Page 21 of A Wife's Duty

“Are you hungry?” Boone asked.

Food—that was what he wanted to talk about?

In the back of her mind, she was telling herself she shouldn’t ask questions. It wasn’t her place. Boone was her husband, he was the one in charge, and she should trust him completely. Only, they had both nearly been blown up. All of her training went right out the window as she followed him into the kitchen.

“Are you not ... upset?” she asked.

“About what?”

“Your car was blown up.”

“And?”

“We were in it moments before it was blown up,” Lucia said.

“I’m aware.”

“We could have died.”

“There was a chance of that, but trust me, I know a bomb when I hear one.”

This made her frown. “You heard it?”

“Yes, it was the ticking. I’ve heard it many times. I’ve used them many times myself.” He smiled.

“I don’t know how you can be so calm.”

“It’s not the first time someone has tried to blow me up, and it is not going to be the last.” He pulled out a bottle of water and unscrewed the cap. “Here, have a drink.”

She looked at the bottle of water and frowned. “How?”

“What?”

“You’re so calm and you just lost your car.”

“Cars are easily replaced and we’re both still alive. Besides, it just got a lot more interesting.”

This just made her frown even more.

He reached out and cupped her cheek. “You need to stop worrying. Trust me, I have everything under control.”

Boone got straight to cooking and for a few seconds all she could do was look at him and wonder what the hell was going on. They were nearly killed. This was not the first time she’d been around someone who had nearly been maimed. Her family had been on the hit list for a long time. She’d been near her father when someone attempted to shoot him. It hadn’t ended well. A soldier had lost his life, and she was shoved into a car and driven home. It was one of the few times she considered her father even caring about her, which was crazy.

Her father didn’t love her, yet he didn’t let a madman kill her. She later came to realize it would have been bad if he had allowed his daughter to be killed. She heard him say that, but if he needed a shield, she would be the first one he used. It was said in drink, but even still that had hurt.

Why were things about to get a whole lot more interesting?

Who was her husband?

What was truly going on?

****

All security footage was gone. The cameras that focused on the street conveniently had a glitch and all stopped working around the time Boone’s car was tampered with. Boone didn’t need any of them. One of his men had been in place, filming the whole incident, and from the look of things, Valdez was getting sloppy as it appeared he had sent one of his sons to do the job.

Sitting in his office, Boone took a sip of his tea—black, no sugar—and watched not for the first time as one of his brother-in-law’s tampered with his car. Leandro, the youngest son of Valdez, had placed the bomb in his car.

It lined up with all the information he had on him. The boy had been playing around with explosives most of his life. He was responsible for killing the nanny. Apparently, he was so excited to see if one of his bombs worked, he lured the nanny out to the garden shed, locked her in, set the trap, and from a safe distance, watched as it exploded.

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