by Meli Raine
“Sean. Sean! Slow down. I don't understand.” I reach up to adjust my glasses, his face coming into sharper focus. My stoic man is jumping with emotion, his face a ripple of feeling, body fidgety and pumped.
“Wyatt was working with Romeo. You saw him at the club that night,” he says, insistent and demanding, as if I'm supposed to understand what he's talking about.
The flashback hits me hard. I work to keep my voice steady, fighting images of that night. The dead man at my feet haunts me. “Yes? But what does that have to do with – ”
“His hair was a match from the other job with Romeo. That man you saw had to be Wyatt. It had to be.” Pleading eyes meet mine and I get it.
Oh, dear God, I get it.
Sean scoops me up in a hug, his voice hoarse with emotion.
“I did it, Lily. I found him. I found Wyatt.” Hot breath makes my shoulder's buzzing feel like ice.
“But Wyatt is Stateless. He's...” Sean's grip on me tightens.
He's one of the bad guys, I almost say.
But don't.
“I know. I know what you want to say.” Gruff and deep, his voice is a contradiction.
“No, Sean, I – I'm happy for you.” Taking his face in my hands, I move within inches of his face. “You did it. You did it. You really found him.”
A long sigh escapes him. It is twenty-three years long.
Pulling back, he gives me an earnest look, eyes wet with emotion. “And you're right. But you know what this means?”
“What?”
“It means Stateless is real.”
“Of course it is! Drew and Silas and – ” I almost say the president, but I hold back. The last thing I want is to crack this door open again. Closing the lid on the coffin of the past is my goal.
“And it means we have to take it down.”
“Oh, God,” I groan.
“Lily,” he says, a thousand words in my name, a lifetime of pain. I close my eyes and see eleven-year-old Duff, beaten and broken beside his family's fire pit. I see his Gran, her image drawn from pictures Sean has shared with me, long white hair in a bun at the top of her head, a fierce determination in eyes that promise justice to a little boy. I see Romeo in that sex club, so eager to watch me die with his fingers around my neck, knowing he would frame Sean and leave us as tools for a plot like no other.
I see my future with this man, so loyal, so true.
I see what he needs to do.
“Sean,” I say, the words coming out of me from a place of truth so deep the resonance is otherworldly, as if this is my true language. Our eyes are worlds that orbit each other, until finally, I have to say it. I have to give this man permission to be who he really is.
I look up at him, love blooming through me, the difference between it and fear indistinguishable as I say,
“I understand.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Wyatt's alive.”
“Yes.”
“Then you have to find him. You have to free Wyatt.”
Lily and Duff found love, but they found something more – his long-lost brother. While their story is over, Wyatt's is just beginning as he learns the truth about his very existence in Stateless, the first in an all-new romantic suspense series by USA Today bestselling author Meli Raine, coming fall of 2019.
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When you’re born without a trace, no one knows you’re a weapon.
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Preorder Stateless now!
