by Taylor Lee
Rafe leaned against the window, studying her. He shook his head, an ironic smile curving one side of his mouth as if he couldn’t believe how she played her father.
Nicki shrugged. So maybe she was laying it on a little thick, but she could tell her father was about to give in. Ignoring Rafe’s amused irritation, she spoke earnestly.
“Papa, I know you worry about me. And I know that both you and Rafe are concerned for my safety. As I am for you and Rafe and Katya, and Grayson and Caleb, and all the people I care for. But Papa this is why you trained me as well as you did. So that I could help save three young women and perhaps many more from a hideous fate. This is a worthy cause, Papa. Because of how you taught me, I am the best person to do this job.” She paused for emphasis, then added. “And that is why I am going to do it.”
Nicki had never given her father an ultimatum, never overruled him. She’d never had the need. She let the silence between them stand. At length she heard her father’s sigh. When he spoke, his voice was resigned.
“Nikita, I wish to speak with Rafe, privately. Please put him on the line and turn off the speaker phone.”
Before she could object, Rafe strode across the room and held out his hand for the cell phone. She tossed it to him. When he clicked off the speaker she jumped up and went to stand by the window where Rafe had been during most of the conversation with her father. Even without hearing her father’s end of their discussion, it was clear what he was saying.
Rafe’s response was crisp.
“But, of course. That goes without saying, Yuri. Unlike your incorrigible daughter, I do understand and appreciate your concerns.”
Rafe shot her a hard glare when she gave him a flippant nod.
He listened without speaking for several minutes, his brow knotted in concentration.
“That bears further investigation, Yuri.”
Rafe glanced over at Nicki, then grimaced.
“I expect the rest of our team in minutes. It isn’t useful to tell you not to worry. But do know that we are taking every precaution. Ah, mon cher ami et un confident. Indeed I will.
“Soyez bien.”
After he put the phone down, Rafe leaned back in his chair and regarded her through narrowed eyes. Nicki’s skin tingled at his quiet concentration. He didn’t seem quite as angry as he had been, but his quizzical expression was disconcerting. She decided she had nothing to lose by confronting him. She had won after all, even if the two most important men in her life were upset with her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Rafe slowly unwound his tall frame from the chair and moved in front of his desk. As he closed in on her she saw that she’d mistaken his silence for agreement. From this proximity she sensed his implacable anger simmering just below the surface. The slight smile quirking his lip was unsettling.
“And what way would that be, Nicki?”
She aimed for nonchalance.
“I’m not sure. I assume you’re angry with me. And it’s clear you didn’t like the way I spoke with my father. “
“To the contrary. Your conversation with your father was instructive.”
Knowing that they had a long day of planning ahead of them, Nicki refused to concede the upper hand. Determined not to be intimidated, she thrust out her chin.
“What do you mean, ‘instructive’?”
His voice was soft, but she didn’t miss the edge of danger.
“Tell me, Nicki. Is that how you get your way? How you ‘handle’ your father? You browbeat him until he gives in?”
Not wanting him to see that he was making her nervous she assumed a dismissive air.
“Pretty much.”
“I see. You ascribe outrageous motives to his legitimate concerns? To make him feel guilty for wanting you to be safe? For wanting to protect you, the person he loves more than anything in the world? In sum, you act like a spoiled brat?”
She tossed him a careless smile.
“If it works.” She added, with a small frown: “Except that I’m not a spoiled brat.”
Within seconds, he was beside her. She startled and tried to back away but he grabbed hold of her arm and dragged her toward him. He twisted her arm behind her, pulling her up close, pressing her hand against the small of her back.
She sucked in a breath, fighting to quell the rush of sensations flooding her body.
“Ah, but you are, Princess. A very spoiled, very bratty young woman.”
She turned her head, refusing to meet his fierce gaze. She huffed.
“As I said, “If it works.…”
Rafe’s breath was hot in her ear, along her neck.
“I’m not your father, Nicki.”
She sniffed, avoiding his piercing eyes.
“Sometimes you act like you are.”
He gave a harsh snort.
“No, Nicki, if I’d been your father, things would be quite different. I’m curious.
In all those years of manipulating him, twisting him around your finger, have you ever been disciplined?”
She tried to swallow, but his provocative words sent shockwaves boiling through her, drying up her spit. She struggled to sound careless, but her voice cracked from the strain.
“Since I have no idea what you mean by that, you may assume that I have not.”
“Until now.”
He pulled her up against his hard body, a powerful male animal pinning his prey.
Nicki’s stomach clenched as shards of excitement cut through to her groin.
He wove his fingers through her hair and tipped her head back, baring her lips and throat to his mouth. His voice was low, harsh.
“We’ll deal with this later, Nicki.”
She tried to shrug him off of her, to break his hold, but he held her so tightly she couldn’t move. She could barely breathe.
She gasped a breathy, panting sound.
“Perhaps a discussion is in order.”
He guffawed.
“No, Princess, given how accomplished you are at manipulating words… actions, not words, will be the order of our business tonight. I look forward to introducing you to some of the things you apparently missed growing up. Come to think about it, it’s better that you learn them from a lover, one who knows just what this naughty girl needs and is itching to give it to her.”
Hearing the tentative knock at the door, with a harsh groan, he pressed his lips against hers in a bruising kiss. She tried to twist away, fight his kiss, but he was powerful. He held her tighter until she began kissing him back. With a groan she clung to him, not wanting him to ever let her go.
Chapter 33
Nicki woke, startled to see that Rafe was in bed with her. It took her a moment to remember that he and Gray had headed for the sparring ring after their day-long discussion. She hadn’t asked if it was okay if she went to his room. Given his coolness throughout the day, she wasn’t sure that he would come to hers. She was surprised that she’d fallen asleep, until she remembered everything that had happened in the last two days and wondered how either of them still had the strength to walk around.
Rafe was sitting up in bed resting against the headboard. She smelled the sweet seductive scent of his Turkish cigarette. In the glow of the burning ember she saw him looking down at her, a serious expression on his face.
She snuggled against his bare chest and was relieved when he put his arm around her and pulled her up close to him. She nestled against him, reveling in the strength of his arms. Trailing her hand over his muscular chest, she tangled her fingers in the curly hair that had intrigued her the night before. (As though everything about him didn’t intrigue her.) He was gorgeous. She wished she were brave enough to follow that pattern of hair arrowing over his abs and down to the top of his sweat pants. For the moment, she settled for resting her cheek on his chest and breathing his musky strong man smell.
Breaking the silence, she looked up at him, and said, “I hope you don’t mind that I snuck in your room. I…I wasn’t sure
you would come to mine.”
He frowned and his tone was somber, but his words took the edge off.
“I told you this morning that from now on you’d be waking up in my bed if we aren’t in yours. If you hadn’t been here when I got back, I would have dragged you out of your room, thrown you over my shoulder and brought you here kicking and screaming.”
“Mm hmm. That sounds positively primitive. But don’t you think we’ve given our team enough to gossip about? God, Caleb is practically drooling for the deets of the next installment.”
Rafe chuckled.
“Caleb doesn’t need details. What he doesn’t see with that sixth sense of his, he makes up, just to annoy me.”
After she’d heard Rafe sigh at least three times, Nicki knew she couldn’t ignore the underlying tension any longer. She took a deep breath and walked into the fray.
“Are you okay, Rafe?”
He gave a harsh laugh. It was painful to hear.
“That’s an interesting question, Princess. Am I okay? I guess considering that the woman I love is about to infiltrate an international human trafficking ring that we now know intends to have a high level auction of kidnapped girls, some of whom are our clients, and we don’t know where, how, when or who will be taking her—Hmm. Yeah, given that, I guess you could say, ‘I’m okay.’”
“Rafe, please…”
He held up his hand.
“I’m sorry, Princess, I didn’t mean to reopen that discussion. We have thoroughly litigated it and I’ve conceded what we all know. As much as it pains me, you are the single best person to do this job… and as long as you are there, Katya is the perfect partner.”
Nicki sighed. “But you are still upset with me?”
“No, Darlin’; the person I’m upset with is me.”
He was silent for another long moment. When he finally spoke, the tone of his voice and tortured expression on his face shot a flash of fear through Nicki.
He shook his head then leaned down, lifted her chin, and gazed in her eyes.
“Nicki, we need to talk.”
“Oh, Rafe, haven’t we talked enough. Can’t we just hold one another tonight and be grateful that we have this time together.”
He groaned softly.
“Damn, Princess, I wish it was that easy.”
He hitched up in bed and rested against the headboard. A weary frown creased his forehead. Reaching for his cigarettes, he lit another.
Staring straight ahead as if she wasn’t there, he said, “Nicki there are things you need to know about me. What I’m going to tell you very few people know. Your father is one of them. It is only fair that you also know the kind of man I am.”
She frowned and started to object but stopped when he held up his hand.
“Nicki, please. This is difficult for me to tell you. Please just let me say it and be done with it. Can you do that for me?”
Struggling not to react to the icy cold shivers of fear streaking down her spine, Nicki nodded.
“Yes, Rafe. I can do that.”
“While you are absolutely the right person to invade that den of thieves tomorrow, you need to know that you can’t count on me. I’ve got a real bad track record when it comes to protecting the women I love. You have to know now, Nicki, that I can’t promise that I can protect you.”
Nicki waited, the silence and the pain in his voice frightened her, but she respected his wish and waited for him to speak. When he did, it was like listening to a recording. A flat, expressionless recording of short clipped phrases. His monotonous tone became a blessing as horrific detail after detail spilled out.
“I should have known what my life was gonna be when I watched my father kill my mother. His soup wasn’t hot enough. Things like that infuriated him. I couldn’t stop him. I did my best. I was eight years old. He tried to kill me too. I got away, but she didn’t. He got my sister two years later. I was ten. I should have been able to stop him then, but I was a puny kid. I didn’t start growing until I was twelve or so. I didn’t know he was screwing Frannie; that was my sister’s name. She was twelve at the time. I didn’t know any of that stuff. I was such a vacant kid. But I got smart. Real smart, real fast. Turned out I had a hand in killing my father. I didn’t do it. But my gang did. I didn’t even recognize his body until one of my gang apologized. Said he didn’t know he was my old man when he slit his throat. I laughed when he told me. It was a little bit of justice for my mother and Frannie. Even though I didn’t get to kill him, at least I trained the guy who did.”
Nicki stared at him in disbelief. That something so hideous could have happened to Rafe when he was a child was stunning. That she didn’t know about it until now was heartbreaking. She had to fight every instinct she had not to put her arms around him and hold him. She forced herself to stay still. From the dead expression on his face, she realized he had only begun.
“I should have been able to prevent what happened in Rwanda. I was older then, and my skills could compete with the best of them. But, hell, we were still young. Christ, I’d just turned twenty. Rwanda was where I met Gray and Max. Gray was two years older than me, and Max was a whopping twenty-four. He was an army medic then. I was already Delta. Your father made that happen. It’s important to understand. We were in the middle of a fucking uprising. We weren’t supposed to be there. Only the U.N was sanctioned. The U.S. wasn’t.
“Our Colonel was my hero. I believed in him. He was the kind of man I wanted to be. He was suave, cultured, came from a prestigious family. Handsome as hell. He spoke as many languages as I did. I always knew when something was wrong. My instincts are as good as yours Nicki, but this time I ignored them. For once I had a military leader to look up to, the way I looked up to Yuri.
“Like I said our mission was clandestine. We were supposed to intervene quietly, blow up weapons, get intel, that sort of thing. I’d always been attracted to working with kids, so I started helping out at a girl’s school, teaching the kids English in my spare time. The little girls loved me. They got a kick out of how I tried to speak their language. I did it badly and they loved my clumsy attempts.”
Nicki clung to him. She dug her fingers in his arm to weight him down. She was afraid if she didn’t, she might lose her grip on him. That he’d fly away high in the sky like a balloon when you let go of the string. Her chest was so tight she had to force herself to take shallow breaths or she might forget to breathe. She wanted to shut out his monotonous voice, longed to make it stop. She didn’t know if she was strong enough to hear the rest. But as terrified as she was to hear what she knew was coming, she was more afraid he might stop and she’d never know the agony torturing his soul.
“The Colonel put me in charge of the mission. We were supposed to blow up a cache of weapons the rebels hid in a compound. We did this kind of thing all the time. Didn’t matter whose weapons they were, we were just supposed to get rid of as many as we could. We didn’t pick sides. Tutsi, Hutu, Interahame, who the hell cared. We just wanted to cut down on their firepower. The government was as rotten as the rebels. As violent, as vicious—if not more so. Once the militia got involved, it turned out they were the worst of the bunch.
“That day we wired the compound and were waiting until dark for the command from the Colonel. He was a quarter of a mile away calling the shots. When he radioed me the go signal, I signaled my men to blow it. And at that moment two of the children I’d been working with came running out of the building. I can see them now. They were laughing, calling my name. ‘Missur, Missur, Missur Rafie. Candy? Candy?’ I screamed. I screamed and screamed. Grayson and three other men had to hold me down. Don’t know what I thought I could do. And then it was blown. Bodies were everywhere. I watched pieces of them fly through the air. I can still see them. I don’t know who screamed louder. All those dying children or me.”
Nicki did her best to control her sobs. She wept as soundlessly as she could. The lump in her throat threatened to choke her, but she kept forcing herself to swallow. Anyt
hing to keep him from stopping until the terrible tale was told.
“Gray and Max dragged me to some government hospital. I was burned pretty bad. My throat bled for weeks. I couldn’t talk. They dosed me up. I woke up in middle of night. Gray was there. He looked like shit. Even before he told me, I knew what he was going to say. Gray could barely speak, he was so angry. He said, ‘Goddamn, Rafe. I don’t want to tell you this but the Colonel sold us out. He set us up. He did it for money, Rafe. For goddamn fucking money.’
“The militia wanted the world to know that the US did it, killed the little girls. The official word was the U.S. wasn’t there, remember? It was supposed to be a fucking public relations disaster for the U.S. The bastards enticed the kids into the compound after we got it wired and made sure we didn’t know.
“The next morning Gray found me. The way he tells it, he looked for me all night long. So did the doctors at the hospital. Gray found me covered with bloody bandages. Like a good soldier, I was sitting in the camp cleaning my weapons. I had them all lined up, pretty as you please. Gray told me the Colonel had been found dismembered. He was in so many pieces he could have fit in a small sized steamer trunk. Gray kept saying no one would blame the man who did it. No one, from the President of the United States to the lowest Private. Gray made me promise I wouldn’t blame that man either. I laughed. It took me three months to be able to talk again, but I laughed then. I told Gray later that I wouldn’t blame that guy for what happened to the Colonel but I’ll never forgive him as long as I live for killing twenty-seven innocent little girls.”
For several long moments the only sounds in the room were Nicki’s sobs and the sound of his match striking another cigarette. Rafe didn’t let go of her, but he didn’t look at her either. He just looked straight ahead and continued in that low monotonous tone.
“Do you want to know the irony of it? The fucking irony of it? There was no public relations disaster. Because no one knew it happened. We were in the middle of the biggest genocide in modern history and we didn’t even know it. In little over a month nearly a million people were murdered. The ‘civilized’ world turned its back. It didn’t give a shit what was happening in some godforsaken African hell hole. Think about that, Nicki. Between 800,000 and a million people were slaughtered by their fellow countrymen in less than six weeks and the world couldn’t have cared less. Sure as hell no one knew or cared about those little girls. Except us. Max said it was a blessing. At least they weren’t all raped before I blew them up.”
