by Karin Harlow
“Mama, Mama!”
Nikko stood frozen to the earth. A maelstrom of emotions heaved in his chest with such ferocity he could barely draw a breath. Marisol was alive, and not more than twenty feet from him. He could not take his eyes off the beautiful little girl who looked so much like her mother but had his deep blue eyes. Her laughter was like magic; her sweet scent of sunshine and animal crackers would forever be burned into his memory. His daughter.
Moist heat stung his eyes. He tried to swallow but could not. When Selena turned with the smiling girl in her arms and looked at Nikko, his legs trembled.
Marisol was alive.
He took a step toward them, then another and another, until he found himself reaching out for her. Selena moved into him, handing him the small, squirming body. The moment he touched her, the moisture in his eyes spilled over, blurring his vision. When the small arms wrapped around his neck and she pressed her cheek to his, his heart exploded with emotion.
“Marisol,” he breathed, hugging her to him.
She hugged him as tightly. “Daddy,” she said as if they had known each other all their lives.
It all came crashing down around him, his love, longing, and fury at his daughter’s mother for keeping such a precious gift from him. As those emotions clogged his chest, another one emerged: fear. Fear of losing this precious child of his.
He opened his eyes and glared hard at Selena, who stood silently crying beside them. His arms tightened.
“Oww!” Marisol cried, squirming in his arms.
Nikko loosened his hold and kissed the top of her head. “My apologies, Marisol, I am just so happy to meet you.” He swung her around on his hip as if he had been doing it for years. “We have a lot of catching up to do. And Mama and I have to have a very long talk.”
Marisol pulled back and smiled at him, her dimples captivating him. “Are we going to live together now?”
“We have a lot to work out, but I promise you this much, sweetheart, you and Daddy will be spending a lot of time together.”
“With Mama.” It wasn’t a question. The little girl had a mind of her own at eight. It shouldn’t have surprised him. She was as willful as her mother.
Sister Agnes approached, staring at Nikko warily. “It’s okay, Sister,” Selena said, “this is John—Nikko, Marisol’s father.”
Sister Agnes nodded and extended her arms to Marisol. Nikko resisted, and Marisol grunted and turned away from the nun, quite content where she was. Nikko smiled and whispered in her ear, “That’s my girl.”
The padre reemerged from the church and gave Nikko the same unsettled look as the nun. “Father Ken, this is Nikko, Marisol’s father.”
The padre looked at Selena, then Marisol, then Nikko. He smiled and extended his hand. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you. Selena and Marisol speak of you often.” Nikko shook the priest’s hand, but looked at Selena. She just shrugged. In that moment, he noticed the stress lines on her face. She was pale and looked as if she had dropped weight in the last few days.
“I want to go to the fair,” Marisol announced.
“That is up to your parents,” Sister Agnes said.
“That’s not a good idea,” Selena said.
“Can we go?” Marisol sweetly asked, hugging Nikko tighter as she pressed her face to his and smiled. “Please.”
“We’ll see,” he said, smiling, and realizing at that moment he would never deny his daughter a thing. In that instant, he also realized with crystal clarity why Selena had done what she’d done. Not that he agreed with her methods, not that he would have done the same. But he understood the fierce need to protect his child. And the woman he had loved. He would kill for them then. He would kill for them now.
Hours later, Marisol slept soundly in her bed next to Sister Agnes’s. Nikko knelt down beside her and smoothed a damp curl from her cheek. “Sweet dreams, angel,” he softly said. “Daddy loves you.” He kissed her on the cheek and inhaled her sweet scent again, grateful for the last few hours. They had been a whirlwind of emotions and catching up. His overwhelming love for his daughter and his need to savor every second with her had put his anger at her mother on hold. But now … As he rose, his gaze locked with Selena’s as she stood quietly at the doorway. Leaving the room quietly, shutting the door behind him, he said, “Tell me everything, Selena, and don’t leave out one part.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
An elderly nun led Selena and Nikko to a small guest room down the hall from where their daughter slept. The stuffy space had a narrow bed pushed against the wall in a corner, a nightstand with a lamp, and a coatrack.
Selena sank down on the edge of the bed.
If she could, she would curl up and sleep for a decade. But so much more had to be done before she could close her eyes and sleep with no fear of the future.
Her eyes burned from a river of tears. Watching Marisol and Nikko together for the past few hours had been an emotional avalanche. Her heart ached with so much bittersweet pain she doubted she would ever recover.
“Start with your mother and father and go forward,” Nikko softly said.
Selena took a deep breath and nodded. She owed him answers and more. “When my mother was just a teenager, my father, Paymon, a daemon—a Prince of Hell—took a fancy to her. He invaded her dreams night after night. In those dreams, he seduced her. When she resisted him, he raped her. He returned repeatedly. Sometime later, she gave birth to me in a church. I was immediately baptized. That’s why, unlike other daemons, I can withstand being on consecrated ground. Any other daemon would burst into flames. I believe, too, it is why I am immune to the fear of water.” Selena smiled bitterly. “I remember when I was little and taking my first Holy Communion, I was sure the priest’s finger would catch fire when he placed the host on my tongue. Unfortunately for you, that didn’t happen.”
She thought she saw Nikko’s gaze flicker for an instant, but other than that, his expression remained hard.
“Paymon was charming, suave, too handsome for words. My mother hated him but could not resist him. He never left her alone for long. In his own way, he was as possessed by her as she by him. When she became pregnant a second time by him, she began to lose her grip on sanity. She’d mumble how she’d gotten lucky with me … always with an added So far. … But she was worried. What were the chances she’d bear two children by the devil that wouldn’t turn out to be pure evil? When she couldn’t take it any longer, she jumped from her apartment window. I later learned I would have had a sister. I was eighteen when they died.” Against Selena’s will, her voice cracked.
“I’m sorry,” Nikko softly said.
Selena shook her head. “Don’t be. She was finally out of her misery. And my sister was better off never having to live with the curse of her parentage.”
“Unlike you?” Nikko asked softly.
Selena ignored his question. “I swore that day I’d hunt the bastard down and kill him. And so I shall.”
A prolonged silence dragged by and she saw Nikko clench his fists. Probably to keep himself from strangling the abomination in front of him.
“What did he do when your mother killed herself?”
Selena flinched when he finally spoke, his voice tight. Controlled. “He came after me. But I was stronger-willed than my mother. And smarter. My mother taught me how to shut off my mind when I slept, how to mentally protect myself and keep predators like my father out. I forced him from my thoughts, and he couldn’t find me. Then I took off.” She smiled. “And I met you.”
“Is that why you were here? Hiding from your father?”
“Yes, my mother told me to always stay close to consecrated ground. She also told me of daemons’ aversion to water. What better place to be than on an island named after a mighty archangel? It’s why I chose to hide Marisol here. Paymon never found me here. He won’t find her.”
“If this island afforded you so much protection, why did you leave it to come with me to Atlanta?”
She turned
her gaze away. “You know why.”
“Because you loved me?” he queried softly.
She nodded. “With all my heart. I couldn’t bear the thought of not being with you.” She looked back at him. “We were so damn good together. I loved how you loved me. How you made me laugh. Made me feel normal. You never judged me, you just let me be me. I loved you first for that.” She looked down at her hands, then back at his intense stare.
“I would have followed you to the ends of the earth. I had had no contact for almost three years with anything remotely daemon, I thought I was free of him. But I was wrong. When I got pregnant, it was as if I’d sent up a flare. He found me in a dream and demanded Marisol’s soul for yours and mine. I refused. I thought our love was strong enough to beat him.”
“Your faith didn’t last very long.”
“Things started to happen to you.”
Nikko shook his head. “Nothing happened to me.”
“Yes, it did! Remember the night you worked that undercover sting? What happened, Johnny? You were shot! My father orchestrated that! He came to me and taunted me with what he had done! And while you were in the hospital, they gave you the wrong medication and it nearly killed you. Do you think that was an accident? And then—”
She choked on her emotions. “I started bleeding.” She dropped her head into her hands. “It was his doing. He would have killed you just like he killed my mother! I couldn’t bear the thought, so I did what I had to do.” She looked up at him through damp eyes. “I went to the doctor and had Marisol early. By cesarean section. No one knew. I immediately brought her here to St. Michael’s, and then I came to you. I—I had to do something you would never forgive me for. I thought if I pushed you away, my father would leave you alone. So I lied to you about Marisol, and you turned on me!” Bitterness sprang up within her. And anger. “What if what I told you had been the truth, that I was afraid of being a mother? That I didn’t love you? That gave you the right to attack me? You tried to kill me, for God’s sake, and almost did! I’m a little pissed off about that, Nikko!”
She raked her fingers through her long hair, wincing at the pull of the tangles. She shook off the pain and looked hard at him and collected herself. “But I forgave you a long time ago. You’re alive, Marisol is safe. It was what I wanted above everything else.”
Nikko sat down beside her, though he didn’t touch her. For a long, uneven moment, he stared at her. His face gave nothing away. No anger, no hate, no understanding, and certainly no love. “Tell me about Balderama.”
She couldn’t blame him for playing it cool. “Los Cuatro was the one thing in my mother’s life that she had control of. It gave her a profound sense of purpose. Señor Balderama was always there to pick up the pieces after my father did his damage. He was like a father to me in many ways. It was he who found me unconscious on the floor after you attempted to kill me. It was he who made my past go away so that I could start over.”
“You would have let me rot in prison.” His eyes flared red, his fangs just noticeable. Yet she was not afraid. This Nikko she could handle; it was the quiet one she feared.
“You’re wrong. I would have come forward. At the time, I didn’t know how to do it and not alert my father. And whether you believe me or not, at the time you were safer in jail than out on the streets. As I was getting my bearings, I heard you had escaped, and then after Señor exhausted all of his connections searching for you and came up empty, I thought you were dead or had left the country. I had no idea what had happened to you—I still don’t. I just know I was shocked to see you on that mountainside in Kyrgyzstan. I also knew there was no way I was going to let you die there.”
“What do you do for Balderama?”
“Mostly reconnaissance, sometimes cleanup.”
“Assassinations?”
“I think of it as exterminating vermin.”
“Just because he says they’re vermin?”
“Since I also consider cartel leaders vermin, then yes. But I’m not blind. I know who is who and what is what. The people love it when I disperse the dearly departed’s cash and coin in the village streets.”
“You’re a regular Robin Hood,” he remarked cynically.
“More like a black widow who shares.”
“Why does he want the cask?”
“I told you, for the same reasons as you.”
“And you believe that?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Why not let us do all the heavy lifting? You know it will be safely stored on US soil where no third party can touch it. Where does your Señor plan to store it? Some remote island? With what—a security system that can be breached by a few dozen mercs?”
Everything he said made sense. Why not move aside and allow the United States to do exactly what Nikko suggested?
He seized on Selena’s hesitation. “Ah, so you agree?”
“In theory, but how do I know you work for the US government? Señor will want proof.”
“I have never lied to you, Selena. But if it will make you feel better, I’ll be happy to have the president vouch for me.”
“The president of the United States?”
Nikko nodded. “The president of the United States.”
She sat back in the corner, using the wall for support, and contemplated what he’d said. “If the president of the United States can vouch for you, it makes perfect sense to stand back, especially since we know that louse Chávez had an inside track to the cask. It was his men you heard speaking Spanish out there. He had a deal with Noslov. …”
“And?”
She exhaled loudly. “Apparently there were others who made him a better offer.”
“Who else?”
Selena swallowed hard. The moment of truth. How did she tell him the devil had a hand in this? “The daemon king, Apollyon, wants to threaten the Order with it.”
“The Order?”
“The group that controls all immortals. The daemons think if they threaten humanity with a dirty bomb, Rurik will hand over control of the Order to Apollyon.”
“For what purpose?”
“The daemons are tired of being told what they can and can’t do. The truce among the factions is tenuous at best. I don’t understand it all, but I do know since the treaty was signed several decades ago, there has been relative peace.”
“Why haven’t you gone to this Order with this information?”
She sat forward. “Because I’ve been killing daemons, a huge no-no, and extracting blood from more than a few not-so-willing vampires and other immortals, another huge no-no.”
“The Rev?”
“Yes. I, um, do it in exchange for information on my father and, more important, the locations of Hellkeepers.”
“To get the stones.”
“Which give me the power I’ll need to end my father’s existence.”
Nikko shook his head and looked at her with such an odd expression she didn’t know what to make of it.
“What?”
“You. Marisol. This entire scenario amazes me in a mixed-up, terrifying way. I don’t know how to process it all.”
“Don’t try, just go with it. Otherwise you’ll drive yourself crazy.”
“All this time I have hated you with such a vengeance all I wanted to do was kill you again. For eight years I thought you and Marisol were dead. I have walked this earth a hollow, broken man. Now everything is different. I don’t know what to feel anymore.”
Compassion and the need to soothe away this man’s pain took hold of Selena. Tentatively, she reached out a hand to him. He stared at it, not moving a muscle. When he didn’t respond, she slid her hand over his and softly said, “I hope one day you can forgive me.”
His clear, blue eyes looked deep into her soul. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Selena and Nikko had fallen into an exhausted sleep on opposite sides of the narrow bed. Somehow, sometime in the night, they met in the middle
. His arms had wrapped around her. Her head had tucked under his chin. He hadn’t consciously woken until her body began to twitch and tremble restlessly in his arms.
He knew so little about her, how she’d lived the past eight years, yet he knew so much, too.
How she’d made a safe life for Marisol. And the emotional toll it had taken on her. Her tireless efforts to hunt down and kill Hellkeepers so that she could destroy the thing that threatened their daughter’s life. How she’d lived with the lie she’d created, and the guilt she must bear because of it. Never knowing if her child really was safe, but having no choice but to make it all work.
And now she was reliving the nightmare that had become her life.
Maybe his life, too?
Selena’s trembling body quieted in his arms. He sat back against the wall, bringing her with him, and wondered where it would end.
He’d missed eight years of his daughter’s life. His lifestyle was not conducive to any type of family life. No L.O.S.T. operative had a family. Cassidy was the only one in a relationship. It was allowed only because Cross knew so much and was an asset. How was Nikko supposed to juggle his work and his daughter? Whom could he trust other than Selena to care for Marisol when he could not? He’d be damned if he’d be one of those absentee fathers; Nikko would be a part of his daughter’s life. He’d give anything to get the last eight years back. But they were gone. So was any chance of normalcy.
And what about Selena?
He didn’t want to feel anything for her, not even the hatred that had consumed him for so long. He accepted why she’d done what she had done, but he did not, could not, forgive her for the pain he had endured. Not only the tragedy of losing a child, but also the self-loathing and self-hatred that came from thinking he had actually killed the woman he loved in a fit of anger. It had molded him into the hard-as-nails, cold-as-ice L.O.S.T. operative Nikko Cruz. There was no going back.
It was who he was now. Who he would always be. Johnny Cicone had died the day he thought he killed Selena Guerrero.
