Chapter 66 – thiago
Sixty-Six
thiago
Remi: Meet me on the terrace.
Her text arrives just as the elevator doors slide open, and I step inside.
I can barely hear myself think over the pounding of my heart. It beats so hard I swear I can feel it in my throat.
Before dinner, before we take this next step and she introduces me to her family, I need to come clean. I need to tell her how it all started, how deeply sorry I am for deceiving her, and how each lie I told grew harder to live with as my feelings for her became real.
There’s one truth I’m no longer afraid to admit.
I love her.
I’ve known it long enough that pretending otherwise has started to feel like another lie.
I spent most of last night pacing my room, turning every conversation over in my head, searching for an explanation that would make this right, but there isn’t one.
Nothing excuses the lies I told or the truths I deliberately withheld from her.
I kept rehearsing what I would say anyway, because I need her to hear it from me.
I need the chance to tell her the truth before anyone else ever can.
I can only hope she forgives me.
The elevator reaches the rooftop, opening onto the terrace. The pool comes into view first, its surface rippling as the first drops of rain fall. I can't imagine what Remi would be doing up here after spending all that time on her hair and makeup.
“Hey, chama. You up here?” I call out as I round a tall potted olive tree. “Remi? Baby, it's raining. We're about to get drenched if we don't go back inside.”
Her voice comes from behind me. “I don't think either of us is going to dinner.”
Every muscle in my body locks as I turn toward her.
She’s standing several feet away, both hands wrapped around her Glock, the barrel trained on my chest. Rain streams through her hair as black mascara streaks her cheeks, mixing with tears she doesn’t bother to wipe away.
One look at her face tells me everything.
The words I spent half the night preparing disappear because I already know I’m too late.
I slowly raise my hands. “Remi, let me explain.”
“Explain what, Braga?” Her voice shakes so hard I barely recognize it. “That you’re not really SWAT? That you’re some undercover piece of shit?”
“No.” I take a cautious step toward her. “That’s not how this happened.”
“Bullshit!” She steadies the gun. “Enough with the bullshit. I saw it. I saw every fucking page.”
I swallow hard. “I’m not denying how it started."
Rain soaks through my shirt, plastering it to my skin as I force myself to hold her gaze.
“But once I got to know you, chama, once I knew who you really were...”
“Shut up!” she screams. “Shut up. You don’t get to call me that.”
The gun trembles, and watching her struggle to hold herself together forces me to see exactly what my lies have done to her.
I want to go to her so badly that my body keeps leaning forward, but I stop myself.
She’s crying because of me, and I can’t even touch her without making another choice for her.
“It’s all a lie. None of it was real, Thiago.” A sob slips free as fresh tears spill down her face. “How could you do this to me?”
“It was real.”
A broken laugh escapes her.
“You expect me to believe that?” She swipes at her tears. “I let you into my home. I let you meet Zara. I told you things I’ve never told anyone.” Her arms slowly fall to her sides, taking the gun with them. “I trusted you.”
The last three words come out so quietly I almost don’t hear them.
“I thought...” She shakes her head, her face crumpling. “I thought you loved me.”
For a moment, I can’t speak.
She has no idea I spent half the night trying to find the courage to tell her exactly that. Now she’s standing in front of me, believing the only part of this that was completely real was another lie.
“I do.” My voice falters. “And I’m sorry, Remi. I’m so fucking sorry. I should have told you the truth before any of this happened. Before I touched you and before you trusted me. I should have given you the choice I took away from you.”
Her face falls even more, and I close the distance between us.
“No, Remi. Listen to me. Please.” I wrap my arms around her. “I wanted to tell you. I came here prepared to tell you everything.”
She doesn’t move.
“I love you.”
Her entire body goes still against mine. The words are finally out, but the relief I imagined never comes. She gives me nothing, and I tighten my hold because I can feel her slipping away from me while she’s still standing in my arms.
“I do. I swear to God, Remi, I love you.”
A sharp pressure drives into my abdomen, and my breath hitches.
At first, I don’t understand why her body has shifted against mine or why heat is spreading beneath my ribs until she pulls away, and my eyes drop between us.
The black handle of her knife protrudes from my stomach.
I stare at it, then slowly lift my eyes to hers. The pain I saw there hasn’t faded, but fury has taken over her expression. She looks at me as if the man she loved is gone and I’m the bastard who took him from her.
“Liar,” she whispers.
Of all the things she could call me, that one cuts the deepest.
I stumble backward and press a hand over the wound as hot blood spills through my fingers.
“Remi...” I look from the knife to her, still trying to process what just happened. “You stabbed me.”
“You’re a bastard, Braga.” She raises the Glock again. “And you’re lucky I didn’t put a bullet through your skull the second you stepped off that elevator.”
“Remi, I came here to tell you the truth.”
“Well, guess what?” Her laugh twists into another sob. “Your commander beat you to it.”
Elena.
Goddamn you.
“This isn’t how I wanted you to find out.”
“No?” She looks at me in disbelief. “Maybe you should’ve told me the first time we fucked. Remember that?” Her voice wavers. “Or when I let you spend time with Zara. Maybe that would’ve been a good time. Or when I trusted you enough to hand you pieces of my life that belonged to no one else.”
She closes the gap between us, and I don’t move.
Her fist slams into my chest.
“Or that night you showed up at my door.” She strikes me again. “I held you while you cried. I fucking bathed you, you goddamn asshole.”
She pounds against me, over and over, each blow weaker than the last as she loses herself to grief. I don’t stop her or try to shield myself. I take every one because I deserve it. I keep saying her name through it all, but she either can’t hear me or doesn’t want to.
“Remi...”
“I held you together when you were falling apart, Thiago.” Her breathing turns ragged as she looks up at me. “At your father’s grave...” She presses a trembling hand to her mouth, struggling to speak. “I was there for you because I loved you.”
The past tense hollows me out.
My vision blurs, and I blink hard, but the first tear slips free anyway. She said “loved,” as if whatever she felt for me already belongs to a life she’s leaving behind.
I had her love, and I fucking lost it before I ever got the chance to tell her she had mine.
When she sways toward me, my hands lift to catch her before I stop myself. After everything I’ve done to her, I don’t know if I have the right to touch her anymore.
Then her hand closes around the handle protruding from my abdomen, and my eyes fly to hers.
“Rem, don’t…”
She holds my gaze and wrenches the knife free. The pain nearly drops me as blood pours down the front of my shirt.
Before I can recover, she drives a right hook into my mouth, busting my lip open. I barely taste the iron before her left fist connects with my cheek. One of her rings catches beneath my eyebrow, tearing the skin and sending a warm trail down the side of my face.
I should’ve known better than to think Remi wore anything that couldn’t also double as a weapon.
I’m too slow to get out of the way when she slashes the knife across my ribs. Water runs into the cut, burning as I press a hand against my side and feel blood seep between my fingers.
“Remi, stop.”
The blade comes at me again. I bring my forearms up to protect myself, and it slices over them, leaving several cuts behind.
“Fuck you!”
I reach for her wrist but pull back before I can close my hand around it. I could stop her. I know I could, but using my strength against her after everything I’ve already done would feel like another betrayal.
That hesitation costs me when the blade catches two of my fingers.
“Remi, please.” Desperation roughens my voice as I retreat another step. “I don’t want to hurt you, baby. Please stop.”
“Hurt me?”
She laughs through her tears. “How fucking thoughtful of you.”
With her eyes on mine, she hurls the knife at my face. I jerk my head aside, and it passes so close to my temple I feel the rush of against my skin. The steel strikes the concrete behind me with a sharp crack.
We both freeze.
I look up at her and realize the knife was never the thing I needed to be afraid of.
“I hate you.” Another sob shakes her voice. “I hate you so much.” She drags a trembling hand across her face, smearing what remains of her mascara. “Was any of it real, Thiago?”
“It was all real. Every second I got to know you was real.” I step toward her despite the gun and the blood running beneath my shirt. More tears fall. “Look at me, baby. I lied about why I came into your life, but I will never lie to you about what you became to me after.”
“I can’t.” She shakes her head, sending wet strands of hair across her face. “Because the man I thought I knew...the one I thought I loved...” She struggles to get the rest out. “He doesn’t exist. He never did.”
“Don’t erase him because I was too much of a coward to tell you the truth.
” My voice breaks, and I make no attempt to hide it.
“I’m standing right here, Remi. I’m the bastard who lied to you, and I’m the same man who held you, laughed with you, fell in love with you.
None of that belonged to any mission. It was mine. It was us.”
She stares at me for several seconds, then swipes at her tears with the heel of her hand. When she speaks again, there’s more strength behind the words.
“No.” Her jaw tightens. “You knew my father’s name before I knew yours.”
I open my mouth, but nothing I can say makes that any less ugly.
“You knew my mother. My family. My home. You knew them all before I ever let myself know you.” A bitter laugh slips out. “I thought I was letting a good man into my life, but I was delivering the enemy to their doorstep.”
“I’m sorry I betrayed what that meant to you.”
She raises the gun again, and this time, her hands are steady. “Your mission wasn’t just about me. It was about all of us.”
The barrel is level with my chest.
“That’s where you fucked up, Braga.” The tears gathering in her eyes don’t weaken the conviction in her voice. “Because if I have to choose between the man I love and my family...” Her lips tremble as she forces out the rest. “I’ll bury the man I love myself.”
All I hear is that one word. Love. She didn’t say she loved this time. She still loves me, and she’s going to pull the trigger anyway.
Her finger curls around it.
“If you love me, let me fix this.” I take a careful step toward her. “Let me tell you everything. No more lies or secrets. Just you and me.”
Fresh tears slip down her cheek.
“I wish I didn’t.”
I move closer.
“Remi, please.”
She flinches when I reach for her.
“You don’t want to do this. You won’t kill me.”
Her chest rises with a shaky breath as she stares at me over the barrel of the gun. I can see the fight happening in her expression, the fury warring with everything she just admitted she still feels for me.
“You killed me first,” she whispers.
The gun fires.
I close my eyes and brace for the impact, but it never comes. The shot rips across the terrace, followed by the violent splash as a bullet hits the pool behind me.
The Glock clatters to the concrete.
When I look at her again, Remi is staring at her empty hands as if she can’t believe what she’s done...or what she couldn’t do.
She chose not to shoot me.
A sob tears out of her as she wraps her arms around herself, and another tear slips down my face. I don’t bother wiping it away.
I move toward her, but she immediately backs away.
“Don’t.”
“Baby...”
“Don’t call me that.” She drags both hands through her wet hair and looks at me with an anguish I know I put there. “Please...just don’t.”
“I love you. You have to know that. I know that means nothing to you right now, but it’s true. It was true before I stepped onto this terrace, and it will still be true when you hate me tomorrow.”
“Get out.”
“Please, just let me explain.”
“Get out!” she screams. “Go. Right now.” She points toward the elevator.
“Because if you stay...” She squeezes her eyes shut before continuing.
“If you stay, I’m going to remember every reason I love you, every reason I trusted you, and every way you betrayed me.
” Her hand falls back to her side. “And I can’t survive that. ”
I stare at her, knowing there’s nothing I can say she’ll believe. Not tonight, and maybe not ever.
When she opens her eyes again, her gaze finds mine. “So leave. And if you ever come back...” Her voice drops, but the hesitation is gone. “I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
This time, I believe her.
“I’ll kill you.”