Take (Deliver 5)

He’d investigated the entire crew the moment he discovered Tate Vades sniffing around his domain. While he didn’t know who was fucking who in Tate’s household, he’d learned enough to determine that Kate was the ideal target.

She wasn’t married. Didn’t have a romantic partner or monogamous lover. There was no one in her life who would travel to the end of hell and back to avenge her death. And that was where he was headed after he killed her. Back to Caracas. Hell on Earth.

“All your assumptions can fuck right off.” She guzzled her drink and shoved the cup aside.

“Your friends might be outraged by your death, but they don’t love you. Not the way a man loves his soulmate. You are no one’s other half. No one’s number one.”

She closed her eyes, tucking away her reaction. But he felt the moment his words penetrated. The mattress shook beneath her perch on the edge, her body quaking so loudly and intensely he marveled at the strength of her despair.

Her gaze moved to the exit. Would she make a run for it? If she did, she wouldn’t make it past the antechamber. The door to the stairway required a key from the inside, which he kept in his locked safe.

He poured another drink, stalling the inevitable task. She wouldn’t be the first life he took. Nor was this the first time he hesitated.

As if she sensed the direction of this thoughts, she turned and gave him her full attention.

Perspiration formed along her hairline, her breaths choppy and rough. “I don’t want to die.”Smooth tequila, a gorgeous woman, and the thrum of rain on an old roof… Tiago hadn’t felt this relaxed in a long damn time.

He didn’t want to kill her. Not tonight.

Maybe the month he spent in this room softened more than his muscles. With a grumpy old man as his only visitor, he ventured to guess he was lonely.

He hadn’t seen his guards since he arrived. Even though they’d been carefully vetted and handpicked for this job, he didn’t trust them in his personal space, let alone his headspace.

He longed for conversation, and Kate wanted answers. He could give her that much.

Wetting his lips with a sip from the mug, he let his mind drift to the past. “Eleven years ago, my men pulled a smuggled slave out of a deadly crash in Peru.”

“Lucia,” she breathed.

“They found her chained in a truck with a twisted piece of metal protruding from her abdomen.”

By some miracle, she’d survived. But barely.

The same could’ve been said about him at the time.

“When they brought her to me, I knew I’d have to kill her. It was the easiest solution.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I hesitated.” He reached for his boot and untied the laces. “It wasn’t a matter of morals. I’ve been taking lives since my early twenties.”

Killing was a job requirement, then and now.

Her face paled. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-seven.”

Fifteen years her senior.

She touched her throat, eyes round with shock. “You’re older than I thought.”

He felt old. Too fucking old and jaded to have a meaningful conversation with a girl from the suburbs. But he wanted to tell her about Lucia, needed to get it off his chest.

Removing his boots, he leaned back against the wall, with his legs stretched off the mattress. “Lucia came to me at a time when I needed a distraction.”

It had been the worst year of his life. He’d lost everything, moved halfway across the world, changed jobs, and stripped his identity down to the black remains of his soul. All he had left were nightmares and chaos, and he needed to balance that with something constant, something he could control.

And there she was. A woman he could save.

“Boones and his medical team operated on her,” he said. “She went through several surgeries and a long recovery.”

“He has a medical team?”

“Three other doctors. They followed me to Venezuela twelve years ago to work for my organization. But they’re old, older than Boones, and it was time for them to go home. They left the night Boones transported me here.”

“Where is home?”

Tiago didn’t originate from Eritrea like Boones and the others, but their quiet African village on the Red Sea was the only place he ever called home.

His chest constricted. What bound him to Eritrea was a collection of pervasive, melancholic memories. His life there ran the gamut from extreme joy to unendurable tragedy. None of which he was inclined to talk about.

When her gaze dipped, he realized he was scratching the scars on his forearm.

Lowering his hand to his lap, he skipped over her question. “I didn’t keep Lucia alive out of the goodness of my heart. She’s attractive and ferocious, and I wanted to mold those attributes into a weapon I could use.” He chuckled in remembrance. “She became an invaluable spy, but it took years to tame her.”