Chapter 34
This is America
Caleb
APPLYING THE UNITED States Uniformed Code of Conduct Oath to this situation is sticky.
I can’t reveal anything about the case that would jeopardize the team, so I decide to tell her a story.
The sun is rising when she comes into view. She’s wearing a robe and standing barefoot in the hallway.
So incredibly sexy. So beautiful. And I so want her to be mine.
Lust suffocates me.
Consumes me.
Blinds me.
All I can do is stare at her. Before I know it, every inch of my body is solid with sexual tension.
“You carried me to bed instead of waking me,” she whispers.
Finding my footing around her is getting harder and harder. It’s like she’s an earthquake under my feet. “You were tired. I figured you needed the sleep.”
Staying where she is, she slides down the wall, sitting and crossing her legs at her ankles. “It’s your turn to talk and we don’t have a lot of time before we have to leave to go to the museum. I can’t be late.”
Crossing my arms, I stare at her and feel my heart pounding its new erratic, unsteady beat. “I have one question first.”
Her stare narrows. “What is it?”
“What do you know about Cruz moving his business operations to Mexico?”
Her brows rise in surprise. “Nothing. He hasn’t mentioned it, but he has been very preoccupied lately. To be honest, other than his business dealings and his black-market art fetish, I don’t really know much. He’s never even openly admitted he involved my brother in anything. Of course, he knows I know it had something to do with drugs, but that’s all I know.”
She has no idea he runs the Mona Lisa.
Accepting what she’s told me as the truth, because she has no reason to lie, I walk toward her, remembering the feel of her breasts, the taste of her nipples, the way she feels beneath me.
She’s sin and suffering and everything that won’t be good for me, and yet I can’t stop myself from opening up to her. And with each step I take, I know this is one walk I won’t be able to turn back from. “He’s involved in a lot more, you do know that? Right?”
Unmoved. Undaunted. She keeps herself together and gives me a nod.
“Okay, so here’s the thing, Gemma,” I say, “you and I are connected in a way you don’t even realize, and it’s not in a good way.”
The ease she felt dissipates. “I don’t understand?”
I stop beside her and slide down, our secret meeting place, out of evil eyes. “Just listen.”
She nods and there’s a frightened look on her face I wish I could take away.
My brother, Jason, was sitting in the front row at your brother’s trial. The judge was late because he was talking to me. I was telling him things I couldn’t share with anyone else.
When he entered the courtroom, the jurors filed in and the bailiff asked everyone to rise. The jurors all took their seats in the jury box.
The judge addressed the jury, and the foreperson responded. Soon after, the bailiff handed the verdict form to the judge as he read aloud, “As to Count 1, the jury finds the defendant guilty . . .”
My best friend was there. He’d been through a lot to see justice served. After hearing the verdict, he stood to leave. Your brother turned around then and pointed to him. “You, you did this to me! You took my family from me, you took everything from me!”
The courtroom was in chaos.
Your brother wasn’t done though. “You’ll get yours! An eye for an eye. Don’t forget it,” Josh spat before he was escorted kicking and screaming out of the courtroom.
Confusion clouds her brown eyes. “I still don’t understand. Why are you telling me this? I was there, I heard it all.”
The harsh reality of my life sets in. Feeling unsettled, I push a piece of hair from her eye. “Because you don’t really understand how deep your brother was in. He should have been locked away forever, but Cruz didn’t want that. Didn’t want him to crack, so he put a plan in place to make sure it didn’t happen.”
Emotion slams into her.
I go on. “Your brother received a three-year sentence because of me. And Cruz’s case never even made it to trial because of me.”
Every second we talk about this stretches out, dark and deep and unwanted. “Why . . . why did you do that?” The sound of her strangled words fill my senses.
The truth is hard to admit. “I buried evidence to keep my nephew alive.”
The breath seems to whoosh out of her. “Evidence that would have put Enrique away?”
I feel like I’m playing Russian Roulette when I nod.
Click.
Blank.
Click.
Blank.
Eventually, you have to stop pulling the trigger or die.
Right?
Truth or not, I have no idea what to expect. “Yes. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. And I can’t live with myself anymore for doing what I did.”
Her suspicious gaze narrows on me. “So, either you work for the US government and you did something illegal, or you work for some private company who overlooked the cover up, which is it?”
“I can’t tell you that. The only thing I can tell you is that on the night of the benefit, I’m going to make it right.”
A smugness takes over that I hadn’t been expecting. “I have a very similar plan.”
“Care to share the details?”
“No, you?”
“No and don’t get in my way,” I warn her.
“Don’t get in mine.”
We stare at each other. There is nothing more to say. We both have secrets and we both have a vengeance so great nothing will stop us, not even each other.
But who will get there first?