Chapter 6 This Is Not Part Of The Op
THIS IS NOT PART OF THE OP
DOMINIC
Ishouldn’t be here. I tell myself that for the tenth time in as many minutes as I sit in an unmarked sedan across from Enya’s flower shop.
It’s well past closing, and the street is quiet except for the occasional dog walker or rideshare pulling up to the curb. The shop window glows warm and golden—just like her. She’s a light I have no business going near, not after doing my damnedest to dim it.
But I can’t make myself leave.
Enya’s upstairs—her silhouette moves across the curtains every now and then. She’s probably making tea, or reading, or doing something ordinary and gentle.
Everything she does is gentle.
Everything I touch gets sharp edges.
My jaw tightens as I replay her words from earlier.
Morally reprehensible.
She said it like she meant it, like she finally saw me for what I am.
I shouldn’t care.
But I do—more than I want to admit.
I press back in the seat, scrubbing a hand over my face. I’m not happy about any of this. Not the op, not the aftermath, and definitely not the fact that she looked right through the glass and forgave me while cutting me loose in the same breath.
She had every right to…but it still hit like a punch.
When did this stop being a job? When did I let it become something else?
Between her first shy smile and the nights I stayed over just to watch her breathe, I crossed a line.
My phone vibrates.
DAISY flashes across the screen.
I answer immediately. “Hey.”
“Dom!” My sister’s bright, chaotic voice streams through my earbuds. “I’ve been meaning to call, but something kept coming up.”
“All okay with Kai?” I ask after my nephew.
He’s four and the most beautiful child in the world.
Innocent. Perfect. I love him as much as I do my sister. Family means everything to me. So does Enya. Fuck me! She’s become my family.
“My little cutie is sleeping. Forest bribed him with a promise of a beach day.” Her husband, Forest, is a state Supreme Court judge who shows up to court in beach shorts. He wears a suit now and again, usually under duress.
“I’d love to have a beach day with Kai,” I say absently. I am so tired and, honestly, I need something good in my life. I need a hug from my nephew.
“How are you?” Daisy asks, and I can see the frown on her face over the bits and bytes.
“Fine,” I lie.
“Do I scent the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity?” She imitates Big Daddy from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.
I laugh.
“Work stuff?” she muses.
“Yeah.”
She clicks her tongue. “Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
She snorts. “Sometimes we do the wrong things for the right reasons.”
Daisy’s been calling me on my bullshit since we were kids.
“Is that a quote from Kung Fu Panda?” I evade.
“Kai’s very impressed with Master Oogway. Now, come on, Dom, spill.”
“Can’t, Daisy, you know that.”
“Give me the non-classified highlights,” she insists.
I huff out something close to a laugh. “There’s someone.”
Silence. Then an excited gasp. “A woman someone?”
And just thinking about Enya makes me smile, despite myself. “Yeah.”
“Oh my God. Who is she? Is she nice? Does she know who you are?”
“She’s…was a target. She’s very nice. She knows what I do now, but she doesn’t even know my real name.”
I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I didn’t get to kiss her, or hold her, or love her long enough to stockpile small, ordinary moments that I can cling to when the years turn cold.
Daisy groans. “That’s a clusterfuck if there was one.”
I grimace. “It’s…complicated.”
“Everything about your life is complicated.”
The last uncomplicated thing I did was teach Kai how to snowboard in Aspen. I want to do that again. See his adorable smile.
What would my baby with Enya look like?
Whoa! Where did that come from?
“At least tell me her name,” Daisy pleads.
“Can’t.” If I give her the name, Enya, which isn’t a common one, she’ll google shit, and put two and two together. I’m in D.C. and Ambassador Cahill just had a scandal involving treason, and he has two daughters, Margaret and Enya. My sister is bright; she’ll know. My job doesn’t allow that.
“Dom,” she protests.
A ghost of a smile tugs at my mouth. “In any case, it doesn’t matter.”
“What…why?”
“I lied to her in bed and out…for six months.”
“Dom.” Her voice softens. “Did you fall in love?”
“Yes.”
She exhales sharply. “I’m shocked.”
A dry, cutting chuckle slips past my lips. “Imagine how I feel.”
I hear sounds on the other end for a moment. “So, you had to get close to a target, and you fell for her. Right?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t right, Daisy, it was very, very wrong.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing.” The word breaks out of me.
“Nothing?” She sounds incredulous. “You fall in love for the first time, and you’ll do nothing?”
“What can I do?” I retort, frustrated. “I can’t possibly go tell her, hey, I’m in love, wanna fuck?”
“Ugh!” Daisy’s disdain comes through, loud and clear. “You don’t have to be crude about it.”
“What can I offer her?” I snap. “I can’t say let’s get married and have babies.”
Daisy doesn’t respond right away. I hear her swallow. “Do you…uh…want to do that? Get married to her and have babies?”
I don’t reply. The words won’t come—not when I know some dreams are never meant to survive reality.
Yes, I want it all with Enya. I want the life I never thought I’d have—the one I never believed was possible for a man like me.
Falling in love with her means wanting everything my job taught me to avoid—permanence, truth, vulnerability.
And thanks to that effective training, I have lost the best thing in my life.
“Does she know how you feel?” my sister muses.
“She knows what I did, and I think that has more believability than my fucking feelings, don’t you think?”
Silence stretches for several long seconds.
Then Daisy says, “Dom…it might be time.”
“For what?”
“To quit,” she says.
The shock makes us both reel.
She’s never said this to me. Not once. No matter how dangerous the situation, not even after I was shot in Paris. But she’s saying it now. I’m thinking it now.
What does that mean?
“Look, Dom, you’re good at what you do, but it might be time to leave the job before it eats you alive. You’ve sounded off for months…since…Paris.”
She’s not wrong.
I let out a long exhale. “Do you know where I am right now?”
“Where?”
“Outside her place. She’s a florist, and she has an apartment above her shop. I’ve been here for a couple of hours.”
A laugh bursts out of my sister. “The cool Dominic Delacour is sitting in a car outside his woman’s house like a sad, morally conflicted stalker—no offense.”
“Some offense.”
“But true,” she insists. “You got shot last year. You nearly died in Paris, and you didn’t even take a break. You just kept running as if nothing happened.”
At her words, my shoulder aches as if it remembers.
“You deserve a life that doesn’t make you feel like you’re hurting people,” my sister continues. “You can’t just live as a legend, Dom, you deserve something real.”
I look up at the soft light glowing from Enya’s apartment window.
Real….
I had it. I destroyed it.
“I’ll think about it.” I am sincere when I say it, but I don’t know how to do anything else. Since I left college, all I’ve done is this. I was recruited when I was nineteen. For a decade and a half, this is the only life I have known.
“Come to L.A.,” she says. “Let’s…talk about this.”
“I need to wind this op down.” And I’m not ready to stop stalking the woman who has taken up a permanent spot in my soul.
“Dom,” she cries out, “I need you to get your head out of your ass and get a control of this situation before you lose yourself for good.”
“Daisy, I’ve got to go,” I whisper.
“Dom—”
“Please.”
That word does it.
“Fine. But if you don’t get back to me in two days, I’m coming down to D.C.”
“Daisy,” I warn.
“Deal with it,” she says in her power-boss voice.
The line goes dead.
I glance at my phone as the backlight blinks out, and then goes dark.
I return my gaze to Enya’s window, knowing she can’t see me, knowing she wouldn’t want to. And that hurts more than anything else ever has, even that damn bullet.