tone. Something not quite in line with the smile he fakes.
If he was anyone else, any other time, any other place, I’d listen to my instincts and demand we turn around. But there’s some saying about hearts. Rose-tinted glasses, perhaps. Blinders.
“H-how much further?”
“Just a couple minutes.” He drapes his arm and rests his palm lazily over my breast. His body, burning mine despite the hour. Then he just… breathes. A deep inhalation, and then a noisy exhale. “How are you feeling after the stuff that went down today at work?” He glances down at me, tilting his head and nibbling on his bottom lip. “Not every day you’re exposed to danger like that, right?”
“No, I…” I swallow the ball of nausea battling to make me out to be a fool. Or a liar. “Not something I’m used to. There were no injuries or casualties though, which is a relief.”
“Such a relief.” His arm grows tighter around my shoulder, steering me around a gentle bend in the path and forcing me to duck when a tree limb hangs low.
“So Jasper’s okay?” I slow my steps. Not alarmingly obvious, but still, my instincts fire in my belly and demand we turn around. “He’ll be alright?”
“He’ll live. Jospeh Wilkes had set us up, though, drawing us across the city to a meeting he intended to be at. If he could put a bullet in mine or Lix’s gut, he would.” Then he chuckles. Startling and sickening, his eyes are just… not his as he studies me. “The fucker would have us dead in a heartbeat if he could. I can’t believe I thought you worked for him.”
My stomach sinks, like a balloon of lead. “You finally believe me now?” I swallow the sickness from my throat. Wipe the clamminess from my palms. Make my escape—mentally, at least. “I’ve been saying from the first day that I don’t work for that guy.”
“Right. And I’ll admit I didn’t believe you.”
“But you do now, right?” Run away, Tiia. Get some space and run. “It’s been a while since you thought that stuff.”
“I believe you now.” He brings us to a stop, dropping his hands to my elbows and turning so we stand toe-to-toe. He searches my eyes, finally tender again, finally genuine. But a structure spears up in my peripherals. A little house. A hut of some sort. With stone walls and a narrow chimney protruding from the roof. “I’m sorry I ever treated you like the enemy, Grá. You’ve been nothing but honest with me all along, and I was just…” He pauses and shrugs. “I was an asshole.”
I peek to my left at the cute little cabin in the woods and imagine smoke billowing from the chimney. Maybe rocking chairs out front. A little table to hold icy glasses of soda.
But then I blink and look again.
Instead of the place being whimsical and cute, I notice bars on the windows. A steel door, instead of wood, which completely messes with the aesthetics of what surrounds it.
I peer up at the thick canopy of trees overhead, noticing only now that the sun no longer penetrates and warms the top of my scalp.
In fact, it’s verging on cool out here. The humidity no longer taking my breath away. The heat, no longer hurting my skin.
“Tiia?” Placing his hand beneath my chin, Micah draws my focus back around. “Did you hear me? I’m trying to apologize for my behavior.”
“Um…” I gulp, the sound surely audible to him and every woodland animal within a hundred-mile radius. “I-it’s okay. We already forgave, right?”
“Is there anything you would like to say sorry for? Anything you’ve said? Or done. A lie you’ve told, or an action you’ve committed?”
“I mean…” I peer at the house again. To the steel frames on the windows. The bars that won’t let anyone in who isn’t already in, and won’t let anyone out, if they’re not meant to be out. Then I bring my focus back to Micah and remember a day from forever ago, sitting in a boardroom when my boss tossed a file on the table and barked out a formidable brief that left my heart scrambling.
Micah Malone is the Malone family enforcer. He’ll kill for his brother, on Felix’s command, or to protect Felix. He’ll torture a man to get intel, and then he’ll make that man disappear, never again to be seen.Micah is quiet and deadly. He doesn’t take part in the fanfare the way Felix does. If Micah wants you dead, he’ll do so without announcing it. And he’ll do it slowly, so in the end, you’ll beg for lights out.
“I’m trying to give you a chance here, Grá.” His voice crackles, aching and sad. But all I hear is a threat. A promise. “Own up to your shit, babe. Apologize.”
He knows.
My eyes flare wide, my heart throbbing in my chest until the thud-thud-thud stings.
Oh god, he knows.
Panicked, I spin on my heels, dirt and moss scraping beneath my shoes, and drop my head in preparation to run. But an arm wraps around my stomach before I can take more than a single step, squeezing until my lungs empty and a scream bursts free of my throat.
Then he lifts.
“I gave you a fuckin’ chance.” He turns us around, unphased as I kick my legs out and scrape my nails against his arm. “You could have told me the truth.”
“Let me go!” I slam my feet down and connect my heels with his shins, bruising. Hurting. “Micah! Let me go.”
He stomps toward the little house, his hand digging in to my hip and his heart thudding against my back. “It was all a fuckin’ act. The, I’m in the street, acting the damsel to get your attention.”
“Micah!”
“Then when I call you out on it, you switch it up to the hyper-independent, I can take care of my own shit bullshit.”
“Micah!” I cry out when he shoves the hut door open, the steel panel slamming against the wall inside and echoing back at us. The place is empty. Oh god! It’s empty except for a concrete floor and a single chair, bolted down. “Micah! You need to stop.”
“You’re a fucking Fed!” He charges to the chair and throws me down, slamming my back and legs to the wood and slapping a leather strap around my wrist to keep me still. I spasm under his touch, kicking out. Screaming. Searching for freedom. And all along, Micah works with quiet determination. His face is stony. Terrifying. And his hands are sure. Strong. Emotionally destructive as his injury strains white as he works. He fastens one buckle and quickly goes to work on the second. “A fucking Fed,” he repeats, quieter this time. “A spy.”
“Micah…” My voice cracks and aches. “Please stop. We can make this better.”
“You walked into my world and swore you were decent.” He finishes the second cuff and moves down to trap my legs. “Made me out to be the asshole for not believing your act.” He slams my right foot against the wooden chair leg and wraps the leather cuff around my ankle. “You made me out to be the monster!”
Tears stream over my cheeks, unbridled and without permission. “We can talk about this.”
“But you fuckin’ nailed it,” he chuckles, the sound cold and distant and filled with hatred. “Your job was to infiltrate my life. My home. My family.” He finishes my final cuff and looks into my eyes. Devastation completely and totally destroying us both. “Do you get a bonus for going to bed with me? Extra cash? Maybe a medal and award ceremony for your bravery?”
My chest heaves with silent sobs. “Please stop.”
“Sex for financial reward or career advancement is called prostitution, Tiia.” Enraged, he shoves up tall and circles away, leaving me here. Alone. Broken. Terrified. “You’re a fucking whore.” He closes the door, snicking the locks and shutting out most of what little light penetrates the trees.
Then pressing his back to the steel, he looks me dead in the eyes and drops his hands into his pockets. “I loved you,” he grits out. “I have never, in my entire fucking life, been so stupid as to give my heart to someone else.”
“Micah…”
“And I thought I’d done my due diligence. I thought I’d checked you out. Tested you. Run your background. I was being thorough!” he snaps. “I was taking no risks with my family’s well-being. But I was just looking at the wrong side of the line.”
“Please stop,” I sob, wriggling my hands and searching for a way out. “Please let me go.”
“I was so focused on you being Wilkes’ girl, I never even considered you might be Uncle Sam’s.”
My heart thunders horrifyingly fast—a very real chance I might die of cardiac arrest long before his blades pierce my skin. Or his bullets.
Not his words, though. They’ve already hit me. Like a scattershot of pellets that keeps coming.
“The Feds,” he sighs, dropping his head and shaking it side to side. “We’ve had a dozen just like you waltz through our home over the years. Sometimes they’re dudes dressed up as guards. And sometimes they’re women, posing as a sex worker.” He scoffs. “We always knew what they were. It was so easy to tell, we didn’t even have time to get mad at them. But not you, Tiia Ailani.” He drags his bottom lip between his teeth, staring down into my soul and destroying everything I am inside.
Everything I’ve ever been, or hope to be, in the future.
“No,” he repeats, “not you. You snuck in and made me a fool.”
“I’m sorry?—”
“You want to put my brother in prison?” he booms, making me jump with his harsh words. “You want to hurt a good family? You want to imprison someone who is single-handedly taking New York crime and making things better?”
“Micah—”
“I know your boardroom would’ve been bursting with riled Feds. Let’s get those bastards,” he sneers. “Let’s lock those Malones up and clean our streets. Your people have been trying for longer than I’ve been alive.”
“Please let me go.” I try to stretch my leather cuffs. Squirm. I attempt to wriggle my legs. My arms. I search for movement of any kind and pray I find it before he slits my throat. “Don’t be the Malone that kills a Fed, Micah. Please.”
I’m begging you.
“So you admit it, at least.” He shakes his head. “For the first time since we met, you speak the truth.”
“You deserve better than to do this.” I search his eyes, tilting my head when he glances away. “You don’t deserve to go to prison because of whatever you’re gonna do to me.” My voice cracks. “Please, Micah. Think further ahead than your hurt right now.”
“You want to live?”
“I want you to live!” Tears stream from my eyes. “I want you to not walk out of here and head-first into a hundred guns. Because that’s where this is going. You hurt me, and you’ve condemned yourself to a lifetime behind bars, or worse,” I groan. “Worse, you get yourself shot and buried.”
“You sleep with me to do your job,” he snarls. “And you act like it’s my life you want to save, when it’s yours. All along, it’s been about you and your neck.”
“It hasn?—”
He takes the long, silver knife I’ve seen a thousand times before—in photographs, more than in person—from his pocket and flicks the blade open until the cold steel glints against the muted light whispering through the windows.
“You’re a fucking liar, Tiia. And you’re a whore for hire. But worse…” He pushes off the door and saunters closer. “At least those girls on the corner are honest about who they are. They’re truthful about what they want from a man.” Dangerously, terrifyingly, he stops a foot in front of me and crouches to be on my level. “A handy for a hundred bucks. A roll in a cheap bed for rent money. It’s a simple transaction.” He slides the dull side of his blade across my thigh, slicing through the denim of my shorts like a knife through butter. “They’re honest, Grá. And sadly, that’s not a label I can apply to you.”
“I was never sent here to hurt you.” My jaw trembles. But I bite down on the emotion clogging my throat. I work to dry my tears and harden up. He’s Micah fucking Malone, and he’s already tied me down. I’m not sure he deserves my sorrow.
My heart, yes.
But not my heartbreak.
“I was sent to watch.”
“Yeah? But not to hear, right? Considering the trauma you sustained in a fucking explosion on the job last year.”
His eyes track over my face, his jaw hardening when my cheeks drain white. I don’t have to see myself in a mirror to know I turn pale.
“I know everything there is to know about you now, Agent Hale. Though, RICO could be a cute nickname, since Grá no longer applies.” He tilts to the side and reaches out to tap my earlobe with his free hand. “I’m surprised they sent you undercover with hearing loss. Don’t they usually put agents out to pasture once they’ve been damaged?”
“Like I said…” I grit my teeth and fight fire with fire. Anger with anger. “I was sent only to observe. To report back.”
“Yeah?” He drops his hand and continues slicing my shorts, all the way until I feel the tip of his blade against my hipbone. “What did you observe? I know you didn’t see my brother kill anyone. You didn’t see a drug deal. You didn’t even get to see me intimidate anyone.” He releases a wispy, contented sigh. “Shame. Because I do some of my best work when I convince men to give me a club instead of losing their fucking kneecaps.” He slices through the waistband of my shorts and exposes my thigh completely.
When he pulls back and grins, my blood runs cold as a fresh panic sets in.
“You observed a good family, Tiia. Bred from bad stock, sure. And living comfortably with the money extracted from unlawful activities, I admit.” He moves across and begins slicing the other leg of my shorts.
He’s undressing me.
But it doesn’t feel nice.
It doesn’t feel consensual.
“You observed Felix protecting his brothers. You saw me save a fucking plant from a woman I wouldn’t trust my goldfish with. You watched me eat pasta. And fuck you until you thought you might explode.” His jaw hardens. “You watched me give my heart to a bitch, knowing you didn’t deserve it, but taking it anyway because it’ll get you a pay raise and, shit,” he scoffs, “probably forgiveness for whatever screw-up you committed last year that ended with you losing half your hearing.”
My stomach drops as he leans forward, painful and twisting as he places his lips by my ear. “Can you hear me now, Tiia Hale!?”
I tremble in my seat and choke down the sob clawing for freedom.
“What did you want to observe?” Pulling back, he cuts through my waistband and grins when the denim falls away, exposing me and my panties to the man who could have, an hour ago, had me.
Any place. Any time.
The trust I placed in a mafioso’s hands was foolish at best. Dangerous, in reality.
“What was your target, exactly? What did your handler want you to bring back to them, giving them permission to raid our home and fuck us up the way they wish they could when my father reigned supreme?”
“I didn’t have a—” I cry out when he places the tip of his knife at the top of my kneecap and slides it down. He doesn’t break skin, but his threat remains clear. “I was just sent in to observe. I swear!”
“You’re a fucking liar. You think I’m new to this? You think I haven’t questioned the men who came before you?” He shoves up from his crouch and storms to the wall draped in tools. Saws. Hammers. Cutters. Chains. Knives. My breath comes out on a choked gasp when he selects a pair of pliers and turns back to face me. “You are not my first Fed, Tiia. But you’re the first trying on the innocent act.”
“Micah, please?—”
“You were sent for a reason! You had a specific task in mind. An explicit data set to complete.” He starts forward and slowly circles my chair. “You were given a job. Placed inside that antique store somehow knowing I’d be by.” He fists my hair and yanks my head back until I cry out. Until I look straight up at the ceiling. But then he steps closer and steals that view, replacing it instead with his handsome face.
His violently enraged, handsome face.
“You placed yourself in front of me outside CeCe’s club on purpose. Then you put yourself at Colby’s Antiques. How did you know I would come searching for you?”
“I didn’t— I didn’t!” I cry out when he tightens his fist. “You came to me. You sent your man in first, to buy a desk and start that rapport with me.”
“So maybe we were working each other,” he seethes. “I wanted intel on you, so I found your job and sent a man in to figure you out. Meanwhile,” he lifts his free hand and shows off a pair of greasy, dirty pliers, “you were working me. Placed yourself somewhere I was likely to look, sold me some stuff you knew I’d want, and acted the part really well.” He releases my hair, my head jerking forward when I no longer have that backwards force holding me down. Then he comes around and crouches in front of me. “How’d you memorize all that shit about the pirates and the Mongolian soldier?”
I clamp my lips shut, if only to stop their trembling.
But I won’t be his first stubborn victim, a person with a scrap of bravery and reason to stay silent. I doubt I’ll be the last.
He grabs my hand and separates my fingers, studying each one the way he has in the past, when we’d lay in bed after making love and his only desire at the time was to see me. Know me. Catalog my every dip and line.
He closes his pliers over my middle finger and tightens just enough to remain firm.
My heart sprints in my chest. The idea of being tortured far and away, worse than the idea of being killed.
“You didn’t make the story up about the soldier,” he croons, stroking my forearm with his free hand. “I’d already done my research before stepping inside your shop. Which means you had, too.”
“Let me go.” I try to wiggle my fingers. To dislodge the middle from his tool. “Let me leave and I’ll never step foot on your property again.”
His eyes shutter at my words. From rage, to hurt, to curiosity, then back to rage.
“You can’t have known what I’d come in to buy that day. I hadn’t even decided more than a few hours before I walked in. Which means you studied everything on the shop floor?”
I firm my lips and refuse him the information he so desperately wants.
“Quite fastidious of you. You actually played the part well. I bet Colby enjoyed all that free labor.”
“Let. Me. Go.”
“Did you get to keep the commission from your sales?” he presses. “Or would they be considered income from criminal activities? In which case, old man Hoover confiscated the money and poured it into the government coffers.” He lifts his free hand and makes the quotation marks with his fingers. “‘All in the name of justice for the people’ or some bullshit.”
“I’m not discussing this with you.” I straighten my spine within the tight confines of my chair and jut my chin forward. My headstone will read, ‘Here lies Tiia Hale, a woman who possessed more pride than she did common sense.’ “Kill me, Micah. Cut me. Do whatever you’re gonna do. But you won’t break me.”
“You don’t think so?” He fixes and tightens his pliers, adding pressure to my nail. But still, he doesn’t crush the digit. He doesn’t hurt me.
He won’t.
He can’t.
“We’re all alone out here, mo chroí. You’re not being watched right now. Your handler has no clue where you are, this bunker isn’t listed anywhere. And you have no cell reception, which means no one is listening. All of that means I can tell you a man sat in this chair mere weeks ago.” He looks to his left, my right, and grins toward a long spray of crimson marking the stone wall. “He didn’t want to discuss things, either. But like you, his existence threatened my brother’s safety. His artery opened like a fire hydrant. You sure you want to test me?”
“Do it.” I firm my shaking jaw and challenge him with my stare. “Show me what kind of man you are. Prove to me I was right all along.”
“Right?”
“That you’re nothing more than a copy-and-paste of the man who came before you. Born a killer. Die a killer.”
“Born a prisoner,” he counters on a sneer. “Die a protector. There’s a difference, though I’m not sure you’re capable of understanding where the line is.”
“You won’t hurt me.” Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! “You showed your cards when you sat me down, and you’ve yet to cut me.”
“Perhaps I like to savor my prey.” He drops his pliers so they clatter against the concrete floor, then he slides his blade through my shirt, slicing it open to reveal my simple black bra and the stubborn rolls of my stomach. “I’m not a man who rushes. It’s not like you have anywhere to be after this.” His eyes dance with a manic rage. “What time are your people expecting you to check in next?”
“An hour.” I stare into his eyes and snarl. “If they hear nothing within that timeframe, they lay siege to your home and take anyone inside it.” Lies. Lies. So many lies. “Probably best you go and save Felix.”
He shakes his head, humored as he reaches out and cuts the spaghetti strap of my top so, like my pants, the fabric falls away.
“That’s just not true, mo chroí. You spent all night here last night and walked out with yesterday’s clothes this morning.” His eyes sparkle with torment. “I’d say they consider you deep undercover at this point. We have until morning, at least.”
“You still have a chance to walk away,” I choke out desperately. “You can let me go. I’ll tell them this operation is a bust, and we go our separate ways.”
“Can I still fuck you anytime I like?” He brings his blade over and slices through the other strap, destroying my top and exposing my entire body except for the bra and panties I wore today. “For as long as you’re working this case, spending the night is just the job, right? But once you’re reassigned, and I’m no longer your mission, sucking my cock is off the table, no?”
Fuck you. Fuck this place. Fuck this entire mission.
“The government will surely reward your dedication.” He pushes up to stand and re-folds his knife. Dropping it in his pocket, I have a moment to breathe a little easier, a single second where he holds neither a blade, nor a tool, to my body. But then he shucks his jacket and turns to hang it on the hook at the back of the door.
We’re in a barred fucking prison. Steel and stone and impenetrable walls. But they thought to install coat hooks, like propriety matters.
Turning back to face me, he rolls his shirt sleeves up. One fold. Then another. Another. To reveal tattooed forearms and eventually, the little white circular Band-Aid that proves he’s decent beneath the violence.
“This is sexual assault.” I firm my lips and stare straight through him. “Destroying my clothes. Tying me down. And now you’re undressing yourself. This is a crime.”
“I know.” He unbuttons his shirt and reveals his muscular chest. His ridged abdomen. The scars he’s collected over a lifetime. And the stitch marks on his ribs, still so fresh, each insertion is still marked with a white dot. “Maybe this is the memory I want you to take with you. Murderer. Criminal. Sexual deviant.”
“It’s not who you are.” Fresh tears spill from my eyes and track over my cheeks. Silent. Devastated. He doesn’t get the wild, pathetic girl sobs most others would put on. “You’re better than the world you were born in to.”
“Am I?” He unsnaps his pants and lowers the zipper. But he doesn’t push them down. Doesn’t expose himself to me, despite the fact that my eyes wait for it. Despite my heart skipping a beat when he doesn’t. “I’m the son of a don, Tiia. Literally bred to murder others.”
“You’re better than this.”
“I was contracted by my own father to kill my brothers.” His lips curl into a cruel smile when my eyes jump back to his. “Guess that wasn’t in your information packet when you were assigned to this family.”
“Micah…”
“He told me when I was ten years old what my future looked like. He told me who. When. Where.” He sets his hands on his hips and looks down at my chair. “Felix would be the first to go, because he was clearly gunning for top spot.”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what? You’re observing, aren’t you? I’m giving you information no one else on this planet knows. You can take it back to the office and get yourself a raise large enough to pay for a hearing specialist.”
A painful lump of nerves settles in my throat. Anxiety. Desperation. “Please stop this. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”
“You lied to me! Lied to my face. You ate with my brother. You were in my fucking home! You spent the night, where you could have easily snuck out and slit his throat while I slept, sated from good pussy and na?ve with trust.”
“Stop degrading what we had.” I jerk in my chair and try again to loosen the straps. “You call me a whore and describe it as good pussy. But I know you love me, Micah.”
“Loved,” he spits out. “It’s a feeling I long ago learned how to switch off.”
“Love!” I cry. “And it’s not something you get to abuse. You have a good heart, Micah. You’re a good person. But you undo it all for every second you have me tied up in here.”
“I have a job. One single fucking mission in life. According to my father, it was to eliminate anyone who would dare sit atop the Malone throne and rule New York City. But according to me, to my heart,” he spits out, “it’s to protect the man who now owns that throne. I owe my brothers that protection.”
Then he looks down at me, sneering with disgust. “I owe you nothing.”
Stalking around and coming up behind my chair, his woodsy scent is tainted by the tang of sweat filling my lungs. He grabs my hair and yanks me back, straining my neck until the muscles and bones ache. Stretching my throat until it hurts. Then he slams his lips to mine and steals my breath, his tongue coming out to duel with mine.
But this isn’t like a real kiss this man is capable of.
This isn’t love. It’s not Micah.
So I give him nothing back. I don’t fight or bite or turn my head away. Nor do I give in, kissing him back and returning what he so freely gave any other day.
“You don’t want me anymore, mo chroí?” He pulls back with a gasp, his breath and chest racing as he studies me, upside down in my vision. “How dirty did you feel, fucking a man for work?”
“I fucked you because I wanted to.” I close my eyes and steal from us both this memory. Whether I live or die, I don’t want to remember him this way. Not when I know the real him. Not when I know the tenderness he’s capable of. “I went to bed with you because I wanted you. That had nothing to do with work.”
“It had everything to do with work!” He releases my hair and stalks back around to stand in front of me, snarling when I flicker my eyes open. Though I only allow slits, so I can close them again at a moment’s notice. “You accepted my pendant, knowing you were a lying cunt.”
Tears burn the backs of my eyes, his words, worse than knives.
“You deceived me, Tiia. All so you could make an arrest? So you could add this catch to your record and go down as the one who finally locked up a Malone?”
“No, I?—”
“For more than sixty years, my father lived. Sixty, Tiia! Where he laid scourge on this city and killed countless people. He trafficked guns and powder into this country by the ton. And he transported women out to sell them. To have them raped and killed. Sixty fucking years, and his father before him, destroying anything good this country had. The Feds could have stepped in at any point. They could have intervened and saved five little boys from the torture of living inside that house with no way out. But no, you choose to breach now? When those boys are men and the crimes they commit are in the pursuit of something decent.”
“Micah, it’s not?—”
He reaches out and tears my bra down, the cups folding forward and my breasts pebbling when they’re exposed to the fresh air.
A bursting sob races along my throat, violent against the sensitive skin and leaving me a shaking mess.
“Don’t do this,” I tremble. “You’re not like him.”
“What was your objective when you came into my life?” He cups my breast and slides the pad of this thumb over my nipple, hardening the tip, elongating it and scratching away at my soul. Because his hand on my flesh still calls to me. It still sends spears of electricity to my very core. “You say observe. I call bullshit.” His eyes flicker to mine. Dangerous. On the edge of deranged. “What exactly was your mission?”
“I told y?—”
He pinches my nipple and sneers when I cry. But my explosive breath has nothing to do with pain. Or violation. And everything to do with the fact he can still command my body.
“Was it to arrest me?” he demands. “Or Felix? Which one of us was your end game?”
“Micah, I don’t?—”
He dips down and takes my nipple between his lips, biting just hard enough for it to feel good, and suckling so a fire coils in my belly. “You’re still wet for me, Tiia Ailani.” He crouches to save his back, and looks up at me from beneath long, beautiful lashes. “But your heart pounds from fear.”
I firm my lips and loathe the tear that trickles over my cheek.
“But you’re not afraid of death,” he decides. “Nor torture.” His eyes search mine, unblinking. Unkind. “You’re scared you’ll still come from my touch, even tied to a filthy chair where other men have died before you. You’re afraid of admitting you fell for a killer. Because if you do, you’ll be forced to toss your entire career in the trash and admit you’re nothing when you don’t have a badge to hide behind.”
“Please stop.” I keep a tight hold on my jaw. On my words. My entire soul. “Please just let me go. Or kill me.” I swallow a painful lump, damn near choking on it. “Whatever you’re gonna do, just do it already. I don’t want to sit here wondering which side of your family tree your actions will align with.”
“Which side?” He moves to my other breast. Leaving the first to rest in my stretched-out cup and drawing my neglected nipple between his lips until the tip elongates. “I only have one side to draw from, mo chroí. That’s why you’re here.”
“You have two. We all have two. It’s basic biology.”
“So we discuss science then?” He scoffs, cold and mean and horrifyingly distant. “X chromosome, Y chromosome. Mix it all together and we still end up with a killer. Or should we discuss rape?” He releases my breast and pushes up to stand. “Because that’s how I was conceived. Did the Feds think to intervene back then, when a seventeen-year-old girl was abducted from a good home, forced into captivity, bred, and discarded? How far back do your records go, Agent Hale? Could your people have helped my mother, or was she tossed away like trash, the timing wrong and her safety was not worth blowing an undercover case for?”
His mother was Renee Rossi, just as Christabelle suspects. And the men who surveilled this family before I was even born knew exactly what happened to her.
When.
How.
They watched it happen, and they did nothing to remedy abuses committed against the innocent.
“That’s what I thought. There’s not a lot of difference between the people in my world, and those in yours. You have guns, we have guns. You have a badge… and somehow, that makes your criminal actions okay.”
“Micah—”
“I know and associate with a lot of the people on your watchlist. It’s the way of our world. But I’ll tell you, Hale, none of us respects you or your profession. And it’s not because we disregard the law. It’s because you do, too.”
“Please let me leave.” Emotion balls in my throat and leaves my voice trembling. Broken. Because hell, he’s not wrong. My colleagues will call their moves strategic. Searching for the biggest fish.
I call it second-hand abuse.
To sit around and watch bad things happen to decent people. To let it, because that’s not the fish we came hunting for.
“Tell me why you came into my life, Tiia.” He circles my chair, slowly meandering as I twist my neck to keep him in view. “I want to know your main objective. Was it me? Was it Felix? Was it someone else completely—my father, perhaps? Since we know the FBI is a giant, slow-moving machine, and Timothy has been dead for only a few months. Maybe new orders haven’t trickled down from the bosses yet.” He stops behind me and crouches, sliding his hand around and cupping my pussy until my breath comes to a choked standstill. Resting his lips against my ear and ensuring I hear him, he murmurs, “Were you ordered to suck my father’s cock, Tiia?” Gently, he rubs his palm over my clit and forces my heart to race faster. “Would you have gotten on your knees for him the way you did for me?”
“Let me go!” I explode in my chair, trying, but failing, to snap my restraints. I throw my elbows wide, but they go nowhere, because my wrists are bound. I attempt to kick, but my confined ankles forbid the movement. “Micah! Stop touching me!”
“You took my cock in the back of your throat, Tiia Ailani. Kinda surprised me you’d be submissive so soon after meeting me, but I guess it makes sense now, huh?”
“Please let me go,” I break, slumping in my chair and sobbing. “Please stop touching me. Just let me leave.”
“People don’t leave this bunker, mo chroí. Not alive, anyway.” He brings his hand up and rests it between my breasts. “Not wearing a wire, are you? Can’t have you getting that recording back to the government, all so you can play it again during trial.”
“Micah—”
“Everything makes sense now, though.” He breathes against my neck. It would be erotic, if not for the fact that this isn’t the man I know. The one I love. “How does your boyfriend feel about sharing you with the job?”
“My boyfriend?”
“Roscoe,” he nips my earlobe and chuckles when I jolt.
From pain.
Surprise.
Disgust.
“My information conflicts itself. Roscoe’s last name might be Jones, and maybe he’s in construction. But it’s hard to tell. Because records have been tampered with. It’s one thing to be away from those we love so we can make a living. Everyone has to do that. But you lie on your back for me while you’re on the clock, taking my cock like a good little slut and swallowing my cum when I tell you to. Then you just…” He bites my neck. “Then you go home to him, leaving work at the office.”
He slides his tongue over my neck, soothing where his teeth bruise. Sending bolts of pleasurable pain shooting through my stomach. I can hate him, and I can love him, at the same time. “It’s all pretend, right? But it works, and he sticks around, so I guess he’s okay with your arrangement.”
“Stop kissing me.” I harden my voice and force myself to choose hate. “Stop touching me. Stop talking to me.”
“Stop lying to me!” Shoving tall, he stalks away from my chair and over to the wall of tools. Long hammers. Pipes. Wrenches. Scissors. It’s all so meticulously hung, so neatly organized, and yet, none of it is clean.
The steel, that should be a sparkling silver, is mostly black with grease. Dirt. Gore, I’d rather not identify. Scissors that should glint in sunlight, are chipped at best, and coated in a sticky substance I refuse to acknowledge as crimson and coagulated. Selecting a long tire wrench, about the length of his arm, he flops it up to rest against his shoulder and circles back to stop in front of me. “You are the FBI, Tiia. Not a fucking antique dealer. Not just a woman in the street. Not just a female I stupidly handed my heart to. Which means you were placed in my life for a very specific reason.”
Tears stream over my cheeks. Even when I refuse myself the luxury of sobbing, of breaking down and falling apart, they still purge from my body and leave me looking foolish.
But that’s okay, because looking dumb and vapid helps in my search for anger.
“None of this was accidental, Tiia. You came to me, you slid into my life and my bed, and you sat at my dining table and watched Felix interact with the woman he loves. You came here asking questions about my family.” He flexes his hand around the tire iron, squeezing, testing. Terrifying. “You were handed a very specific brief when you took this job. What was it?”
“To observe you.”
“Don’t fucking lie!” He swings out, like a major league baseball player looking for a home run. His face burns a dangerous red and his arms bulge, muscles firing up beneath his taut skin. A scream of terror erupts from my throat, burning on its way up, tearing at my flesh. But I only catch the first half arc of his weapon, because I squeeze my eyes shut and refuse to watch him become the monster the files swear he is.
The destroyer his brief paints him as.
“Open your eyes!” He pulls his swing up short and shouts so loud, I jump in my chair. “Open your fucking eyes, Tiia, and tell me what you’re doing here.”
“Observing,” I cry, quiet, pathetic sobs rolling along my throat. “I was sent to watch over you.”
He throws his weapon so it lands on the concrete with a deafening clatter, then he takes my breath away, slamming his lips to mine and surprising my eyes wide open. “You owe me the truth. You violated my home! You desecrated my trust.” He drops his hand into his pocket and produces his beloved knife. Where everything else in this room is dirty, this one glistens. He flips the mechanism and has the silver blade popping free of the handle, then he places it at my wrist, just firm enough to make my heart stop completely. “I’m begging you, Tiia. Don’t make me hurt you. Just tell me why you were sent.”
“I’ve already told you.” My jaw quivers. Pathetic, really, how weak I am when I look into the eyes of this killer. “I wasn’t authorized for more.”
A frustrated growl rolls from his chest, erupting on a snarl that makes me startle. Then he slides his knife along my wrist, my eyes snapping closed so I don’t have to watch. My heart thundering in my chest, though soon, it’ll stop moving at all. He slices through thick leather easily, surprising me when my hand comes free and my eyes pop open. Then he grabs my hand in a tight fist, wrenching my arm so I worry about my joints. My elbow. My shoulder. His touch is rough. His eyes, fiery and homicidal.
He slams my palm to his chest, right over his heart, and stares into my eyes. “Do you feel that!? Do you feel it break?”
“Micah… Please stop.”
“In thirty-three years, I’ve survived abuse and torture at the hands of the man your people should have hunted. I’ve been shot and stabbed by my enemies. Had a part of my body amputated against my will. I’ve had to choose between my brothers, deciding which one to protect and which to leave to fend for themselves. I’ve been starved and beaten, raised a fucking baby, and witnessed that baby’s mother’s brutal murder. I’ve held a different brother down when his girlfriend was being raped and killed by my father. And I’ve managed to never fall in love. Never.”
His heart pounds beneath my palm. Heavy, racing beats that send shards of glass splintering into my veins.
“In thirty-three years, my heart has never beat for a woman. It has never broken when someone looked into my eyes and refused to tell me the truth.” His angry gaze flickers between mine. “I’ve never hurt as much as I do right now.”
“I was sent to protect you,” I blurt out, sobbing breaths wracking through my chest and making it impossible for me to catch up. I try to pull my hand free of his grip. To curl in on myself. “Joseph Wilkes has made several attempts on yours and Felix’s lives in the last several months. The FBI has deemed this unacceptable. They can’t afford to let you die right now.”
“They can’t—” He tosses my hand away and stands tall, leaving me with three limbs attached to the chair. “What?”
“If Wilkes kills a Malone,” I heave, searching for air. For my lungs to fill instead of spasm. “Then the city breaks out in a war unlike any we’ve experienced since the sixties. If that happens, several ongoing operations come crashing down.”
“Protect me?” Dumbfounded, his shoulders droop. His arms. His entire body. “You were here to protect me?”
“The drive-by today,” snot runs free of my nose and stops above my top lip. “We knew that was happening, so I called you back to the shop, knowing you wouldn’t let Felix go to the club without you.”
“You…” He sets his hands on his hips and swallows, a loud, gulping action that has his throat moving. “You staged an entire armed robbery… to redirect me and my brother?”
“Yes.” I drop my head and just… breathe. And cry. And know I’ve hurt a decent man. Micah Malone has two triggers in life: liars and threats upon his family. I’ve stepped on both. “There was no robbery. The uniforms taking statements were following orders, and the witnesses on the street were seeing what they were told to see.”
“And the thing the other night?” he growls. “When I stayed at your place?”
“We knew that was coming, too,” I sigh. “So I kept you busy.”
“You went to bed with me! You slept with me, Tiia! That’s going above and beyond the call of duty, don’t you think?”
“That’s different.” Desperately, I search his eyes. “You and me. That’s not the job. That’s…” Love, is the word I want to say. It’s the word that stumbles toward the tip of my tongue. “I didn’t sleep with you for work.”
“Right.” Scoffing, he turns on his heels and presses his hands to the door, resting his forehead between them. His back grows as oxygen fills his lungs, then shrinks again on his exhale. “You’re a whore for the Bureau, you know that, right?”
My heart aches, shattering in my chest when he says that word. When he treats me any less than the way I’ve become accustomed to.
“You’re damaged goods, Hale.” Turning, he rests his back to the door and drops his hands to his pockets. “You fucked up on the job a year ago and landed yourself with a medical condition the government doesn’t want to fund unless they’re getting something out of it. Agents can’t work in the field if they can’t even hear properly.” He meets my eyes and sneers. “You’re literally only good for your cunt. They sent you to me with one very specific task in mind. Maybe you didn’t know it then, but they sold you. And yet, you sit here and think it was your choice all along.”
He shakes his head, disgust rolling out with every word he speaks. Every expression he makes.
“The FBI just became your pimp. Your dead parents must be so proud.”
He spins on his heels and yanks the door open.
“Wait!” I shove forward in my chair as darkness outside invades and makes me question just how long we’ve been in this room. “W-where are you going?”
“Away.” He looks me up and down, the contempt in his stare enough to make me feel like mud on the bottom of someone’s shoe. Then he cruelly flips the overhead light off and leaves me to the dark. “I’m walking away, Tiia, and I’m never coming back. I suggest you free yourself and leave, because Felix knows what you are, too. And he’s not above letting his soldiers fuck a whore before they slice her throat open.”
“I-I don’t know the way.” Terror slams through my stomach as I look out into the night. The oppressive darkness, endless, like a cloak that would drape over my head and remind me of all my worst nightmares. “Micah, I don’t know?—”
“I told you the first time we met, I don’t accept the damsel act. You’re gonna be fine.” Then he brings his hand up, absentmindedly rubbing a sore spot in the center of his chest. “And so will I. Don’t worry about Lix and me. We’ve survived hell together our whole lives. Wilkes isn’t an issue for us.”
“Micah!” I scream out when he backs through the door. “Wait! Please.”
“Run back to Roscoe,” he calls over his shoulder. “He accepts second-hand pussy.”
The click of an animal’s nails in the trees sets my heart into overdrive. The hoot of an owl’s call. Nighttime presses in around me, so the barred windows no longer pose as prison, but rather, a guard. The stone walls, no longer captivity. But safety. My hands quiver violently, my fingers trembling as I reach across and unbuckle my other wrist strap.
And all the while, wildlife rustles in the trees outside.
“Please come back,” I whimper, my voice shaky and broken. “Don’t leave me out here.”
A coyote’s call echoes through the dark sky. Its desperation to survive another midnight like ice in my veins. “Micah?”