Chapter 2 The Moment I Break
THE MOMENT I brEAK
DOMINIC
When I see her step into the briefing room, it’s as if someone hooks a wire behind my ribs and yanks.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her since I left her, lying that I was going to Paris when I was actually going to Virginia, to Foxstone Park, to catch Lowell leaving a package of U.S. intelligence for his handlers.
She’s wearing what she usually does: jeans and a flowy, feminine blouse. Since it’s spring and still cool, she’s wearing a light wool coat. It’s cashmere. She likes the texture against her skin. I wonder what she’ll do with the cashmere scarves and sweaters I gifted her.
She knows who I am.
We know Margaret Cahill visited her the day before. She was in Enya’s apartment for forty-five minutes. After that, Enya didn’t open Lucille’s.
After that, I watched her cry in her apartment.
The agency rented an apartment right across the street from her place so we could keep an eye on her. I was closing up yesterday, or rather, that was my excuse to spy on her.
The woman who sobbed for hours, her arms around herself, isn’t in the room behind the two-way mirror. This Enya is composed like she’s been invited for high tea.
I’ve seen hardened arms dealers sweat harder than this.
But this Enya isn’t real. I know my woman, and this is an act—a mask she’s put on to protect herself.
And I hate it. I hate that she’s here, afraid, answering questions because of me—because of what I did. Because of what I am.
“Dom, you sure you don’t want to go in there?” Kiera asks.
We know each other well. She’s been with me on several operations over the years. It’s reasonable that she’s asking me why I’m not interrogating Enya.
My cover is blown, so it doesn’t matter if Enya knows who I am. My next mission takes me out of the country—and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I’ll adopt a new legend. Move on.
Except, for the first time since I started working as a covert operative, I don’t want to move on. I don’t want to break the illusion Enya has of a man who was in love with her.
Because it wasn’t all lies.
“I’m sure,” I murmur, not able to take my eyes off my girl.
My behavior and my internal dialog are the antithesis of who I am.
I’m Dominic Delacour, a man with no emotions. I will happily write off an innocent bystander as collateral damage to complete my mission.
We now know that Enya is not connected to what Lowell was doing. Hell, her father wasn’t involved, and we’d suspected him.
“Then why are you doing that thing?” she remarks as she smooths my forehead with her fingers.
I jerk back.
Kiera and I have had sex.
Many times.
On-again, off-again operational lovers.
But not for a long while, and I haven’t touched her or anyone else since Enya. Before Enya, it wouldn’t have mattered. I wasn’t committed to a woman, and in any case, I always thought monogamy was for idiots.
Guess who’s the idiot now?
“What am I doing?” I demand.
“Brooding. Looming. Acting like a wild animal someone forgot to sedate.” She shifts her weight, crossing her arms. “You want to talk about it?”
That elicits a jagged laugh from me. “Talk about it?”
She sighs. “You just seem very upset.”
I want to say the Tom Cruise line from Mission Impossible—“You’ve never seen me very upset”—and the Dom from my last mission could’ve pulled it off. This version of me can’t. This is the man who fucked up, who let emotions he didn’t even know he had knock him off balance.
Since I don’t have anything to say to Kiera, I look through the two-way mirror at the ghost of my reflection layered over Enya.
I’ve gotten old, I think, when I see the gray in my beard and sideburns. I haven’t shaved in a couple of days. My hair is a touch too long because I missed the last cut.
No, you didn’t, Dom. She said she likes your hair long so she can run her fingers through it.
My eyes are a cold, flat blue, which people don’t forget once I’ve interrogated them—or so they say.
I’m built for this work, inside and out.
Today, though, I’m off-kilter.
“Quit staring at yourself,” Kiera mutters under her breath.
“Don’t you have something better to do than bust my balls?” I keep my tone light. Just because I’m feeling all these emotions doesn’t mean she or anyone else needs to know.
“If I don’t do it, who else will?” she retorts with a grin.
She looks relieved now. The Dom Delacour she understands—the detached, unfeeling version—has resurfaced. She’d hate knowing I can’t hold onto him.
My gaze finds Enya again.
She shifts in her chair, adjusting her chocolate brown cashmere jacket. It makes her brown eyes look darker. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear—it’s a nervous gesture, one the agent talking to her will catch right away, knowing that her confidence is false bravado.
My chest aches, hollow and sharp—and a burst of fear runs through me. A man like me doesn’t really get afraid, but not long ago, I almost died, and since then I’ve been contemplating my mortality, which, no surprise, makes you scared.
The mere thought of my brush with death makes my shoulder throb, a phantom ache from the bullet I took a year ago behind a bakery in Le Marais. I was saved by the woman whom I had bullied and crushed, and by a man whom I mercilessly used but now call a friend.
When I woke up in the US Embassy’s medical bay three days later, the doctors called me lucky.
I didn’t feel lucky. I felt tired.
And lately, that weariness has started to feel like a warning.
Maybe I’m done with this life. Perhaps I should’ve been done a year ago.
The door opens behind me in the observation room.
Agent Ruiz steps in with a file. “Delacour. Hale. We’re starting.”
Kiera steps forward, all business. I stay rooted to the spot.
Through the glass, Enya lifts her eyes—and for a split second, she looks right at me.
She can’t see me. I know that. The mirror on her side is one-way.
But I still feel seen.
My hands roll into fists.
Ruiz clears his throat. “Dom, you sure you don’t want to join us?”
I drag my eyes away from her. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Is that my voice? It’s so rough, like I haven’t used my vocal cords in a long while.
Kiera and Ruiz look at each other for a beat, and then at me.
“You understand this is just routine,” Ruiz says.
He’s known me a long while, too, so he’s probably seeing what Kiera refuses to see—that I fell for my target. Ruiz would know. He’s fallen for a couple.
I frown. “Yeah.”
No, this is not routine.
This is a clusterfuck, and you’re going to hurt Enya when you talk to her about me, ask her if she’s told anyone what she knows about me, about her father…anything.
After that, she’ll go back to her life. And she’ll never know my real name. She’ll remember a man named Nick Smith, one who said he loved her, and then used her to catch a traitor.