I push up onto my elbow to see her better and feather the faintest caress over the discolored skin. She doesn’t stir. Seeing the bruises eats away at me daily. Every time, I relive the moment where I was forced to watch Vince Boswell land those few vicious strikes before she decided to fight back.
I still don’t deserve her or her love, but every time I think I can turn away from her, something turns me back.
My life used to follow a straight line—an arrow pointed at someone who needed to die. My interests always aligned with the job that had to be done and the people who paid me to do it. Now everything is a vicious tangle of lies and secrets and splintered memories.
I lean down, inhaling her scent. Vanilla, hints of cocoa, and something else—something so deeply familiar that it releases a shockwave of faceless memories every time I taste her. I slide my lips over her smooth skin…giving in…knowing the moments we shared once upon a time live beyond the barrier of my broken brain. If I could unleash them, would the path forward become more clear? Would it mean I could never turn away from her again?
I’m too tired to hold back. So I taste her. A flicker of tongue against her collarbone, then her neck. She moans softly against me, her hot hand dragging lazily down the front of my chest. I should stop now while I’m only a sensation in her dreams. Let her breathing take on its sleepy rhythm again. Keep her at a safe distance the way I have been.
But I can’t. Not when the memory of us is still pulsing like adrenaline through my veins. So real…
Her body undulates faintly as I glide my hand up her inner thigh. All silk and warmth. Her eyelids flutter open with a sigh. I nip and roam as she slowly wakes, answering my touches with more of her own.
“I need you,” I murmur against her ear.
“You’re burning hot.” She lifts her shadowed gaze to mine and rounds her hands over my shoulders. “Did you have a dream?”
Something knots in my stomach. Vulnerability I’m not used to. I silence her questioning with a deep kiss and more eager slides of my palms across skin I’m in a hurry to possess. I knead her through her panties until I can feel her arousal seep through.
Her needy whimpers signal my last shred of willpower disintegrating. I strip her quickly, settle between her legs, and claim her mouth again. She drags her hands down my torso, urging me tighter, closer. Then deeper as I roll my hips and join us. Her awe-filled gasp echoes between us, rushes into all the empty places inside me like a storm rolling in. When she opens her eyes, they hold that drugged kind of haziness I recognize when I’m inside her.
She brings her hands to my face, raking her blunt fingernails along my unshaven jaw. “Tristan,” she whispers. “Tell me.”
This isn’t the time to talk about it. But I can’t escape her or the feelings. I’m overwhelmed by her. By how much I need her. How much I worry I’ll always need her. My lips part. I don’t know what to say, though. How to explain how the dream ripped me open a little more but how lost I still feel in the fog of my memories. How she’s the one clear thing. Her and this love between us that barely makes sense but can’t be denied.
I hush her with a kiss. Hold her tightly. Rock into her slowly. Take. Feel. Revel in her. Mold against her as she wraps around me. Consumes me. Accepts all of me.
My heart twists as my body climbs, tight and fevered. Words clamor and lodge in my throat until she glides her fingers into my hair. Soothes my burning skin with her healing touches. And for a fleeting moment, the darkness becomes a safe shroud around the truth. The union of our bodies opens the door I keep closed, beckons for the words that finally leave my lips as I lower my forehead to hers.
“I want what they took away from us. I want it back.”
Our gazes lock in the darkness. Her eyes glimmer. A mirror of hurt and loss.
“Me too.” She brushes her fingertips over my lips. “We’ll make it right. I promise.”
I don’t know how we ever can, but her words make a vow for both of us. And I believe her.
CHAPTER THREE
Isabel
Midafternoon light floods the apartment as I get dressed. Through the sliding-glass doors, Tristan leans over the brick-lined terrace with his coffee. The wind ruffles his hair and T-shirt. The horizon is thick with buildings that pierce the hazy layer of sky between the city and the wispy spring clouds. Tristan barely moves, as if he’s deep in conversation with the world beyond.
Or maybe with his demons… The ones who crept into his dreams this morning. He won’t talk to me about them, but I can’t fight the inexplicable desire to wrap my arms around his pain. His words earlier might haunt me forever. Recognizing all we’ve lost. Acknowledging that he feels that emptiness too…
I’m angry for him and everything we’ve endured. When he shows me his heart, something changes. I want to fight for him the way he fights for me. There’s so much wrong to right, but I’m nowhere close to giving up trying.
I go to the kitchen for coffee. I hear the door slide open and closed again, and Tristan joins me a moment later. I pour myself a cup, and he comes behind me, wrapping his arm around my middle as he tops up his own.
“Hi,” he says, kissing me on the cheek.
I smile, warmed by the affection he’s so adept at holding back when he wants to.
When he goes to the living room, I follow. We sit across from each other on opposite couches. The apartment is silent except for the distant sounds of the street below.
“Did you have a nightmare last night?”
He purses his lips. “More like a vivid dream. A memory.”
I straighten, instantly curious, but also concerned because he seemed troubled despite the way he woke me up, with his hands everywhere, his need palpable.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
I exhale through my nose, trying not to appear as frustrated as I am. “It might help, you know. Talking it through might trigger something new.”
He looks over his shoulder through the window and then back to me. “I don’t get to pick and choose what memories are going to hit me. I want to remember, but then no matter what it is, I’m never really ready for it. It’s a setback. It’s jarring when I have other shit I need to think about and focus on. Like us. Figuring out our next move.”
My frustration fades, replaced with empathy. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it must be for Tristan to process everything he does. To parse true memory from whatever his imagination serves up beside it. To not completely lose his shit every time he gets a particularly troubling dose of truth about his old life and everything we lost.
I’m ready to go to him when he leans forward, dropping his notebook onto the center of the coffee table between us. I glance between it and him, because the ledger’s mere presence is a taunt. Bait that ultimately I can’t resist.
“What are you going to do with that?” I finally ask.
“You mean, what are we going to do with it?”
I don’t answer, but he has to know my silence is agreement. We’re in this together, and if his little red notebook is the key, I’m all in.
“You’ve gone through it,” he continues.
I nod. “A little.”
“Crow’s plan won’t work. He’s in it for the money, and it’s going to get us killed. I don’t care about money. I just want to get us out of this mess.”
“So how do we do that?”
He drums his fingertips on his knee, looking pensive. “We do it carefully. Strategically. Like a good hit, it should be well planned, quick, and fatal.”
I swallow, because this is definitely his area of expertise, not mine. “What’s your plan?”
“We reverse engineer a hit. Once we figure out who did the hiring, we target them. Blackmail if necessary. But whatever we do, however uncomfortable we make them, the intent will be to make Company Eleven the culpable party. Then we hope it’s enough of a blow to either take them out of the game or—at the very least—send a clear message that if they don
’t leave us alone, I’ll keep going down the list, making their operation a living hell one name at a time.”
I set down my coffee and consider Tristan’s plan. I pick up the notebook. Its contents will probably haunt me the rest of my life, but if one of these names could free Tristan from this life…then the red ledger could mean something more. Give us a path to follow.
“Where do we start? Who do we pick?”
“We could look at the high-profile hits. Those would have the highest risk of scandal if exposed. Or someone rich. All the Company’s clients are flush, but more money means more power, and that power could be a valuable weapon to punish the Company’s fuck up. Or we pick someone dangerous. Someone who played without rules and whose friends won’t hesitate to mete out their own kind of justice.”
My thoughts jump around the possibilities—all of them thrilling but scary at once.
“That’s a lot to consider. You know these people better than I do.” I go to open the book.
“Don’t.”
I lift my gaze.
“I’ve got them all memorized, Isabel. Every name. Every detail. It’s all in my head. I don’t want you going through the list and researching every one on your own.”
I frown. “Why?”
He pins me with a pained look. “A lot of these people weren’t good. I know that. But some were like you. Innocent.” He hesitates. A hint of remorse shadows his eyes. “I can’t undo what I’ve done.”
I set the book down and slide it to the center of the table once more. His words settle between us, taking up space I wish didn’t exist. The reality of what he’s done and the life he lived before won’t ever be something that doesn’t cause me pain. It’s like grief. Heavy and relentless. An invisible but ever-present burden. Maybe with time it won’t hurt quite as much.
Either way, I know I have to find it in my heart to forgive him no matter what I discover along the way. There’s no undoing the past, and neither of us can waste more time wishing for the impossible. We can only do our best with the time we have. Be better and do better.
I shake my head because what I’m thinking now seems foolish to say out loud. Quixotic even.
“What?” he presses.
“There’s no erasing these names…but what if we tried to make it right somehow?”
His brows knit. “How? Take out the Company and then put a bullet in my head?”
I flinch. “No. Don’t say that.”
“Well, that would look a lot like justice. I don’t know what else you have in mind.”
“Forget it. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”
I rest back on the couch and release a frustrated sigh. I roll the conversation around in my head, trying to find the path we were on before we derailed. High profile, rich, or dangerous. Every possibility is a Pandora’s box and scary as hell when I really start to think about it.
“What about a live target?”
He lifts an eyebrow and takes a sip of his coffee. “Explain.”
“Ask Jay for a job. If she gives you one, it’d be easier to trace something back with a live subject.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
I can’t mask my smile. “That’s possibly the only time you’ve ever said that to me.”
He grins. “Well, the catch of course is that I don’t know her end game. I can’t trust any information she gives me.”
“Never hurts to ask.”
He shrugs. “Suppose not.”
He reaches for his laptop and opens it. I get up and take the seat beside him, leaning in so close our sides touch.
He types in the password to the computer faster than I can guess the keys he’s hitting. It’s a long one.
“What’s your password?”
He shakes his head slightly. “No way.”
“What if it’s an emergency and I need to get into it?”
“Like you got into my bag yesterday? Was that an emergency too?”
“No, I was curious. If we’re in this together, we shouldn’t really be keeping secrets, should we?”
He pulls up a simple chat terminal with an unfamiliar gray and black screen that looks like something a hacker or programmer might use.
I tuck the password argument away for later. “What’s this?”
“An SSH chat. It’s a command-line utility that works well when you have a small group you talk to. Basic, untraceable. It’s how Jay and I communicate.”
“You don’t have her cell? You can’t just text her?”
He chuckles. “No. You know how easy those are to trace?”
Our eyes lock, and I can read his thoughts in an instant. “You track me through my phone.”
He only hesitates a second. “I need to know where you are.”
I think about arguing, but I get it. This is about life and death, not personal space and privacy etiquette.
“Don’t you think it should go both ways? What if we get separated and I need to find you?”
Ignoring me, he looks back to the screen and types Jay’s name into the chat terminal. “Then what? You’re going to swoop in and rescue me? Trust me, if you’re trying to find me, you’re probably headed for trouble and better off not knowing.”
I frown, offended at the insinuation. “You don’t know that.”
He hovers his fingertips over the keys, blows out a breath, and begins to type.
RED: Ready when you are.
The cursor blinks for several seconds before a new message appears with a ding.
JAY: You have a debt.
I look up at him. “A debt?”
“For the intel on Boswell. For fucking up and getting away with my life. It’s all bullshit anyway. Test of commitment. Or pretending like I can be a good little soldier again.”
He taps out a response.
RED: I’m aware. How much?
JAY: Three jobs. Soloman’s price.
RED: Fine. Where to?
JAY: I’ll prepare the details. You’ll have the dossier tonight.
JAY: Welcome back.
“I hate her,” I mutter, suddenly furious that she can speak to him with such ease, such rapport, when all she’s doing is arranging for him to take more lives.
Tristan closes the laptop with a click and sets it aside. “She’s not worth your hate.”
I rear back a little. “After everything she’s done to you? She’s the murderer here. For years she’s taken advantage of your vulnerabilities to use you as a weapon in this sick game of theirs.”
“And there’s a murderer above her and probably another above her. Who knows how high it goes? That’s what we need to be focused on. Hate is distracting. It’s basic, and you’re better than that.”
I pause, trying to talk myself out of the emotion that feels too overwhelming to rise above at the moment. I can’t manage it, at least not right now.
“I’m allowed to hate her for what she’s done to you.”
He falls quiet and reaches for my hand. Our fingers glide and hook. The simple connection offers more relief than he probably realizes.
“Just don’t dwell on it too much,” he says. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
I huff out a sigh, very much dwelling on the woman I despise, realizing too that jealousy lives somewhere inside my hatred for her. I resent that she’s known him and been in his life, even in this limited and strange capacity, when I’ve been shut out this whole time. If I had a list of people who’d wronged me in the worst possible way, Jude McKenna’s name would be at the top of it.
“Flanders Fields.”
I blink a few times. “Huh?”
“It’s my password.”
“Oh.” I pause. “What’s the significance?”
“Look it up sometime. And if it makes you feel better, I’ll let you track my phone. Just in case you need to rescue me sometime.”
I lean in. “Maybe I already have.”
He begins to smile, but it fades as he brings his hand to my face, tracing over the tender
skin along my jaw. “You’re probably right.”
TRISTAN
We spend the afternoon milling around Midtown. It’s busy and hectic the same way it always is, which drives me crazy and gives me solace at the same time. I don’t know how to absorb less of what I see. The details come in a deluge, but over time, I’ve come to terms with this being normal. Because crowds are camouflage, and even though I don’t think anyone’s looking for us here, I rule nothing out.
The stores get pricier the farther up Fifth Avenue we go, which doesn’t matter much because we’ve been window shopping most of the time. Neither of us has room for superfluous things.
“Do you want to go back? Maybe we can catch lunch somewhere on the way,” she says.
I nod toward the hotel tucked into the next block just before Central Park.
“Let’s grab a drink in the Plaza.”
She looks me over and then down at her simple clothes. Tight jeans and a dark sweater that hangs off her shoulder a little. “We’re not dressed for that.”
“Nonsense.” I take her hand, and we start walking that way. “The trick is to walk in like you belong there. Don’t make eye contact with the bellmen. Just walk straight up to the bar like you’ve got a suite reserved for the week.”
“That simple, huh?”
“Bet on it.”
We stroll in that way, swiftly bypassing the man in the hotel uniform. Isabel lifts her chin confidently. Her pretty lips are pursed proudly as we walk hand in hand up the marble staircase to the Rose Bar. We take two stools, and the bartender with the Irish lilt is none the wiser.
As I watch her peruse the menu, I’m hit with something so much more powerful than desire or affection or this unending urge to keep her safe. It’s…gratitude?
She was joking about rescuing me a few hours ago, even though I could tell it burned her to think that she never could. The truth is she already has. If it weren’t for her blind faith in us, I’d never know what it’s like to love a woman. To know that, against the odds and everything that should have kept us apart, we’re heading down this uncertain path…together.
The Red Ledger, Book 4 Page 3
