Wicked and True (Wicked & Devoted 4)

It didn’t matter. The deed was done. He’d told the lie. Now he had to let the chips fall.

“I don’t have a choice.” He cupped her face and gave in to his need to cover her mouth with one last lingering kiss. She cried and clung. Then, before his heart fucking bled out, he pulled away. “Goodbye, Tessa.”

Resisting her needy eyes and crumbling expression, he turned away, and left—probably for good.

As Zy left, Tessa heard the door slam behind him and the click of her deadbolt, followed by the faint rev of his motorcycle out front as he sped away.

Then she heard nothing but the empty echo of terrible, stabbing silence.

What was she going to do?

Her baby was gone, captive of some drug cartel or another. The man she loved had left to destroy those same criminals or ones just like them. Tessa had seduced him for answers to save her baby, and she had the terrible feeling he’d seen right through her. And he’d given her what she wanted to know…but he hated her for it.

Now, she was utterly and completely alone.

Anyone she might have called to talk this through? They were gone, too. Her parents? Dead. Her bosses? Wrapped up in saving their own family. Her co-workers? On Zy’s side. The one friend she might have confided in? A captive of criminals herself. Kimber couldn’t help her now.

No one could.

She had to help herself.

Around her, the walls of her once-homey duplex pressed in, crushing her along with the inky night’s darkness. Tessa stood stock-still, listening to the sounds of her harsh breaths and frantic heartbeat in the hush.

What was she going to do?

She almost scoffed. How many choices did she really have?

Only one. And it would kill her.

On shaking legs, she blew out the candles she’d lit all around the bedroom, then groped her way to her bathroom, flipping on the harsh overhead light. When Tessa looked in the mirror, she blanched.

Her cheeks and chest were still flushed with orgasm. Her lipstick was long gone from her swollen, bruised lips. Mascara ringed her eyes. She looked naked in every sense of the word. And haunted.

It fit. From tonight on, she would never be happy or whole again since Hallie’s kidnappers had put her in a terrible predicament: save her daughter or the man she loved.

Protecting one would probably result in the death of the other.

She had to choose tonight. No delays. No excuses.

It was a no-win situation.

What had she done to deserve this karma?

Tessa shoved the useless question aside. Feeling sorry for herself solved nothing.

Fighting tears, she lunged forward and killed the bathroom light before lurching for her bed. It seemed like the natural place to sob over her hopelessness until she gathered the courage to do what she had to.

But as she reached the edge of the mattress, the passion she and Zy had just shared rolled over her senses. The air smelled of sex. The sheets were still warm from his body.

And she couldn’t stand the thought that in forty-eight hours he would likely be cold in the ground.

Because her choice to save her daughter would have put him there.

But Hallie was a baby. Her child. What other choice could she make? She couldn’t see a way to save them both. If she tried, she might well lose them.

The outcome of her forced betrayal had already been too horrible to contemplate when she’d thought other EM operatives would be assigned to rescue Kimber. It had taken a while to realize that giving the enemy whatever she could scrape together about the planned rescue mission would allow the cartel to ambush and kill whichever of her peers had drawn the short straw. She’d hoped Zy wouldn’t be accompanying them. She’d prayed desperately.

She should have known better. Worse, he would be attempting this rescue alone.

Tessa staggered from the bed, against the opposite wall, feeling wretched and hollow. Defeated.

Even her legs stopped supporting her.

She slid down the wall and dragged her knees to her chest, staring out at the darkness, and tried to think of anything. Of any way. Of any possibility. There must be some course of action to preclude the seemingly inevitable.

But what?

If she failed to respond to Hallie’s abductors or gave them false information to help Zy, they would show their displeasure by ending her daughter. Poor Hallie would be dead before her first birthday because her mommy had been too naive to see danger coming and too unworldly to save her.

Tessa couldn’t live without her precious baby daughter.

But how did she live the rest of her life without the man who completed her heart?

A cry rose from the depths of her soul, wracking her body. Grief poured out. Despair surged in. The sobs stole her breath and splintered her heart.

No, she couldn’t give up. She couldn’t do nothing.