Chapter 31 – Thiago
Thirty-One
Thiago
Eyes closed, head resting against the seat, hands clutched tightly around the steering wheel, I try to decompress after my shift.
Today was a day from hell.
Two back-to-back calls, a drug bust, and a hostage situation. Three dead perps should be cause for celebration, but I fumbled more than once. Nothing serious enough for anyone else to notice or to put my team in danger.
But I noticed.
I hesitated when I should’ve moved and missed a detail at the hostage scene that normally would’ve jumped out at me. They were small mistakes, but mistakes all the same, and the kind that become dangerous if they turn into habits.
The truth is simple. I wasn’t fully there today because every chance my mind got, it wandered back to Remi. The way she felt in my arms, her legs wrapped around me, the way she looked at me when she finally stopped fighting what was happening between us.
Goddamn.
I scrub a hand over my face and let out a slow breath. This is exactly what Elena warned me about. Getting attached, losing perspective, and compromising the mission. Every operative thinks they’re immune to it until it happens to them. I always thought I’d be smarter and more disciplined.
But now I understand it.
Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to betray everything they believe in. You make one exception, then another, convincing yourself you still have control until you realize you crossed the line a long fucking time ago.
That’s where I am with Remi.
I know exactly what I’m doing, and I’m doing it anyway.
Friends with benefits.
I can pretend it’s all part of the job, that I’m playing the role I was sent here to play. Then she smiles at me and looks at me with trust in her eyes, and the guilt gets harder to carry.
She thinks I called in favors and bent a few rules. In theory, that’s exactly what I did. But the truth is so much worse.
With a sigh, I stare out at the city beyond the glass. Sooner or later, she’s going to learn who I really am and what I’ve been doing since the moment I entered her life. The question isn’t whether she’ll hate me. It’s whether I’ll be able to live with it when she does.
I reach across the passenger seat, open the glove compartment, and pull out my father’s notebook.
For a few seconds, I just hold it, then I grab the pen tucked inside and turn to a blank page.
I don’t know why writing to him feels easier than admitting any of this to myself, but the words come anyway.
I’m in trouble, Pai.
I’m supposed to be watching her, but lately I spend more time thinking about her than about the mission. I’m making mistakes. Losing focus. And the worst part is, I know exactly why.
I pause, staring at the page.
I care about her.
There it is.
The one thing I haven’t been willing to say, even to myself.
My phone buzzes somewhere inside the center console, breaking the silence. I close the notebook and slip it back into the glove compartment without bothering to reach for my phone.
I already know who it is.
Elena.
She’s been calling and texting since I got off shift. Four missed calls after my shower. Six more messages lighting up my screen on the drive to Sloane’s. Elena wants check-ins, “touching base,” she calls it. But I know it’s her way of keeping tabs on me.
As I step out of the car and shove the phone into my back pocket without looking, I decide I’m done with it. Tomorrow, I’m going over her head. I’ll call my superior to request a handler change. Elena’s become too involved, too invested. She’s lost the goddamn plot, and I’m tired of it.
I walk into Sloane’s expecting to find Remi behind the counter, but she’s nowhere in sight. Giving the main floor a quick once-over, I head up to her office. I’ve barely reached the top of the stairs when a woman rounds the corner ahead of me, and my stomach drops.
I recognize her, know enough about her past to know that accidentally crossing paths with the woman formerly known as Amalia Montesinos is about the last fucking thing I need right now.
She doesn’t know me, though, and I need to keep it that way.
I continue toward her without breaking stride, even as my instinct tells me to be careful.
She’s beautiful, but there’s nothing soft about the way she carries herself.
Her head is high, her shoulders squared, and there’s an unmistakable authority in every step that makes it easy to imagine people moving out of her way without being asked.
But I know what most of them don’t. Amalia Cain spent years making dangerous men regret underestimating her, which makes perfect sense considering who she raised.
I’ve barely made it down the hall when Amalia’s attention shifts to me, and the subtle change in her expression, how her eyes harden as they travel down my body and back to my face, shows that she knows I don’t belong up here.
“Can I help you?” she asks in a way that should have me saying no and turning around.
“I’m looking for Remi.”
“And you are?”
“A friend of hers.”
Her eyebrows knit as she glances toward Remi’s office, then back at me. “If you’re a friend, you can wait for her downstairs.”
I almost tell her that Remi has brought me up here before, but I’m not sure arguing my right to wander a restricted floor with her mother is going to improve the situation.
“She knows I’m here,” I lie instead.
Amalia’s eyes narrow. “Does she?”
Fuck.
I’ve spent years being questioned by people trained to pull information out of me, and somehow Remi’s mother manages to make two words sound like she already knows I’m full of shit.
“She will in about thirty seconds.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No, ma’am. It is not.”
She holds my gaze after the “ma’am,” unimpressed by my attempt at respect, then moves closer, putting herself squarely between me and the direction I was headed. Normally, someone her size stepping in front of me wouldn’t register as much of an obstacle. With Amalia Cain, I know better.
“I’ve never seen you before,” she says. “And my daughter has enough going on without strange men showing up where they aren’t invited.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
I lock eyes with her, resisting the temptation to look toward Remi’s office. “I’m not here to hurt her.”
Her face goes completely still.
Shit. Wrong choice of words.
“I didn’t suggest you were.”
“No, but maybe you were thinking it.”
“And you thought saying it would make me less suspicious?”
Despite myself, I almost smile. “No. I realized how bad it sounded about halfway through.”
For the first time, something other than suspicion touches her features, but it disappears before I can decide whether I imagined it.
“Go downstairs,” she says with finality. “If Remi wants to see you, she can find you there.”
Pushing my luck with Remi’s mother would be stupid even if I didn’t know what she was capable of.
I’m about to turn around when Remi’s voice comes from farther down the hall.
“Thiago?”
Amalia looks toward her daughter, and I finally let myself do the same. Suddenly, I forget all about the woman standing between us.
Fuck, it’s good to see her.
It’s only been a day since I left her condo, but seeing Remi again hits differently after having her the way I did.
My mind immediately goes places it has no business going, with her mother standing five feet away, replaying flashes from yesterday that I’ve already spent most of my shift trying to forget.
Then I get a better look at her face, and every one of those thoughts disappears.
“Hey, Remi.”
Her eyes shift from me to her mother. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see if you felt like grabbing something to eat after closing.”
Amalia glances between us. “You know him?”
“Yeah, I know him.”
The answer seems to ease some of the tension in Amalia, but only slightly.
“Thiago, this is my mother, Amalia.”
I give her a polite nod, maintaining the pretense that her name means nothing to me. “Nice to officially meet you.”
“Likewise.” She still doesn’t sound convinced.
My attention returns to Remi, and now that I’m looking at her closely, I can see what I missed at first. Her makeup does a decent job of hiding it, but not quite enough. Her eyes are pink around the edges, her lashes slightly clumped, and there’s a faint puffiness beneath them.
She’s been crying.
Remi usually meets me head-on, ready with a smart-ass comment before I can get one out myself, but she’s barely said two words since she walked into the hall.
I don’t like it.
Not one fucking bit.
As if she can tell I’m two seconds away from reaching for her myself, Remi closes the distance between us and slips her hand into mine.
I wrap my fingers around hers without thinking.
“Mamá, give us a minute.”
Amalia looks down at our joined hands before turning that same guarded stare on me. Whatever she sees doesn’t make her any happier about leaving us alone, but after a moment, she looks at Remi.
“I’ll be downstairs.”
Her eyes come back to me one last time before she walks away, and I wait until she disappears before turning my full attention to Remi.
“What are you doing here?” she asks again.
“I told you. I just—”
“Yeah, I got that. But you can’t just show up. That’s not what this is. Now I have to play twenty-one questions, and I’m really not in the mood for it.”
She tries to pull her hand from mine, but I tighten my hold enough to stop her.
“Something’s wrong.”
She looks away and sighs. “No. There’s nothing wrong other than you showing up here unannounced.”
“Remi.” I draw her closer, relieved when she lets me. “Tell me. Did someone say something to you?” Another possibility occurs to me. “Did someone hurt you?”
“No.” She answers as if the question itself offends her. Remi would probably bleed out before admitting she needed someone to take care of her, but the red around her eyes and the exhaustion on her face tell me she could use it right now.
I gently tilt her chin. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I can’t.”
“I clocked three employees downstairs, plus your mom, and only six customers. Trust me, you can.”
She chews on her lip, considering it.