She didn’t want to hear him confirm the terror churning inside her. “No. You’re wrong!” She made a clumsy falter to her feet. Lazaro stood with her, catching her by the arms before her sluggish legs could buckle beneath her. She didn’t have the strength to break out of his hold again. “You have to be wrong. I have to go back and find him. My father—”
Lazaro shook his head. His handsome face was grim with sympathy and something darker. “I’m sorry, Melena. The missile strike was a direct hit. There was nothing left.”
Some of her hysteria leaked out of her under his grave stare. She couldn’t hold back the grief, the tears. It all flooded out of her on an ugly, shuddering sob. And then her knees did give out, and she sank back down to the sandy floor of the cave.
Lazaro’s warm hands were still clasped on her arms as he crouched down in front of her. She couldn’t stop the wracking anguish, no more than she could keep herself from pitching forward into his arms, clinging to him as she wept.
He held her there, for how long, she didn’t know.
She only knew that after she didn’t think she could cry anymore, or hurt any worse, he was still holding her. Still keeping her upright when the rest of her world was crumbling all around her.
“Why?” she murmured into his bulky shoulder. “My God, he knew this. He was so afraid he was going to die soon. Who would do this to him? Why?”
Lazaro gently pulled her away from him, his ebony brows knit in a tight scowl. “Your father feared for his life?” Confusion flashed across his features, then settled into suspicion. “Damn it. Why didn’t he tell me this? We spoke several times before the meeting. He had plenty of opportunity to say something if he felt he was in danger in any way.”
Melena shook her head, heartsick. “He didn’t know who he could trust. He’d been having premonitions, sensing some kind of betrayal. He knew he was going to die soon. He didn’t know when, or where the betrayal would come from. He wasn’t sure of anyone anymore.”
“Not even me,” Lazaro replied. “Jesus Christ, why didn’t he cancel the damned meeting? He could have made any excuse.”
“I told him the same thing. But it was too important to him. And he didn’t know what would happen tonight. Neither one of us knew.” She thought back on the time she and her father spent with Paolo Turati. She had detected no hidden agendas. No duplicity or harmful intent in any one of them.
Lazaro was studying her in unreadable silence. “You need to tell me the truth, Melena. Beginning with why your father brought you with him tonight.”
She gave him a weak nod. There was no more reason for her to keep it from him. Her father was gone. He had nothing left to lose if word of his paranoia became public. Melena no longer needed to protect him. “I’ve been traveling with him everywhere for months now. He can’t bear to go—he couldn’t bear,” she corrected herself quietly, “to go anywhere unless I was there to assure him no one meant him any harm.”
“How so?”
“You were right that it wasn’t only my translation skills that brought me here tonight. It was my ability to see people’s auras. I can tell at a glance if someone’s intentions are good or not.”
“Your Breedmate talent,” Lazaro murmured. There seemed to be a trace of relief in his tone. “So, when you looked at Turati and the others on the yacht tonight?”
She shook her head. “There was nothing to fear from any of them.”
“Did your father voice his concerns to any of his colleagues in the GNC?”
“No.”
“Anyone outside the Council?”
“No one,” she replied, certain of it.
Lazaro grunted, and she could see his gaze go distant as his mind began to churn on the information. She knew he and the Order would not let this attack go unmet, and there was a vengeful part of her that longed to see the guilty tortured to within an inch of their sadistic, cowardly lives.
“Make them pay, Lazaro.”
“They will,” he answered solemnly. “Whoever had a hand in this, they will be found. There will be justice.”
Her tears started up again, but they were quieter now, filled with more rage and resolve than bereavement. She hadn’t been prepared for Lazaro’s tender touch. She held her breath as he caught her chin on the edge of his fingertips and lifted her gaze to his. He stroked her cheek, his thumb sweeping away the wet trail of her tears.
She could sense his tenderness went deeper than mere concern.
She could see the evidence of that truth in the crackling sparks of amber that were lighting in the deep sapphire of his irises. She could see it in his dermaglyphs, which surged with dark colors across every muscled inch of his torso and arms, the intriguing swirls and arcs of the glyphs’ pattern changing hues before her eyes.
And if all of that weren’t enough, she could see his intent in his aura, which formed a smoldering glow around him now, confirming the astonishing fact.
Lazaro Archer wanted her.
No sooner had the thought entered her mind than he leaned down and brushed his lips over hers. Her breath was already shaky and thin, but as his mouth pressed against hers, her lungs dried up on a slow moan. The kiss was tender, careful, no doubt meant to console or soothe her.