by PM Kavanaugh
Sympathy cooled Anika’s anger. So young, she thought. Only a boy.
“I carried on my parents’ work by joining a national resistance movement,” Gianni said. “It was violent. We destroyed cars, boats, houses, buildings.”
“Not people?” she asked, though she knew there had been at least four.
“Not until two years later, when I plotted the bombing of the Italian parliament building. I didn’t know there would be people—judges—inside. It was supposed to be empty.” Gianni wrapped his fingers around the medal. “I was wrong.”
“The medal belonged to your father?”
Gianni nodded. “My mother gave it to him. I removed it from his body at the morgue and placed it around my neck. There was a nick on one edge that hadn’t been there. I assume it happened during the attack.” He dropped the medal. “Apart from when I have to remove it for a mission, it’s with me all the time.”
Pinpricks of envy jabbed at Anika’s heart. She longed for something tangible from her family. “What does the image mean?”
“It’s St. Jude. He’s the patron saint of lost causes.” A smile ghosted around Gianni’s lips. “My parents appreciated irony.” He glanced at Anika, sadness radiating from his brown eyes. “Now you know how I ended up in an Italian prison.”
She wanted to reach out a hand to offer comfort. “Okay, but you didn’t know the judges were inside. You didn’t mean to kill anyone. And you were, what, fifteen? You shouldn’t have been given a life sentence.”
Gianni shrugged. “The Italian courts disagree with you. I was sentenced to live out the rest of my life in a cage—and I would have, if U.N.I.T. hadn’t given me back my freedom.”
“You think this is freedom?” Anika gestured at the walls around them. “On call twenty-four-seven. Every move monitored. Every thought analyzed. Every mission a life-or-death gamble. You’ve just traded one prison for another. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“For me, it does. For now, anyway.” Gianni stood. “I commend your approach.”
Click.
Anika pivoted toward the sound. The door swung open. She glanced back at Gianni. “What are you talking about?”
“Trying to convince me that we have a shared enemy. U.N.I.T. It’s often an effective tactic when negotiating with a hostile. You’re free to go.”
Chapter 26
Free. You’re free. The words whispered through Anika’s mind, a seductive siren call.
But for how long?
Gianni was right. She had no plan, no provisions. Anger still simmered inside her, nudging her forward. But uncertainty rooted her in place. That, and something else. Longing. For what could have been. What might still be.
She turned toward him. “Convince me to stay.”
“Stay so you can avoid capture. And exile. Stay so you can live.”
“Not good enough. Not for me.”
Gianni stared at the scrambler still lying on the desk. The muscle at his jaw flexed. He gazed at her, his brown eyes clear, unshadowed. “Then stay for us.”
“Us?” Anika’s eyes widened. “Ever since you returned from whatever mission you were assigned after the North Korean embassy, you’ve been...distant. Absent, even. Except, of course, when you were prepping me for the mission in El Salvador.” Her fists clenched at the memory of Second’s warning at the end of her debriefing. “Second advised me not to read too much into your pre-op behavior.”
“What did she say?” Gianni’s gaze burned into her, through her.
Anika sucked in a breath. “She told me your...actions...were guided by a desire...” No! Not that word. “I mean, they were guided by the mission’s objective. She said I shouldn’t interpret them as anything more...” Embarrassment painted her cheeks red. “...more than that.” She dropped her gaze.
“Second was wrong.”
“She found the message you left for me.”
“I told you to delete it.”
Anika dipped her head lower. “I know.”
“What about the night when I brought dinner and you invited me to stay for...dessert?” A smile teased Gianni’s lips. “There was no mission being planned then. That was just about us.”
Anika shifted from foot to foot. She remembered that night. Had relived it many nights since. “That was one night. Versus dozens of nights, even weeks, when I had no idea where you were, when you were coming back. If you were coming back. Where have you been?”
Gianni sat back down. He tented his fingers, pressed them to his lips as if debating whether to release the answers. “You know it’s against agency policy to discuss missions with anyone other than assigned team members?”
“Yes.”
“Then you understand what I’m about to tell you is forbidden.” His voice was low, grave. He shifted in his seat, once. Then he leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desk. “But it’s important to me that you know. This one time. Important for us.” His fingers were so tightly linked Anika could see a whitening of his knuckles.
His rare display of nerves elicited a corresponding response in her. The muscles in her shoulders tensed. It’s okay, she wanted to reassure him. You can tell me anything. She stood in place, undecided.
She wanted to know his secrets. But she also wanted to protect him from the agency’s censure. In the end, her need to know won out. “I’m listening.”
“Are you familiar with ‘sweetheart’ missions?” he asked.
She nodded. “We learned about them in training. It’s when you’re assigned a mark to seduce in order to get whatever the agency wants. Intel, an asset, or infiltration of a hostile organization.”
“In my case,” he said, “it was infiltration. A family-based organization in Eastern Europe acquiring and selling the usual—weapons, drugs, synthetics, military and industrial intel.”
“What was your objective?”
“Come sit.” Gianni gestured to the chair opposite him. When Anika had settled in, he continued. “My mark was the youngest sister of the man at the top. I used her to get close to him. Gather enough evidence so the regional authorities could take the necessary action.”
“And you were successful?”
Gianni nodded.
His silent acknowledgment was a jab to her heart, a painful surprise. Success meant he had slept with the woman. She had thought he could tell her anything, but this was excruciating to hear. She thought back to the moment on the balcony in El Salvador when she had thought (wrongly, as it turned out) that Gianni had slept with Suzette. It had helped to remind her then that it was Gianni’s alias, Nino Bianchi, who had done so. Would that same trick work now?
Gianni was staring into the distance, his gaze clouded with an image or a memory only he knew.
Anika decided it was worth trying. “What was your alias on this mission?”
Her question brought Gianni’s attention back. “What?” he asked.
“Your alias. What was it?”
“Michael Taveggia.”
“And the woman’s name? The one you...I mean, Michael Taveggia seduced?”
“Sonia Yvanov.”
“Michael Taveggia slept with Sonia Yvanov.”
“Yes.”
Michael slept with her. Michael slept with her. Michael slept with her.
“Did you...have feelings for her?”
“Michael Taveggia did.”
“What about Gianni Brambilla?”
Gianni leaned toward her across the desk, palms raised. “My feelings, those feelings, are for you alone.”
With his words, his gesture, the throbbing in her heart quieted. He had only done what the mission demanded of him. “What happened to Sonia?”
“She died in the raid by the authorities.”
“Another innocent,” Anika whispered.
“No. She knew about the family business.” Gianni’s voice was granite. “Still, she died because she believed the lies I told her. The mission objective was worthy, but it wasn’t easy to carry out.”
; That explained the shadows in his eyes when she had seen him in the training facility. “And that’s why you’ve been so distant with me?”
“I couldn’t be with you as I wanted while I was pretending to be in love with someone else. Do you understand?”
Anika nodded. “I want to. I’m trying. What if...you get assigned another sweetheart mission?” What if I do? The thought chilled her.
“I have to carry out my assignments, Anika. I made a commitment to U.N.I.T. Second told me I need to do a better job compartmentalizing. I’m working on it.”
“U.N.I.T. can make our relationship so hard on us, we’ll want to end it,” she realized aloud.
“I’m not sure that’s possible.” Gianni’s gaze was so open and direct. There were no shadows now between them. His words breathed hope into her. Could she trust it?
Her gaze dropped to the scrambler still lying on the desk. “I sure hope Evan’s device works.”
“I do as well. At that size, it could be very useful in the field. But just in case,” Gianni said, gesturing at his handheld, “I activated a privacy function after you arrived. It shields this room but there’s a time limit. We have fifty-three seconds left.”
“So, what now?” Anika asked. “I continue with my advanced training? How much longer?”
“You still need to learn to fly a plane, remember?”
“You promised to teach me, remember?” What else do you remember from that night—the moonlit sky, the autumn night breeze, our first kiss?
“I remember everything, cara,” Gianni whispered. His tender endearment, his warm gaze told her his memories of that night were as vivid as hers. “I also remember asking you to join me for coffee.”
“At the café near here,” Anika said, nodding. “You said it reminds you of the one from your home in Brea, Italy.”
“We could go there now.”
“I don’t think it’s open. It’s past midnight.”
“I mean the one in Brea.” Gianni’s eyes lit up. “We can take a plane. You can have your first lesson.”
Anika’s brows rose. “You mean tonight? Now?”
Twenty-two seconds.
“We’d arrive at the café as its doors are opening. The perfect time.”
Anika sat and considered his invitation. A real date. Excitement hummed through her. One that could be explained away as a training lesson, if anyone ever asked. The realization that they might always need that kind of professional explanation for being seen together sunk in, tamping down her excitement. Then she leaned into it. If that’s what it would take to have both Gianni and a place to belong, she would accept it. For the time being. “I like my cappuccino dry, with one sugar and a light dusting of cocoa powder.”
Gianni’s lips stretched across his face, the smile reaching all the way to his gorgeous brown eyes. “I’ll mention that to the server.”
Anika took in a breath and nodded. “Okay.”
He pressed a button on his handheld. “Transport, this is Brambilla. I need a plane readied for immediate takeoff.” He returned his gaze to her. “Okay...does that mean you’ll stay?”
She knew he was talking about U.N.I.T now.
Nine seconds.
Anika bit down on her lip. “I can’t say for how long.”
“But for now?” He held out his hand to her. Not a question from her superior. A supplication from her lover.
“For now...” She took his hand, warm and vibrant, in hers. One second. “Yes.”
Acknowledgments
This story sat in my computer, eighty percent finished, (well, eighty percent of a decent first draft finished) for over a year while I waited for inspiration, motivation, determination to kick back in. To my delightful surprise, they came in the form of an email from the two women in the first writing group I joined over a decade ago. Both wanted to get back to writing and invited me to join them on regular video calls for sharing and critiquing, because, hey, we were in the middle of a pandemic and GoogleMeet/Zoom/Facetime meetings had become a way of life and a way of coping, so why not? Huge thanks to these women—Marcia Tungate and Sharon Henegar—for helping me finish this book AND make it so much better. I also want to thank Meri Cortez for the Spanish translations and California transplant- Anglophile, Lori Rosenwasser, for the British translations. Any mistakes are on me! Special shout-out to fellow writer KC Klein, who prodded me to get my rights back on Books 1 and 3 of this series so I could realize my dream of self-publishing all three books, with thematic covers and titles, as a proper series. And finally, to Jess Verdi, editor extraordinaire, who made the plot stronger and the emotions deeper. She supplied impressive knowledge, care and tact and actually made the editing process fun. Really! She’s awesome.
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About the Author
Ever since she was a kid playing “spy” with her older sisters, PM Kavanaugh has loved a potent mix of intrigue, danger, and adventure. Now a writer of romantic thrillers, she lives in the Bay Area, California with her clever-enough-to-be-a-spy husband and their aptly named rescue cat, Dash.
Read more at PM Kavanaugh’s site.
