Page 14 of Undercover Shadow
The blaze caught properly, but the warmth did nothing to ease the chill that had settled in my chest from the memories.
“The affairs began when I was seven. First, my dad had one with his secretary, then my mum with her tennis instructor. They didn’t even try to hide them from us by the end. When she’d come home with her lipstick smudged, smelling of another man’s cologne, my father would pour himself another whiskey. He’d disappear for entire weekends with women half his age while she entertained her lovers in our home.” I turned to face Leila, forcing myself to meet her gaze. “They stayed together out of spite, I think. Wanting to see who could hurt the other more, to see who would break first. They used us—my siblings andme—as weapons in their war. We became their leverage, their ammunition.”
“Tag…” Leila’s voice was soft, comforting, but I couldn’t let myself get lost in it.
“When I was sixteen, my mum finally left. We—my brother, sister, and I—came home from boarding school for a long weekend holiday to find her things missing. She’d taken everything that was hers, the paintings she’d inherited from her grandparents, the silver, even the photo albums with our baby pictures. But she left us. Her children. We haven’t seen her since.”
The silence between us was broken only by the raging weather outside.
“We found our father in the drawing room. God only knew how long he’d been drunk. By the looks of it, it had been days.”
Leila’s eyes filled with tears. Of pity no doubt, but I’d begun this story, and I had to finish it.
“That same day, standing in what was left of our home, I made a decision. I vowed I would never marry, never enter into something that could become that toxic, never give someone the power to destroy me the way they destroyed each other.”
“You chose to never let anyone close.” Her voice was quiet, understanding rather than questioning.
“I chose to accept that love wasn’t real. Passion was. But in the end, it always morphed into destruction waiting to happen. I’m thirty-four, Leila, and I’ve never had a relationship last longer than a weekend. That’s not by accident—it’s by design.”
Her hands gripped the edge of the table. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re twenty-two. You’re brilliant and capable and fierce. You have your whole life ahead of you, a chance at something real with someone who can give you what you deserve. You shouldn’t waste your time on someone who’salready decided how this ends. On someone who witnessed love turn malignant and decided the only winning move was not to play.”
The anger that flashed across her face was breathtaking. When she pushed away from the table, the light caught the gold flecks in her hazel eyes, turning them molten.
“You don’t get to decide what I should or shouldn’t waste my time on.”
“Leila—”
“No.” She was close enough now that I could see every detail—the way her chest rose and fell, the flush on her cheeks, the determined set of her beautiful mouth. “You don’t get to kiss me the way you did, then tell me it’s for my own good that it won’t happen again.”
“That kiss was my fault. I lost control, and no, it will not happen again.”
She stared at me for several heartbeats before her expression shifted. “Right. Your fault. Your control. Your decision.” Each step was measured and deliberate as she moved toward the door. “Message received, Tag. Loud and clear. You’ve decided I’m too young, too innocent, toowhateverto know what I want. Like you’ve done since the day you met me.”
“That’s not?—”
“Isn’t it?” She paused at the doorway, but didn’t turn around. “You’ve been calling me ‘kid’ since my brother died. Treating me like I might break, making decisions about what’s best for me without ever asking what I want. I thought maybe…but no. You’re right. This won’t happen again.”
She left, and I stood alone, certain that I’d done the right thing even as everything in me screamed that I was a fool. I remained motionless even as the memory of her kiss threatened to bring me to my knees.
I spentthe next few hours pacing the downstairs library like a caged animal, trying to focus on the mission, Janus, AIWS—anything but the look on Leila’s face when she’d stalked away.
She was right, of course. It had been exactly that long since I first yearned to know how her lips would feel beneath mine. I’d spent all that time treating her like she was a nineteen-year-old who’d entered the Unit 23 training facility with her brother’s death fresh in her eyes. But what she didn’t understand then or now was that staying away from her had nothing to do with age or innocence. It was about me being too damaged, too terrified of what we could become if I let myself care for her the way I wanted to.
The deluge continued its assault on the castle, with wind howling through gaps in the timeworn stones. Somewhere in the walls, pipes groaned and settled. The radiators clanged intermittently, and the whole place seemed alive, observing my misery with the judgment of centuries.
The sound of movement in the kitchen finally drew me from my self-imposed isolation. The sun had set, though the dark clouds made the distinction largely academic. The castle’s electricity flickered intermittently, casting everything in unreliable light.
I found Leila at the AGA, stirring a pot. She’d tied her hair in a messy bun, and when she turned to face me, I had to force myself not to stare at the spot where my lips had been only hours ago.
“Are you hungry? Mrs. MacLeod’s soup smells incredible.”
The shift to civility was so smooth it gave me whiplash. She acted as if the last few hours—hell, the last day—hadn’t happened at all. As if we hadn’t kissed. As if I hadn’t broken something between us that might never heal.
“Leila, about earlier?—”
“Don’t.” She didn’t look up from ladling soup into bowls. “There’s nothing more to say.”
