For the most part, things had become more relaxed over the previous week. Lydia was calmer since giving her notice to Hannah—she was lighter, and I caught her reading business magazines and filling up her home office with piles that seemed to have purpose. And having Frank around made me calmer. Until the wedding was over, and the MI6 operation was far enough in our past, I wanted to know she was safe. In fact, the MI6 operation was the only lurking source of anxiety. That and the weeks-long separation that would follow it.
“I don’t want you to do this.” Lydia looked up at me with her big brown eyes, searching, as though she could convince me, with just that look, not to go through with the operation. And fuck all, if there were nothing else to consider, I’d have let those brown eyes tell me exactly what to do. Those eyes fucking owned me.
It was finally here—this event that had been looming for the past several months, and we were getting ready to head out the door.
“Baby. Damsel. I will be fine. This needs to be done.” I ran my hand down her bare arm. Her skin was still warm and damp from the shower, and she was withdrawn, distracted. She was scared, and I don’t think anyone had ever been scared for me in my life. It was so raw, feeling loved like that. I imagined suddenly that’s what parents were supposed to feel for their children. Or what children were supposed to feel from their parents. It was family.
I pulled her from the closet to the bed and sat on the edge, situating her so she sat atop me, so those lean endless legs of hers bent next to my thighs, and I pulled the towel from her back. I wanted to be what kept her warm, I wanted her to feel how I wanted to be the one protecting her, that she had no reason to be scared, and I wanted my skin on hers to do that.
She ran her nose against my neck, nesting in the crook of my shoulder. When she did that she was so beautifully vulnerable. I couldn’t get enough. Her hair covered my hands, and I kissed her head.
“You’ll wait with Jack’s staff. Emily will be with you. You’ll get every update. And the whole thing won’t take more than a couple of hours.” I explained the plan as I rubbed her back. I explained how the car would be driven by a trained agent pretending to be my driver. How I’d be meeting King in the back room of a restaurant he owned. How my jacket would be wired, undetectable. How I knew exactly what I needed to get him to say and exactly how I was going to do it. How we’d been laying this plan for over a year, and it was going to work. How the officers would be waiting less than a block away, ready to intervene. How code words were in place. How I’d be in and out, and only a fifteen-minute drive away in Southwark the whole time. It was solid, and I had backup.
“And when I’m done, I’ll come right to you, damsel. I’ll whisk you off.”
“You can’t. You’re going away tomorrow.” She said, defeated.
“Yes, well, as soon as I’m back from that, we’ll get in the car, head to the airport, straight for Ikaria, and stay there for weeks. Just you and me. All right?”
“We can’t. After that we have the wedding.”
“Yes, well, fine, you annoying little thing, then I will whisk you away.”
What she didn’t know was that as soon as this bloody mess was over with and we were safely tucked away in Greece, I had every intention of telling her I wanted a family, not in ten years, but now. I wanted a child. With her. I’d stop being such a pathetic wanker and pray to god it was what she wanted too, that I wouldn’t be bloody breaking her in half by asking her to be a mother when she’d said more than once that she wanted more time, that the very idea scared her.
Her head of caramel-colored hair rose, and her damp eyes met mine. “Okay. Just promise me nothing will happen. Say it again.”
I took her face in my palms and ran the pad of my thumb across her perfect cheeks. “Nothing will happen.”
“Okay. Then let’s do this. Go be a hero, Dylan Hale.” She rose from my lap and I realized she had her knickers in her hand. “Because obviously being a duke, world-class architect, and devastatingly handsome isn’t enough. You just have to go off and save Britain and Russia, and stop human trafficking as well.” She began to mock me, doing that thing she did when she was trying to create distance and protect herself, use humor to tell herself and everyone else she was fine. She’d done it the first night I’d made love to her.
I smiled at her daft sarcasm, knowing she needed me there with her, and snatched the knickers from her hands. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing with these, damsel. If you think for one second that after this operation I’m going to want to contend with any extra barriers between me and sinking into you, you’ve gone completely mad. No knickers, darling.” I stuffed the purple silk in my pocket, knowing it was probably demented that I was about to take my wife’s undergarments as a good luck token on an MI6 operation.
“Now,” I continued as I went to the closet. I fetched her favorite jeans and some kind of loose-fitting shirt and bra and dropped them on the bed beside her. “Get dressed, damsel. Let’s get this shit show over with, shall we?”
* * *
I’d been sitting in this fucking empty restaurant for an hour and a half waiting, and King still hadn’t shown up. I tried not to look at my watch, tried not to down the whisky in front of me. Tried not to do anything that would draw the attention of the henchmen who’d clearly been assigned to wait with me. And it was bloody hot in there. I had avoided taking off my jacket as long as I could—it was the only thing on me that was wired—but I’d started sweating, and had draped it over the back of my chair. All I could do to distract myself was think of Lydia back at MI6 headquarters waiting for me. When I’d left she’d been sitting on a couch with Emily, whom she’d asked to bring along. “You know,” she’d said, in her bloody adorable American accent, “in case I get bored.” But I knew it was because she wanted a hand to hold. I adored that she wanted to be strong, and it killed me that I put her in the position at all. But this had to be done. If successful, it cleared the path of being free of the Bresnovs, of finally restoring order with Hale Shipping, for putting Humboldt back in my name. Once this was done I’d have atoned, to some small degree, for the sins of my goddamn father.
At that moment, the door opened and five men walked in—it was immediately clear who King was. The short stocky fucker was flanked evenly by four bodyguards in matching suits.
“Let’s go for a ride, Hale. Shall we?” The fucker said it like he knew something was up. Goddammit. I was supposed to talk to him about going over the Bresnovs’ head, about offering Hale Shipping services for a better deal. I’d worked the details out with MI6, the script, and they were meant to intervene the moment the ass had incriminated himself by accepting the deal. The plan was for the conversation to take place there—why did the fucker want to move?
“I think here should do well, don’t you?” I said. “I’ve got to be somewhere in an hour—why waste, time, right, gentlemen?”
The henchman, the one with the goddamn pistol hanging out his pants, came up behind my chair and tipped it forward. “Mr. King said he’d like to take a ride.”
This wasn’t supposed to happen, but it would be fine. The tracking device was in my jacket. The officers would be watching my whereabouts and would follow. I reached for my jacket, but the henchman’s hand landed on top of mine. I was strong, but Christ, this man was a monster.
King spoke up. “You won’t need it.” My hand dropped the jacket, and the henchman put his hand at my back and pushed me towards the door.
Fuck.