The Negotiator (Professionals 7)

I didn’t even say goodbye to her.

This woman who meant more to me in a few weeks than anyone ever had in my life.

“You just let her go?” Alexander snapped a while later when he came home to find her gone.

“Was I supposed to chain her to the bed, Alexander?” I asked, not caring what time of day it was, making a beeline for the liquor cabinet.

“Maybe fight for her?” he suggested, outraged at my lack of action.

“And what would be my argument?” I asked, pouring a drink, throwing it back. “Come live with me, give up your career, leave your friends behind, forget about your homeland, and come make me dinner, and warm my bed. Because I am selfish and want you to do that for me?”

“You could have at least told her you wanted her to stay.”

“Accomplishing what, exactly?” I asked, pouring another drink. “Making her feel guilty for having to leave?”

“Maybe she wouldn’t have left at all.” His voice was getting higher, borderline squeaky like it often did when he was upset.

“Fairy tales are nice, Alexander, but real life isn’t one. Real life makes love hard.” Yes, love. There was no use even trying to deny it. I didn’t have the energy to even if I wanted to. “It is never convenient and easy. And it doesn’t trump everything else.”

“Maybe it should,” he suggested, face falling.

“Maybe,” I agreed, nodding. “But it doesn’t. I couldn’t expect Melody to give up things that I am not willing to give up. That’s not fair. So I wasn’t going to make her choose.”

“So, that’s it? It’s over? You’re never going to see her again?”

“Her work might bring her to Santorini some day. Never say never. But, no, I am not going to seek her out,” I told him, making my way toward him to go to the door.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not a fucking masochist,” I told him, storming down the hall, dropping down into the bed we’d been sharing, smelling her on the sheets.

I couldn’t seek her out.

See her again.

Then lose her all over again.

Because this pain I felt spreading across my chest, snaking outward until it reached every inch of me, sinking inward until I felt the ache in my marrow?

I wasn’t sure I could live through it a second time.

Three days later, we packed up and went back to Santorini.

Holden—or as Melody referred to him, The Inquisitor—had finished with my men, finding one more plant, disposing of him without my approval because, apparently, he had very little control in fits of unexpected rage that likely had nothing to do with the present moment, and everything to do with a dark past.

Things were safe.

And if I wanted to find Chernev, I needed to be back in my life, around my men, my resources. There was only so much that could be done over the phone, over email. Sometimes you needed to be present to handle business.

So we packed up; we headed home. Me, my curious men, and a sulking Alexander.

There was a stab of guilt at realizing I had done to him what I hated having done to me as a boy. I had given him a maternal figure, allowed him to get used to her, and then I let her go—ripped her out of his life.

It was my fault for thinking he was old enough to be beyond all that.

The situation with him didn’t improve as the days passed. At least in Zagori, he’d been able to go out and explore. Back in Santorini, he was in lockdown once again. And he was taking his pissy mood out on me.

As if I didn’t have my hands full with my own.

I managed to drown mine. In punishing physical activity, in relentless research into Atanas Chernev; his associates, his known whereabouts.

It wasn’t perfect, but it managed to keep my mind focused during most of the daylight hours.

If I avoided Alexander and Cora, I didn’t let thoughts of Melody slip in until I was alone in bed again, wishing the blankets still smelled like her, wanting one more night, pissed that I couldn’t pick up the phone and ask her if she was alright, make sure she was safe.

I would lay awake wondering—worrying, things that weren’t typically natural to me—for hours, often only passing out an hour or two before sunrise, when I would drag my ass back out of bed, and hit the stairs for an hour or two.

“You know,” Cora said when I walked in through the kitchen to get some water, every single muscle in my body aching.

“Cora, please,” I demanded, hearing the ragged edge to my voice. “Don’t.”

“I was talking to Alexander this morning. He tells me you said love. About Miss Miller.”

“It was growing, yes,” I admitted since she was the closest thing I had in the world to a mother, and it felt good to talk to someone who would be level-headed and rational, not full of youthful foolishness like Alexander. “But then it had to end.”