Chapter 16
ROMAN
We drop through warm air in the late afternoon. The light turns the wing gold. Mina watches as the runway rises to meet us. The wheels take the ground. The engines throttle down. The cabin holds a new silence, the kind you get when the worst part is over and the next part has teeth.
The next part makes us bait.
The crew opens the door. Humidity pushes in, full of salt and plants. We step into the heat. A small reception team waits at the bottom of the stairs. Two people place flower garlands around our necks. The transfer is a short drive and a longer glide by boat.
I hold Mina’s hand and let the sun touch my face. We look like exactly what we say we are—just unassuming newlyweds here for a good time. Not two people waiting for an assassin.
Marcus rides in the boat behind us. Tanner stays with the plane to handle the paperwork that will make it look like we’re here longer than we are, and also shorter. Both rumors will travel. Both are useful. I do not make one story when two will serve me better.
The truth is, we leave when I say we leave.
The resort sits on a private islet. Coconut palms. Sand that wants to be a postcard. The main lodge rises out of timber and glass. Boardwalks stand tall from the lodge out to the oversea bungalows. Mesmerizing blue water laps at the white seashore.
The manager waits with the smile of a man on a dental billboard. We shake hands. “Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Black.”
One of many aliases. I keep my voice quiet and my eyes on the sight lines. “We appreciate privacy. We reward it.”
“You will have it, I assure you.” He walks us down the boardwalk. The water under the planks is clear enough to see the shells on the sea bottom. Fish flash through shade and light. A stingray lifts and falls like a breath.
The bungalow is the last one on the line.
That was not an accident. It sits over a shoulder of water that deepens fast. There is one walkway in and a ladder into the lagoon.
Glass runs across the far wall. The bed faces the horizon.
It is the kind of place I’d like to bring my wife back to, once this is all over.
I want to give Mina every vacation a map can hold. Sun that warms her bones. Snow that makes the world quiet. Corner tables where no one knows our names. Trains, ferries, tiny planes that land on water. She deserves that and more.
She carried my sons and walks through fire. Unlike me, she was not raised with the threat of violence constantly over her head. This is all new to her. She grew up normal, and despite the fact that she’s scared, she does the scary things anyway. I will reward that bravery.
I want to plan weeks she does not have to plan.
Take her places she’s always wanted to see.
To pack first aid and snacks and make the sleeping bags face the view, so she can wake up to beautiful wilderness.
Let her be pampered within an inch of her life in some foreign hotel’s spa. Try the finest dining in existence.
We are still learning each other. I do not know what her ideal vacation is, or where she’s always wanted to go. I do not yet know all her habits or half her favorite places. Still, the urge to give her everything knocks at my chest like a fist. If she asks for a horizon, I will give her ten.
Mina steps inside and stops. The room is wood and white linens. A basket of fruit on a low table. Nothing fussy. She goes straight to the glass and presses her hand to the view. The late sun throws a path across the water. Her face loses a line I have been looking at since we left the city.
“It’s so quiet,” she says.
“Good quiet?” I ask.
“Yes.”
The manager leaves us to it, and I check the place out.
The deck is three strides by eight. The rail is low.
The line of the boardwalk reaches us and stops, which means one watch is enough.
I note the screws on the hinges and the lock pins on the sliders.
I lift the lid on the storage bench by the door.
Towels. I close it. I tap the frame where I’ll have my people place what looks like a decorative bracket but is really a sensor that notices weight where weight should not be.
Mina turns in a circle and lets the view pour over her again. She closes her eyes and lifts her face to the sun. A breath later she is at my side. “Tell me what you see.”
“One long approach. Three ways off the deck. A white boat anchored a hundred meters off starboard that is not a tourist. That’s one of ours.
The resort has one camera on the far pylon.
We let it be. We put our own in the palm behind the last hut.
No one will see it unless they climb the tree.
The wind is good. It pushes sound away from us. ”
“What about the ladder?”
“It is fine. If he comes by water I want him to think a choice is his, and that I don’t have contingencies for exactly that.”
She looks at the open curtains again. “It would make sense to close those.”
“It would,” I say. “We leave them open.”
She breathes out through her nose. “To make it look like we’re careless?”
“Yes. We make a picture he cannot resist. Honeymoon. Private deck. A pair of people who think the coast is clear. Too few men. A long walk for the wrong ones to do anything about it.”
She takes my hand and squeezes. “I can do this. I think.”
“You can. You are.”
She swallows and nods. The manager sends a cart with a tray.
Cold towels. Fruit cut into clean circles.
Two flutes and a bottle of the good stuff.
I pour two glasses and hand Mina the champagne.
She sits on the deck with her bare feet on the warm wood and exhales like the air is finally good enough to live on.
I step inside and call the retreat. Carol answers, “Sleeping. All is quiet.”
“Thank you.”
Jennifer takes the phone a moment later. She does not waste time with comfort. “They ate. We walked. We’re behind a gate I dislike in the right way. Do not call again unless you have good news.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t you sass me either.” She hangs up.
I like that woman. She doesn’t accept bullshit. Reminds me of her daughter.
Mina keeps thanking me for being honest with her. That thanks lands like a bruise, but I’ll never say that to her. It tells me other men did not give her that courtesy, and saying that to her would only dig up a past she has yet to share with me. I’m not sure she’s ready to speak on that.
I wonder if Vitaly was one of the liars in her past. What lies he did he tell her to make control look like care?
As of this moment, we have bigger concerns than her past, and I will not dig her past out of her.
For now, I watch what she does when the ground shifts.
She steadies. She does not flinch. She might complain the whole time, but she still pushes forward.
That is who she is to me. A partner I can trust.
When she is ready, I will give her the chance to trust me too.
I walk out and give Mina what she needs in one sentence. “They are asleep. All is quiet.”
Her eyes close. The line between her eyebrows softens again. She sets her glass down and holds the rail. “Thank you.”
We eat what we can. Mango. Pineapple. Crackers that taste like nothing and everything at once because we did not eat breakfast and the time zones have our bodies confused.
The sun drops fast at this latitude. The water turns metal and then ink.
Resort staff light torches along the sand.
The main lodge sends music into the air that sounds like a heartbeat from far away.
I put an arm around Mina and let her lean into me.
She sighs. “I could sleep for a year or not at all.”
“Either is fine. We can get bowls of rice and grilled fish now. Or we can get nothing and call for broth at midnight. Or we can do both.”
“Both sounds right.”
We order nothing yet and stay where we are. The boards creak under the weight of heat leaving them. A fish slaps the surface and disappears.
Her body goes tense against me. “This looks safe. Almost.”
“Almost is the point. Too safe and he will smell a story. Almost safe and he will make his presence known.”
“And end it,” she says quietly.
“And end it.”
Night deepens. The bungalow glows like a lantern.
The glass reflects us back at ourselves.
We leave the curtains open. If he is here, he will watch the picture and convince himself this will be easy.
He will see a man and his wife on a deck.
He will count two glasses. He will think he is the only person doing math, because I must assume I’m safe here.
Vitaly will underestimate me, and I may overestimate him, but only one of us will be ready.
Mina touches the ring and looks out over the dark. “I want to see morning from this bed.”
“You will.”
She breathes out and smiles, small and real. “You’re going to make me believe we have this.”
“We do. He can be lucky once. He will not be lucky twice.”
“Do you think you could be lucky twice?”
“In what way?”
A sly smile quirks her lips to the side just a little, before she drops to her knees before me.
“Are you alright?” I reach down for her.
But she bats my hand away. “Better than alright.” She reaches for the button on my trousers.
Is she…? No. She was scared a moment ago. “What are you doing?”
“Performing my wifely duties.” She unzips me.
“No need for a performance, Mina—”
She silences me with a look. “But I want to.” Her hand is warm on my cock, and I can’t help but suck in a breath.
“Then by all means, don’t let me stop you.”
Her grin steals my attention, before her lips part to swallow me down. She can’t take all of me, so she uses her hands to make up the distance between her lips and the root of my cock.
It’s all I can do not to fuck her face. She shuttles back and forth on my length in full view of anyone who could be watching from the water. I’m not shy, and apparently, neither is she. Should have known that from the first night we met.
She does something with the back of her throat that feels incredible when she takes me there, and it sends my eyes rolling back. I hiss, “Fuck, baby, that’s…” I can’t speak and finish the sentence with a groan.
One hand stays around my cock, but the other goes for my balls, and I jolt. It’s too much, too damn good.
“Keep that up, and this’ll be over quick.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Well, I am a man who gives a woman what she wants. I relax, knowing she wants this too. As gently as I can, I pump into her face, and she moans around my cock. That does it. A surge shoots from my balls, up and down my spine, and out. “Mina, move if you don’t want—”
But she sucks harder, and I shoot straight into her throat, my body jerking with every spurt. She takes it all, with only a slight glossy smear on her lips. She locks eyes with me and licks her lips clean.
“Fuck,” I utter before falling to my knees to kiss her. How did I con this woman into marrying me? She’s a damn succubus, and I will happily let her suck the life right out of me.
When we come up for air, I try to lay her on the floor, but she says, “I want a shower before anything else happens.”
Damn. “If you insist.”
She nods. “You first. I want your eyes on the door when I’m in there.”
I go. I am fast. When I step back out, she’s standing by the glass with a towel wrapped her and a hand on the rail. She moves past me to the shower without dropping her gaze from the door. She is learning my habits. I am learning hers. I like the mix.
When we’re both freshly showered and feeling safe, we move to the bed and fall asleep. She fits against me like she was made for it, and that bit of comfort is enough to knock me out completely.