Chapter 18
ELENA
I couldn't sleep.
My fingers moved in slow, absent circles over the blanket draped across both of us—it was scratchy and uncomfortable, but it was better than nothing.
And it was finally warm, warm from our combined body heat.
I wasn't thinking about the fabric now. I was thinking about him.
About the way he was holding me, how he hadn't wanted me to get off of his lap.
Surely it wasn't comfortable, especially with his leg, but I wasn't going to argue with him.
Being on his bare chest, his tattooed arms holding me tight under the blanket, it felt right. Despite everything. Despite the lies.
"What were you planning to do once you knew the truth about your dad?" he asked once it was clear Ivy was fast asleep. She'd let out a few soft snores despite our situation.
Of course she could still sleep in this mess.
"I dunno, nothing. I just wanted to know." I had no idea what I would've done. I knew better than to take on a mafia family.
"You wouldn't have tried to blackmail them?"
"Knowing they're mafia? Hell no," I scoffed, causing him to chuckle slightly. "I don't want to die just yet."
"I know. Thank you."
"For not dying?"
"For saving my life. Even pepper-sprayed, Alfeo was stronger. I lost a lot of blood, and willpower can only strengthen you so much." Jackson's voice was soft as he squeezed his arms around me.
"Couldn't go letting our best chance of survival go and die. Besides, he would've followed after us. No witnesses and all that," I muttered, not wanting to think about Alfeo.
"That was the only reason you saved me?" His voice was curious, and I could hear a hint of something else.
"Maybe I'd fallen a little for you. Hard not to.
Big macho guy who looks like he belongs in a magazine, helping me survive the rain and…
" I chuckled, catching myself before giving him more compliments.
Of telling him how his damn smile made my legs weak.
He didn't need to know I was crushing hard on him.
And battling myself the entire way, especially since I knew who he worked for now.
We could never work. I didn't want to get involved in that kind of life.
"Maybe I fell too. It was why I couldn't stop myself from being around you. From trying to help you," he said, his voice almost canceled out by a low rumble of thunder. I couldn't help how my heart skipped a beat at his words.
"I kept telling myself it was part of my job. You were the new hire, I was meant to make sure we could trust you, that you weren't planted by a rival family or someone out to hurt them," he said quietly, his thumb now stroking my arm.
"Guess I didn't help my case by looking up those financials," I mumbled. "You were watching me? Had my office wired?"
"Knowing who the Donatis really are, you really need to ask?" he scoffed lightly.
"Yeah, I still feel a little off about that, but I know it was your job, I guess." I wasn't a fan of being scrutinized like that, but I understood. It made sense.
"Yeah." He fell silent after that as lightning ignited the room for a moment once more.
We sat like that for some time, and I matched my breathing to the soft rise and fall of his chest. It never eased or slowed, and I knew sleep was not his friend tonight, same as myself.
"We were special forces," he said, breaking the silence finally.
No preamble. No warning. Just those four words. I didn't speak. I didn't move. I just listened.
"Not the kind you read about in the papers," Jackson continued, his voice a low rumble beneath my ear where I rested against his chest. "The kind that doesn't exist on paper at all."
I felt the steady thump of his heart against my cheek, slightly faster now. Whatever he was about to tell me, it cost him something. I curled my fingers into the blanket, anchoring myself.
"Our unit was tight. We'd been through hell together, trusted each other with everything." His chest expanded on a deep breath. "Then they brought in someone new. Intelligence asset from another country's operation. Guy named Turner."
He spat the name like venom. I could feel the tension building in Jackson's muscles, the way his body went rigid beneath mine. Whoever the guy was, he hated him.
"He smiled too much. Always had the right answer. I didn't trust him, but orders were orders." His voice flattened. "Turned out he was a double agent."
My breath caught. The circles I'd been tracing on the blanket stilled.
I knew whatever he was going to say next wasn't going to be good.
"He got them all killed."
Jackson's voice didn't shake, but I felt the tremor in his chest beneath my cheek. A vibration of grief so deep it had nowhere else to go but into the bones. I wanted to say something, anything, but what comfort could I possibly offer against that kind of loss?
"We were extracting a diplomat's family. High-risk territory. Turner had fed the location to the enemy." His words came faster now, like he needed to push them out before they could choke him. "I was point man, first in the door. That's the only reason I wasn't in the kill zone when they hit."
I closed my eyes, picturing it. The chaos. The betrayal. The moment when he realized what was happening.
"I took shrapnel in my side, my leg. Managed to get to cover, but I couldn't reach the others." His hand moved to his ribs, unconsciously touching what I now realized must be a scar. "Radio was still working. I could hear them dying."
The room felt too small now, too dark. It was closing in on us both as his arms tightened around me. I wanted to turn on a light, to see his face, but I was afraid any movement might break whatever was happening—this confession in the shadows. This raw truth that he needed to get out.
"Then came the fire." His voice dropped even lower. "They firebombed the safehouse. The diplomat's wife was in there. Their kids."
My stomach twisted as I imagined children burning. I had to shove the image from my mind immediately.
He'd lived it.
"I called it in. Command told me to stand down. Said intervention would 'escalate the situation.' Create an 'international incident.'" The bitterness in his voice could have cut glass. "Like those kids weren't already an incident."
His breathing had changed, becoming more deliberate, controlled. The kind of breathing someone does when they're fighting not to lose control.
I moved my hand, resting it flat on his chest, over his heart.
He drew in a deep breath, covering my hand with his. I didn't lean back to look at him. I felt like it was easier for him to share this without looking directly at me. To reveal the nightmare that haunted him.
"I tried to get them out."
I almost didn't hear him as thunder snarled overhead, as if it felt the same pain roiling within him.
"I went in through the back. The heat—" He paused as he swallowed.
"The place was all on fire. I could barely breathe.
I got to one of the kids. Little girl, maybe six.
Carried her out. I could feel myself burning. Smell my own flesh being melted…"
My throat tightened as tears pricked my eyes. I couldn't even imagine the horror of it. Of walking through a burning building to try to save a child, of burning as he tried to save them.
"She died in my arms. Burns were too severe."
I closed my eyes, my hand trembling on his chest. I didn't want to imagine it, but I did—Jackson, younger and desperate, holding a dying child while a building burned behind him. The image carved itself into my mind with terrible clarity.
He went quiet then. The kind of silence that doesn't ask for comfort. The kind that dares you to look away, to flinch from the horror of it. I didn't. I stayed perfectly still, my hand over his heart, feeling each beat like a small act of defiance against everything he'd lost.
"I found him," he said eventually, and there was something different in his voice now. Something cold and final. "Turner. The double agent. Tracked him for three months after I got out of the hospital."
His hand moved to cover mine as he let out a shaky breath. "I put a bullet in his head."
No apology. No regret. Just fact.
"That's what landed me in prison."
He said it like it was the price of breathing. Like it was inevitable. Like there had never been any other possible outcome once he'd watched that little girl die. Held her as she drew her final breath.
"Lot of red tape. They tried to bury it all—the mission, the betrayal, the casualties. Classified it so deep even the families couldn't get answers." His jaw tightened; I could feel it in the shift of muscles. "The Donatis pulled me out."
I blinked, trying to process this. "That was... generous of them."
My voice sounded too light, too careful. I didn't know how else to respond. The Donati family had connections, obviously, but enough to extract someone from a military prison?
He gave a low, humorless laugh that vibrated through his chest.
"Mafia families like to recruit from the inside. Guys already doing time. But the Donatis... they look for men with a code. Not cold-blooded killers. Just ones who've already lost everything, but for the right reasons."
His hand tightened over mine.
"I owe them everything. If it weren't for them… well, I had nothing left. Nothing to come back to, I'd lost my team, my new family. I was ready to join them."
The weight of those words settled over us. I understood now. His unwavering loyalty, his willingness to work for them. It wasn't just a job. It was a life debt.
They'd pulled him from a dark place, one he'd not been able to get himself out of.
I swallowed hard, my throat tight. "I'm sorry you lost your team. I'm sorry for all of it, Jackson."
It felt inadequate. A pebble thrown into an ocean of grief. But it was the only truth I had to offer.
He reached up, fingers brushing the dog tags at his neck. He turned one over, showing me it.
A list of names were engraved there, any the lump in my throat made me choke.
"They were my family."
The way he said it, so broken and defeated, made my chest ache. I thought about my own mother, sick and alone in her hospital bed. About the half-siblings I'd never known. About the father who'd abandoned us both. Family meant something different to Jackson. Something earned in blood and sacrifice.
Now I understood why he never took them off.
I didn't say anything else. What could I possibly add that wouldn't cheapen what he'd shared? Instead, I curled closer, my hand resting over his heart, where the metal tags lay cold against his skin. A memorial he carried everywhere.
My mind whirled with questions. How had the Donatis found him? How had they learned of him in particular? What exactly had they asked in return for his freedom? To just obey, or to kill?
But those were questions for another time. Right now, all that mattered was that he'd trusted me with this piece of himself—this raw, wounded part he kept hidden from the world.
"I think… I think I might sleep, Elena. If you can take next watch."
"Of course. I'm right here."
Eventually, the silence softened. Not gone. Just... less sharp. The tension in his body gradually eased, his breathing deepening.
Now I finally knew what had hardened this man.
This man I was only falling deeper for.