by Bethany-Kris
Yep.
All in all, should be an easy job.
• • •
Feeling like he might finally have enough miles put between him and the city of Kuta to be considered safe, or as close as he was ever going to get, Renzo pulled the black mask from his face. He’d have to put it on again before transferring his ward at the next checkpoint to make sure his face wasn’t seen, but he would deal with that when the time came. All things The League demanded. He’d also like to yank off the goddamn bulletproof vest that felt a little too tight around his chest, but shit …
One thing at a time.
The thumping in the back of Renzo’s vehicle had finally come to a stop but seeing as how he was so fucking exhausted and within three hours the sun would be high in the sky, it might be the fact that his brain had just shut off and wasn’t hearing anything.
But who was he to say?
The Bluetooth in the car beeped through the speakers as the call he had been trying to make for the last thirty minutes—man, there was some shitty service in different parts of the island, unfortunately—finally picked up on the other end.
“Is it done?”
That’s all Cree asked.
Renzo let out a slow breath, his gaze darting to the rear-view mirror to check the road behind him. There, the second black car in his team traveled terribly close to his bumper. Not that he found that problematic, seeing as he had told them to follow that close.
“Yeah,” he finally said, “or mostly. Traveling the kid to the boat now—it’ll take him off the island and then they’ll get him to the private jet out of—”
“Yeah, I know. No problems?”
“Not particularly. Bunch of guns came out when we went into the spot where he was staying with the gang. Man …”
“What?”
“He’s a kid, Cree. Just—”
“A bit younger than I normally train, yes.”
Renzo cleared his throat. “He seemed scared.”
“He should be.”
Right.
That couldn’t be forgotten.
“Everything from here should be standard, yes?” Cree asked.
“By all accounts, the hard part of this is done.”
“Mmhmm, well, the boy’s father called Dare earlier. Said to make sure we told his son—Taman, in case you forgot—that this is for the best.”
Renzo didn’t believe that for a second. Having been the person that boy was currently in the trunk of his car, taken from a bad situation and put into the care of The League, then trained to become this … thing. This person—an assassin who killed for a dollar amount—was not always the best thing, but now wasn’t the time to argue about it, honesty.
He had better things to do.
Places to be after he left here.
Like back with his wife.
“I’ll call you when I hand the boy off at the next checkpoint,” Renzo said dryly.
“You sound—”
“Goodbye, Cree.”
He ended the call before the other man could respond.
It didn’t make a difference that Renzo ended the call so he wouldn’t have to keep talking about the situation with the boy in the back of his trunk. The forty-five minutes that he had to drive to the drop-off point were more than enough time for him to go over every last detail that bothered him. Or rather, made him nervous for the kid.
Once he got to The League, Ren knew what would happen and how it was going to go from there. Nothing about this was easy. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be someone who delivered someone to that fate, either.
Oh, well, he thought, staring up at an inky sky while the road came a little faster at his vehicle. You’re almost back home with your wife.
Even if Bali wasn’t home.
Nor was that vacation house.
Lucia, though?
Well, wherever she was, that’s where his home would be.
He just wanted to get back there.
FIFTEEN
When Renzo was home—not out on a job somewhere in the world—it was rare that Lucia woke up alone. And by rare, she meant it literally never happened. However, that last morning in Bali, when she blinked awake in the soft sheets, the first thing she realized was how empty the bed felt next to her. Sure enough, when she turned to check, Renzo’s warm body wasn’t next to hers. By the looks of the smoothed sheets, he hadn’t been there most of the night.
She took a minute.
Then, two.
Just to blink away the sleepiness in her eyes and the sensation of dreams still lingering in her mind. She took in her surroundings, stretched out under the white sheets, and breathed in the island air that floated in with the breeze from the window that had been left open the night before next to the bed.
Still, she kept looking to Ren’s side of the bed and how empty it seemed without him being there to wake up with her in the morning. She didn’t like that at all, so as much as she wanted to stay right there in the comfortable bed and maybe get another hour of sleep before she had to start packing to leave the island, she got up and went in search of her husband. After, of course, she made a pitstop in the bathroom to take care of her morning business and splash her face with some cold water to wake her up even more.
Lucia didn’t even bother to take the time to change into something other than the over-sized T-shirt of Renzo’s that she’d stolen the day before to sleep in. There was something she loved about stealing his clothes to wear when she could—they smelled like him, kept her warm just because, and gave her a sense of home like nothing else but him could do. Sometimes, she swore he left her a T-shirt he’d worn for a day at the bottom of their bed right before he left for a job, just so that she would have a fresh one while he was gone.
It didn’t take Lucia long to find her husband on the back terrace, and she wasn’t at all surprised that’s where he’d gone. It seemed to be his favorite spot in the whole house, considering the many things he found to do back here between the pool, the forest he liked to explore, and the many sitting areas.
Including the one he currently used.
A square hammock attached to large wooden beams stretched out from the side of the terrace, hanging over … well, nothing but air, really. Thirty feet down below was the lush greenery of the forest and foliage, but the hammock itself simply hung out into the air, giving the person lying in it the appearance and sensation of free floating.
And that’s where her husband rested.
With an arm flung over his face, turned half on his back and half on his side, one might think he was sleeping because of the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. Lucia knew better, though, because she saw that soft smile curving his lower lip beneath his arm. His grin grew a little wider as she approached him, letting her know he was awake despite his position. She couldn’t help but wonder what about this hammock was more comfortable than sleeping in bed with her.
Not that she was offended.
Ren had strange ways sometimes, and she had simply become accustomed to rolling with the punches, so to speak. He occasionally still slept in a bathtub when shit was extra stressful, or he had something on his mind that he didn’t really want to talk about.
Eventually, she would find him wherever he hid away, and he’d tell her all the shit keeping him quiet and inside his mind. She figured, if that’s what this was, then the same thing would happen. It was something they did time and time again—his thing—and she never complained about it one way or another. That was something she’d learned about love a long time ago, and she thanked Renzo for teaching her that, too.
You had to love the whole person.
Oddities and flaws included.
“Morning,” she said, coming to stand next to the hammock. “The bed wasn’t good enough for you last night or what?”
A chuckle echoed from the man in the hammock. “If only, babe.”
“Hmm?”
Finally, he pulled his arm away from his face to give her a better view of h
im. He grinned up at her, and Lucia couldn’t help but smile back at him. His arms opened to her, inviting and far too tempting for her own good. And damn … didn’t he look so fucking good below her with that sexy grin, his fingers wiggling to urge her forward? He was like her own personal little devil sitting on her shoulder, whispering about sin and how good it would be.
“Come here, would you?” he asked.
How could she say no to that?
Well …
She couldn’t.
Lucia kneeled down before climbing into the hammock and Renzo’s waiting embrace. She didn’t typically like the sensation of floating that the hammock provided, but while she was wrapped in his arms, nothing else mattered but this right here. The world went away, and so did the rest of the stresses and problems she faced.
She snuggled against his chest, burying her face into his warm scent. The black T-shirt he wore wasn’t what he had gone to bed in the night before, and neither were the black jeans that rubbed against her bare thighs. She didn’t bother to ask about those things because for one, she didn’t care, as long as he was holding onto her, and for two … well, sometimes it was better not to ask when it came to Renzo.
She never knew what the answer might be.
“I wanted to be in bed with you,” he said, his words whispering along her hair after he’d tucked her head into the crook of his neck, “but you know how wants go, huh?”
“No, I usually get what I want, actually.”
Renzo’s chuckles echoed all around them. A dark, lovely sound that affected Lucia in the best way, and even overtook the noise of the forest and waterfall that usually gave them a nice soundtrack to relax to when they were outside. She liked the sound of him far more. She always would.
“I’m trying to tell you something here, Lucia.”
She tipped her head up, perfectly happy to remain hidden from the world while she used Renzo to do it, but some things were just more important than what she wanted. “And what’s that, exactly?”
“I had a job last night.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Just what I said, babe,” he replied.
“And you didn’t tell me? I thought Bali was—”
“Just a vacation, and it was. Still is. It was a last-minute thing,” he said with a sigh, “and given how simple it seemed—I had it done in a night, and you didn’t even know the difference—I didn’t want to refuse when it was a favor, anyway.”
Huh.
“Still could have told me, Ren,” she whispered.
“Why, so you would worry all night that I might not come back?”
Lucia opened her mouth to deny that.
Renzo gave her a look that kept her quiet.
“I would have tried really hard not to do that,” she told him.
“Exactly, and that’s not what this trip was about.”
“Is that why you’re all in your feelings out here in the hammock, instead of waking me up in bed like you usually do?”
He smiled. “You know me too well.”
“Of course, I do, Ren.”
“Anyway,” he said, his words barely above a murmur as he tucked her back into his embrace and tightened his hold just enough to make her shiver, “I came back—like I promised.”
Right.
Yeah.
That’s always what mattered.
EPILOGUE
Two months later …
“Ren, what has you calling me? I thought you were taking a year sabbatical from—”
“I am,” Ren interjected before Dare could continue speaking, “and maybe even longer, but we’ll see how it goes.”
“Hmm, I hear people around here might actually miss your special brand of arrogance, but who am I to say?”
And they could keep missing him.
For now.
“Anyway, why the call?” Dare asked.
Ren dragged in a quick breath, settling the sudden nerves he felt making themselves known. It wasn’t like him to get nervous, but here he was. It also wasn’t like him to give a shit about some stranger—a kid from an island that he barely spoke more than a handful of words to—but here he was doing that fucking nonsense, too.
Maybe the kid reminded him of his brother.
Maybe it was something else …
Shit, maybe Ren just cared.
“The kid—Taman—from the Bali job a couple months back. Uh, how is he?”
Dare quieted for a minute.
Longer than Ren thought was normal.
“All things considered; he’s adapted well to training. Bit of an attitude, but we’re used to that here, and even you learned to tamper it after a while.”
“Is he out of phase one?”
The dark room.
The fucking tank.
“As of three weeks ago, yes,” Dare replied. “Something you want to tell me, or …?”
“No, I just—”
“Felt the need to check in. It happens.”
“Does it?”
Dare let out a slow breath. “Sometimes. You know, a long time ago, I thought I could raise men and women in this organization to be … individuals without feelings. It would be for the best, considering the work you all do.”
“And?”
“You’re all still very human.”
Dare almost sounded proud of that fact.
For whatever reason …
“I’ll probably check in on him again,” Renzo said.
“Feel free, and you’re always welcome to come to Vegas to check in directly, you know?”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
But no promises.
He only made those to his wife.
Speaking of which …
“Ren!”
Lucia’s shout from upstairs brought him back to reality, and far away from the phone call. He quickly said goodbye to Dare and hung up the phone. Setting the device to the counter, he didn’t even bother taking it with him as he headed for the upper portion of their brownstone. He figured his wife would be in their bedroom, as that’s where she liked to spend the majority of her morning when it was one that she didn’t have to go to the gallery first thing.
Instead, he found her in the bathroom.
With a pregnancy test.
Ren froze in the doorway.
Lucia smiled as she turned the test around for him to seeing the blinking word on the digital screen spelling out the one thing they’d been waiting for since that Bali trip. It hadn’t happened the first month, but they weren’t too worried about it, considering she’d just stopped her birth control. He didn’t know if it would happen on the second month, but apparently, they were just lucky enough that it had.
PREGNANT.
“Look, Ren,” she whispered.
“I see it—I see it, babe.”
Each word he spoke took him one step closer to her until he had her in his arms, and that test was hidden between them.
“Love you, love you so fucking much, Lucia.”
She hugged him back even tighter. “Love you, too, Ren.”
It was time to start another piece of their forever.
He couldn’t wait.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bethany-Kris is a Canadian author, lover of much, and mother to four young sons, two cats, and three dogs. A small town in Eastern Canada where she was born and raised is where she has always called home. With her boys under her feet, a snuggling cat, barking dogs, and a spouse calling over his shoulder, she is nearly always writing something ... when she can find the time.
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OTHER BOOKS
Renzo + Lucia
Privilege
Harbor
Contempt
Fore
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Duty
Vow
John + Siena
Loyalty
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Always
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Unruly
The Companion
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Guzzi Duet
Unraveled, Book One
Entangled, Book Two
DeLuca Duet
Waste of Worth: Part One
Worth of Waste: Part Two
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Inflict
Cozen
Captivated
Dishonored
Donati Bloodlines
Thin Lies
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The Complete Trilogy
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Antony
Lucian
Giovanni
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Legacy
A Very Marcello Christmas
The Complete Collection
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Where the Sun Hides
Where the Snow Falls
Where the Wind Whispers
Seasons: The Complete Seasons of Betrayal Series
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Breathless & Bloodstained
The Complete Series
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