When I walked into Z’s office the day after learning over two hundred people were dead and thousands were injured, I’d already made up my mind to retire from active service.
“I’d hoped you’d take my place as chief one day, Rile,” he’d said then. We both knew I never would have, whether the bombings happened or not.
I’d originally joined SIS because I believed every man and woman should be able to live their life free of tyranny, free of persecution, and free of fear. While my mother had been an agent before me, both she and my father lived their lives with the same purpose.
They were good people who, like my uncle, King Ferdinand, worked hard every day to ensure every person in Spain was afforded those freedoms.
Not everyone was born to the kind of life I led. Kensington certainly hadn’t been. I didn’t judge her for her upbringing or even her lack of a sense of purpose. I understood that she and I were on opposite ends of the spectrum in that regard. I’d known my purpose for many years and was ready to move into the next phase, one in which I slowed down, took on less, and relaxed more. In that way, I sounded like an old man. She, on the other hand, was a young woman, just beginning to figure out how she would make her mark on the world.
She’d been her grandparents’ companion in the last years of their lives. I couldn’t allow her to step into the same kind of role with me.
There would eventually come a day when she would want to spread her wings, and when that happened, she’d struggle with leaving me behind.
“You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?” came my beloved’s beautiful voice.
I have. Allowing her to stay would be selfish. She deserves to make a full life for herself.
“You will break her heart, and yours too.”
I shook my head. Mine broke seven years ago, my darling. I was foolish to think it could ever mend.
> 23
Kensington
It had been two hours since Cortez left the bed we shared and went to visit the grave of his deceased wife. If I were braver, I would’ve told him I was awake and that he didn’t have to sneak away. I would always understand the need he had to spend time in the small cemetery. But there was something more to his visit to the grave tonight, and whatever it was, made him pull away from me.
I felt it the moment it happened, even though he was far enough away that I couldn’t see him in the darkness. It was as though every cell in my body went stone cold. I felt abandoned, more alone than I’d ever felt in my life, even after my grandmother died.
The pain I felt was the same as when I watched her take her last breath and her hand went limp and cold in mine. The feeling of loss was so overwhelming then and now, that I hugged myself as silent sobs wracked my body.
Rather than wait for his return, I crept from the bedroom and took the stairs from the fifth level down to the fourth.
“Is everything okay?” Casper asked when I met her keeping watch on the landing.
I wiped away my tears and motioned with my hand toward the cemetery. “He needed time on his own.”
Startling me, she put her hand on my shoulder. “I know how hard this is—today is the anniversary of her death.”
I didn’t think I could feel any worse pain, but Casper’s words felt like a knife in my heart.
“You should go inside,” she said, perhaps noticing me trembling.
I walked through the door and into the small bedroom that I knew was unoccupied. I fell onto the bed, buried my face in the pillow, and sobbed myself to sleep.
When I woke, the sun was high enough in the sky that I knew it was at least mid-morning. There was no sign that Cortez or anyone else had come looking for me. No doubt, there was someone keeping watch outside my door.
Before we fell asleep last night, Cortez had told me he would be leaving first thing this morning. He didn’t give me any details. He’d only said that upon his return, he hoped that Konstantine would no longer pose any kind of threat to me.
He didn’t say anything about what would happen after that. We didn’t talk about whether I’d stay on here with him or return to London. We didn’t talk about whether we would still be together or if our love affair would end with his job to protect me.
Until he got up in the middle of the night and crept away, I was hopeful that we would still be together. Between then and now, the hope had vanished.
I felt like someone had died, but it wasn’t a person; it was a relationship, or what I’d believed had been one.
“Kenzie?” I heard Teagon’s voice followed by a knock on the door.
“Come in.”