Chapter 30 #2
“It’s not flattery if it’s true.” He stepped closer. “I could have stopped our conversations once I was sure you weren’t tracking me. I didn’t. I looked forward to them. Started creating increasingly complex encryption challenges just to see how quickly you’d solve them.”
“And the personal stuff? The philosophical debates about ethics and truth? Was that just you gathering intel on how a Wilde thinks?”
“That was me forgetting I was supposed to be gathering intel at all.” His voice dropped lower. “It was just me talking to you.”
Daphne shook her head, refusing to be swayed. “You do this for a living. You manipulate people. Make them trust you.”
“Yes. And I’m very good at it.” He smiled without humor. “But I don’t usually find myself flying to Paris just to meet someone who already knows exactly how dangerous I am.”
“I flew here,” she pointed out. “You just had to show up.”
“I arranged my entire schedule around this meeting. Postponed deals worth millions.” His eyes held hers. “Ask yourself why I would do that.”
Because he wanted something from her family. Because he needed information on WSW’s operations. Because he was playing some long game she couldn’t yet see.
But none of those explanations felt right when she met his gaze.
A gust of wind blew a strand of hair across her face. Atlas reached up, hesitated, then carefully tucked it behind her ear. The gesture was so gentle, so at odds with his dangerous reputation, that she found herself momentarily frozen.
“You’re angry,” he said softly. “You have every right to be. But if I’d told you who I was from the beginning, we wouldn’t be standing here now. And I wanted—needed—to meet you. At least once.”
“Why?”
“Because in my world, Daphne, very few people see me. They see what I can do for them, what I can provide, what power I have.” He smiled, and there was such deep sadness in it. “But you saw me. The real me.”
She wanted to argue, to tell him she didn’t know him at all.
But that wasn’t entirely true. She knew how he thought, how he approached problems, what made him laugh at three in the morning.
She knew his tastes in literature and music, his opinions on everything from artificial intelligence to the best way to prepare coffee.
She just hadn’t known his name. Or what he did for a living.
“What exactly did you expect to happen today?”
“Honestly?” His gaze swept over her, taking in the blue sweater, the sensible boots, the glasses she was nervously adjusting. “I expected you to walk straight back out that door when you recognized me.”
“I did.”
“And yet here you are talking to me.” There was something like hope in his expression.
“Not for long.” She turned away. “I’m leaving.”
He let her get three steps before calling, “At least let me give you my private number.”
She swung back. “Why the hell would I want that?”
His lips quirked, and the smile did weird jittery things to her belly. God, the man was entirely too pretty.
“Because I think you’ll want to yell at me again after you’ve had time to process.”
Despite herself, a smile tugged at her own lips. That was exactly the kind of thing Titan would have said—reading her accurately, anticipating her reactions, gently teasing.
But Titan was Atlas.
And Atlas was a criminal who had dealings with the organization that had nearly killed several members of her family.
But she didn’t move away. She waited as he pulled a sleek phone from his pocket, tapped something, and then showed her the screen displaying a number. “Memorize it.”
She did, her near-photographic memory instantly capturing the digits.
Part of her—the cautious, family-protective part—was already planning to have Elliot run the number, see if they could track Atlas through it.
Another part knew that a man like Atlas Frost wouldn’t be caught by something so simple.
“I’m going now,” she said, taking a step back.
“Daphne.” He caught her hand one last time. “The truth is, I’ve been falling for you. And I think that some part of you has been falling for me, too.”
He wasn’t wrong, and they both knew it. She’d fallen for Titan so completely she’d flown to Paris to meet him.
But it was a mistake.
She should pull away and tell him to go to hell. Everything she knew about him—everything she’d learned in the last twenty minutes—said she should. And still her hand stayed in his, and her traitor heart was doing something complicated that had nothing to do with common sense.
She opened her mouth, but before she could form a response, movement at the corner of her vision caught her attention. A black sedan was slowing as it approached them, its tinted window sliding down.
Years of growing up in a security-conscious family had trained her to recognize danger. Her heart rate spiked. “Atlas—”
The window finished its descent, and she caught the unmistakable glint of metal as a gun emerged, aimed directly at them.
Time seemed to slow. Atlas turned and reached for her, wrapping his bigger body around her, as the crack of gunfire echoed off the buildings, followed immediately by screams from pedestrians. She heard him grunt, felt something hot splash across her face and chest.
The sedan accelerated away, tires screeching against the pavement.
“Daph—” He sagged against her, his grip loosening.
She couldn’t hold him up. They both went down, her knees hitting the sidewalk hard as Atlas slumped forward.
He’d put himself between her and the bullets, and now he was bleeding out in her lap in the middle of Boulevard Saint-Germain.
“Why did you do that?”
His head lolled against her shoulder, his breathing ragged and wet. Blood bloomed across his pristine white shirt and spread with alarming speed beneath his suit jacket.
His eyelids fluttered. “Should have... told you sooner.”
“Told me what?”
“Thought… you’d be safe. Couldn’t let them hurt you.” Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. “Praetorian.”
“What?”
Atlas coughed, a wet sound that sent a fresh wave of crimson across his lips, and his eyes rolled back.
“No, no, no,” she whispered, hands hovering uselessly—his shoulder, his chest, there was blood everywhere. “Atlas, wake up.” She shook him, but he was limp. “Titan. Please. Stay.”
Every book is an adventure, and I’m so glad you’re on this one with me. Thank you for reading!