by Kells, India
Sasha grabbed the two pieces that landed on her shirt and passed them on to Isabel. “Am I the only grown up here? Let me remind you that we invaded Isabel’s apartment without her authorization, so no food fights.”
Deva took another sip of her wine and winked at Isabel. “We need to get our fun where we can because it’s dangerous enough to be part of the infamous bastards’ lives.”
“Bastards?” The words seemed so harsh in Isabel’s ears.
Deva and Zoe nodded. “It’s how the guys refer to themselves in private. Well, most of them, because I don’t know Sam that well.”
“I don’t know if I like that. They are good men.”
Gabrielle patted her thigh. “Don’t worry. They may use the word, but they are kind of proud of it. Anything to dissociate themselves from Finch. A word to unite them as they all have different reasons to bring him down.”
Isabel wondered what Kai’s reason was.
“Oh, oh! I see her wheels turning.” Deva’s teasing brought Isabel’s thoughts back into the room.
“What?”
“You are asking yourself what their reasons are, because, and I quote, they are ‘good men’.”
Zoe acquiesced. “They are good men. Deep down. But I must say that Kai and Liam are much friendlier and easygoing, which is a bonus. I’d say that even though I wouldn’t change my husband one bit. It’s not a subject we’ve discussed with them, but we are brilliant women, and can work out the puzzle by ourselves. Lazarus wants him taken down because he’s a threat to humanity and to his family. Same with Liam. Those two have honor branded on their souls. Sam is still a mystery. Archer’s motive is because Finch directly threatened my life. Archer didn’t know about Finch’s existence before. As for Aleksei, it’s because he killed his mother when Aleksei was a child.”
“And Kai?” The words were out before Isabel could stop herself.
All the women looked at each other, but it was Deva who replied. “He never told you? We had the impression that you knew each other.”
Gabrielle quietly looked at her but stayed mum.
Isabel took a deep breath before answering. “It’s complicated. We knew each other a long time ago, and never discussed our families. It’s been almost fifteen years until we saw each other again last week. We didn’t part on good terms.”
The women nodded in silence.
“The reason Kai wants Finch dead is related to his career in the military.” Sasha answered in a soft voice, but Isabel noticed that the other women in the room were surprised by the revelation.
Deva was the first to react. “He told you?”
Sasha shrugged. “It was a casual conversation I had with him. I’ve covered war zones as a doctor, and he as a soldier. We talked about that. He told me about a mission that had gone wrong, killing most of his unit. During the investigation, they discovered that the mission had been some sort of cover-up, with Finch pulling the strings in the background to protect his assets. He vowed to his fallen friends to avenge them somehow, and that’s when he left the military to join Lazarus’s crusade.”
Isabel’s heart ached for him, for his loss, for what he had to endure and sacrificed. It again confirmed the kind of man he was. A new feeling was the pinch of rising jealousy she felt at Sasha’s words. It took effort for her to smile and let go of it. After all, the man wasn’t hers. “I’m glad Kai found a friend in you, Sasha. He has a heart of gold and should be surrounded by people who value him.”
Avoiding further eye contact, Isabel grabbed some pretzels and started to eat. She had too much alcohol in her weakened system as it was, it was making her melancholy and that wasn’t fun. And even more frightening, she felt compelled to reveal things that might cause more damage than good.
“He told me about you too.” The doctor’s soft voice sent a cold chill down Isabel’s spine. “I told him that he shouldn’t only focus on revenge because he would end up empty-handed once this was over. He said that he’d already had his chance at a happily ever after, and that it was someone he couldn’t keep. Who disappeared on him. You are that woman.”
The pretzel turned to paste in her mouth, and she forced down the bite with a big gulp of wine. Maybe two. Liquid courage was always good after all. “Listen, I know I’m an outsider and you protect your own. Kai Jones is an amazing man, and I’m not here to mess with what Sasha is building with him. I sincerely never thought I would see him again, let alone work with him. I assure you that when I left him, I had good reasons. It was for his own good.”
Deva waved. almost jumping to her feet and turned to her cousin. “Wait a minute! Are you involved with Kai, Sasha?”
Sasha sputtered and shook her head as if her life depended on it. “Hell, no! We had friendly conversations, and that’s it. Don’t start spreading rumors, damn it!”
“I thought you had something with Oz, Sasha.” At Gabrielle’s pronouncement, the entire assembly gasped. Isabel looked around, not sure what was happening.
Sasha turned white as a sheet and then red as a beet. “No! No! I want to punch the man, not kiss him. He’s been a controlling pain since I met him, and even worse since the kidnapping.”
Isabel turned sharply toward the doctor. “You’ve been kidnapped?”
Sasha sighed. “Not something I really want to talk about.”
But Deva jumped in. “It’s a long story but Sasha was kidnapped when she helped Deva and Aleksei ward off an attack from a rival gang controlled by Finch.”
Zoe, who had remained silent over the last minutes, coughed. “Interesting conversation, but bottom line, we’ve been diverted from a much more interesting conversation. Why did Isabel leave Kai so suddenly all those years ago? What possible reason would be good enough?”
Isabel turned to Gabrielle who remained silent. Her friend had an impenetrable gaze that meant only one thing; it was up to her. She was the one to decide what to do next. Sorrow twisted her heart in the worst way, but she couldn’t carry this load until the end of time; she would need to own it.
“Six months before I met Kai in Hawaii, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.” Isabel was glad that no one interrupted her, because she didn’t know if she would be able to get it out. “My dad abandoned my mother when she was pregnant with me, so it has been only the two of us. She worked her ass off so I could be fed and clothed and go to school. It was an uphill battle, but I was ready to fight with her. We were a team. My ultimate goal was to get my MBA, so I did everything in my power to achieve that. I wasn’t distracted by anything, not even boys. It’s one of the reasons I remained a virgin for so long. But when we got the diagnosis…” Isabel shook her head at the memory, as vividly painful as the day it happened. “My mother begged me to stay in school, but we needed money. Lots of it. The doctors weren’t that optimistic, but we had to try. I had to do it; otherwise, I would have regretted it for the rest of my life. School would still be there after my mom was healthy again.
“I started accepting any and every job I could get my hands on. I especially liked working evenings and nights because I would visit my mom during the day. Unfortunately, I didn’t make enough money. I needed more.
“My mother would have killed me from her hospital bed if I ever did anything illegal, so that was a route I couldn’t take. However, I believe that perseverance can yield unexpected results. And it did, in the most surprising way. Not only did I get a legal, contractual job, but if I was as good as I promised, I would get permanent employment. And a miracle happened when my boss offered to pay me upfront so my mother could be taken care of when I was away on an assignment in Hawaii. Leaving her was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done because I had to leave for a month. My mom was so great, she even convinced me to take a few weeks off as the treatments weren’t starting right away to enjoy Hawaii before I started to work. That’s when I met Kai.”
For a moment she stayed silent as the memory of him emerging from the sea materialized in her mind.
“You think Kai is kin
d, smart, and funny… To me he is so much more. For the first time in my life I could relax with someone, share my thoughts, not be judged. I felt loved. He gave me wings. It was natural for me to give him my virginity, even if I never told him that. I was way too shy and embarrassed. For the first time in my life I had a break, a pause where I only existed as Isabel. Not the daughter, not the student, not the hard-working employee. I was being selfish with him. I was only his. Unfortunately, the dream had to come to an end. When Kai said he loved me, that he wanted me to wait for him while he joined the Army, for the first time I wished I wasn’t Isabel and duty-bound, but a woman who deserved his love. I didn’t tell him that I had to go, because he would have begged me to stay, asked me why I had to leave, and I wanted him to have an image of me that was true. So one morning, when he went grocery shopping, I kissed him as always, smiled while hiding my tears, and waved at him as he left in his beat-up Jeep, knowing I would never see him again, and that when he came back, he would hate me for leaving.”
Isabel took some more wine, but she doubted any amount of wine would ever wash away the sorrow that clogged her throat. “I did my contract, and as I was amazingly good at what I did, I was offered a very lucrative job. It paid my mom’s medical bills, and even more, it allowed me to finally get my MBA and follow my dream here in Chicago. It has been a winding, tortuous road, but the decisions were easy. It was going through it that was the greatest challenge of all.”
Gabrielle didn’t say a word, but simply put her hand on hers, squeezing gently.
Sasha touched her shoulder, offering her a supporting smile. Deva and Zoe inched closer and reached for her too. Isabel thought at first that this show of support would turn her into a puddle of tears, but was astonished that it had quite the opposite effect. Calmness descended upon her, and for the first time in a long time, she felt appeased.
The good doctor was the first one to break the fragile harmony. “May I ask you a question, Isabel?”
Nodding, Isabel knew what she was going to ask. “Please, call me Izzy.”
“Izzy, what was the contract, the one that if Kai had known about, it would have changed his opinion of you?”
One by one, Isabel looked at the women around her before lifting her chin and answering. “It was a contract for me to become a porn star.”
Chapter Thirteen
As he heard the words, Kai froze in the concealed entrance of Isabel’s apartment, Liam on his heels. It hadn’t been his intention to eavesdrop, but when the discussion had turned to the reason why she had left him all those years ago, he became entranced, his mind going blank. He knew it wasn’t right, she was confiding in the women around her and not him, but there was no way in hell he didn’t want to find out. Countless times he had imagined the best and worst, but this revelation was the most unexpected of all. His brain was like a frozen computer, unable to process the information.
Zoe was the first to speak. “Whoa. Really? That’s so freaking incredible. I have so many questions! What was your name?”
He heard the woman laughing at Zoe’s excited tone until Isabel spoke again. Her voice, low at first, took a more assured tone. “My mom found my stage name and called me Mercury Heat.”
Liam gasped behind him and lowered his voice. “I knew I had seen her face somewhere! But she had long purple hair in the videos.”
Kai elbowed him hard. He wanted to do much more, but preferred to stay silent for the moment. Spying on the women wouldn’t go down well, but he finally had the opportunity to have some answers to his questions.
Movement behind him drew his attention as Liam tensed, both of them reaching for their guns when he saw Lazarus and Aleksei standing on the other side of the entry. Liam told them to stay quiet. They both reached for their weapons in preparation, but Liam gestured for them to stand down.
“What’s going on?” Lazarus whispered.
Liam heard the worry in his voice. “We’ve just learned that Isabel was Mercury Heat.” Liam’s voice had a gossipy tone that put Kai’s nerves on end.
Aleksei emitted a low whistle, but Lazarus’s silence was telling, meaning Kai was going to have a conversation with his older brother.
“We can’t stay here. We can’t spy on them like this. And there is no way in hell that Gabrielle doesn’t know you are here. Fuck, that we’re all here right now.”
Kai cursed in his head. Lazarus was right. Gabrielle knew he was coming back today to discuss the details of Isabel’s return to work. This was a setup.
Pushing the door open, Kai stumbled into the apartment first, cutting short the conversation among the women. His eyes zeroed in on Gabrielle who looked right back at him. There was his confirmation; he’d been played and so had Isabel.
Gabrielle got up and came toward him. Kai’s fists clenched a few times. The tension in the room spiked. Aleksei and Liam went to stand between them and the women, Lazarus lurked close. Kai had no intention of punching the woman, but he certainly would let everybody know the kind of woman she really was.
“You have a problem with me, Jones?”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Isabel come to her feet followed by Deva, Zoe, and Sasha, but couldn’t make himself look at her yet, he was still sorting through a storm of volatile feelings.
“The problem I have is how you tricked Izzy into revealing her secrets to me without her knowing. What kind of friend are you?”
Gabrielle gave him a sunny smile and crossed her arms. “Is that so? And what kind of friend am I?”
Before he took another step, Lazarus stepped in front of him. From the sound Gabrielle made, she didn’t agree with his protection. “Brother, I’m the one who knew and didn’t tell you. If you need to retaliate, I’m the one to target.”
“Oh for goodness sake, nobody hits anybody today!” Lazarus’s dark beard was replaced by Sasha’s windblown dark blond head in his line of vision. With surprising strength, she put some space between the men, one hand on each of their chests. “I swear it was easier to work in a war-torn zone than with you all. Stand down.”
“Sasha…” Lazarus frowned at the doctor, but she was clearly having none of it. The way she was standing in front of him, not giving him an inch, amused Kai, and somehow, that single action relaxed him again. Anger and resentment weren’t his natural state, but that didn’t mean that returning to a peaceful state of mind wouldn’t be the challenge of his life now that he knew the reason Isabel had left him.
Gathering all the courage in him, Kai lifted his head and looked directly at Isabel. “Are you still set on returning to work tomorrow?”
She looked so pale, stood so straight, it broke his heart, but this wasn’t the time. He was a powder keg and nothing good could come out of him if he listened to his emotions. He would have that word with Gabrielle for sure, without a witness though.
“Yes, I still have to make the call to Finch, but that was the plan.”
Kai nodded. “The plan was for me to stay tonight. I’ve brought my stuff and everything. But it’s up to you.”
For a long moment, Kai fell in the shimmering blue of her eyes, and for the first time since he’d recognized her in that pub, understood the shadows that lurked there.
“Yes, you are welcome to stay.”
With that, Kai turned to Sasha who was still playing the referee. “I need to speak to Lazarus about some key security points for tomorrow.”
Frowning, she poked him hard in the chest. “I’d better not have to sew either of you up. I’m in Chicago on vacation. I’m leaving soon and I don’t want to bust my quota of blood and gore before I even take off.”
Having made her point, Sasha grabbed her bag, but Lazarus blocked her way to the door. “You have your next assignment?”
“Yeah, that’s what I do. I’ll go now, I need sleep.”
“We’ll drive you back. It’s not safe at this hour.”
Evading him, she opened the door. “I work in the worst, most violent places in the world, I think I can handle Ch
icago at night. Thanks for the wine, Izzy. See you later, guys.”
Lazarus cursed as the others made a quick exit as well. It took a few heartbeats for him to focus again. “I’ll wrangle the electronics and car info and let you know tomorrow morning. Keep your phone close. Good night, Isabel.”
The silence that followed was deafening and from the way the woman standing twelve feet away fidgeted, twisting her fingers, he wasn’t the only one affected by it, or wanting to break it as quickly as possible.
“I don’t think it’s safe to go out, but Gabrielle and Liam brought some food.”
“If you remember, I’m not much of a cook. My skills are limited to grilling fish.”
Her lips stretched into a thin smile. “We should stick to reheating take-out then.”
“How are you feeling? Are you still on the pain meds?”
“It’s not as bad. I will be able to function through it. It’s only physical pain after all.”
Kai scrambled to find another safe topic, any topic, but his mind reverted back to what he had heard. His grandma had always told him that any untreated wound always festered, so there was only one thing to do. “Why Mercury Heat?”
The sudden change of direction seemed to surprise Isabel, but she quickly steadied herself. “Heat was my Mom’s idea.”
“Your Mom knows what you did?”
“When I was offered the job, I told my mother. She’s the only family I have. Before I went to see her, I built my plan, told her about my intentions, the contract, how much money I would get, and why I wanted to do it. I couldn’t lose her. I didn’t have a job that could pay enough to cover the medical costs, I hadn’t started a career yet. The only thing I had was my body. When I told her, I knew it tore at her, but without other options, we both made the decision to face it together, to be smart about it. We treated it like a business plan with a beginning and an end. It helped.”
