Page 3 of Bride of Vengeance
Jesus Christ, Mariana. Get it together.
But his heart is beating as fast as mine, and his arms are still locked around me.
When we finally stop moving, I'm straddling his hips, my weapon lost somewhere in the chaos. His hands rest on my waist, steadying me, and for a wild moment I wonder what would happen if I leaned down and kissed him.
That's the smoke talking. Or a concussion. Definitely not thinking clearly.
"Are you hurt?" he asks, and his voice is different now. Gentler. Concerned in a way that makes my chest tight.
I should move. Should roll off him and find my gun and call for backup and do all the things a good FBI agent does when she encounters her most wanted target.
Instead, I stare into those dark eyes and feel like I'm drowning in warm honey.
"I'm fine," I manage, though my voice sounds shaky even to my own ears.
"Good." His thumb traces across my cheekbone, wiping away soot and God knows what else. The simple touch sends electricity shooting straight down to my core like he's foundsome secret button I didn't know I had. "You have beautiful eyes, little wolf. They're the color of amber honey in sunlight."
“Little wolf?” This time I repeat it out loud, feeling the fresh air enter my lungs little by little. That's the only part of his statement my head doesn’t refuse to register.
"You hunt with single-minded determination," he says, and I swear I hear approval in his voice. "You don't give up, even when you should. You track your prey through impossible circumstances." His mouth curves in something that might be a smile if it wasn't so predatory. "Very wolf-like behavior."
God, help me. There's something about a dangerous man who notices things, who pays attention to the details that matter. Most men see the badge and the gun and assume they know everything about me. This one sees the hunt.
“Don’t you dare talk to me like you know me.” My survival instinct kicks in. We're so close that I feel like my eyes might betray me and reveal the many things his words are stirring in me, and I can't allow that to happen.
What the hell is wrong with me?This man is a killer. A criminal. The target of a two-year manhunt that's consumed my life and destroyed my sleep and made me question everything I thought I knew about right and wrong.
I should not be noticing how his silver hair looks like spun moonlight against the red glow of the fire behind us. I should not be wondering what those long fingers would feel like tracingother parts of my body. I should definitely not be fighting the urge to lean into his touch like a cat being petted.
"Thirty-three years old. FBI organized crime specialist. Been hunting me for exactly twenty-three months and sixteen days."
How the hell does he know that?
More importantly, how does he know the exact timeline? I've never told anyone—not my partner, not my supervisor—about the obsessive way I've been counting days since the first Ghost kill landed on my desk. It started as pure professional interest and became something much more personal. Much more dangerous.
My train of thought is again interrupted by his voice, cutting through the silence I hadn't even noticed had fallen. “Your turn, Agent Castillo. Tell me what else do you think you know about me."
"I know you're the most wanted man in the Bratva underworld," I say, harshly, rattling off facts I've memorized like gospel. "I know you've killed at least seventeen people in the last two years; probably more that we haven't connected yet. I know you disappear like smoke every time we get close, like you've got some kind of sixth sense for law enforcement."
"And what makes you think any of that is accurate?"
The question stops me cold. There's something in his tone; not arrogance, but genuine curiosity.
"Because I've been tracking you for two years," I say, but even as the words come out, I hear how weak they sound. "Following your patterns, your methods—"
"You've been tracking a ghost story," he interrupts, and now his voice has gone hard. Professional. "Following breadcrumbs that lead nowhere. Chasing shadows of someone who may not even exist the way you think he does."
"You're here. You're real. You just called me by name and told me my exact case timeline. That seems pretty fucking real to me. I should arrest you," I whisper, but it comes out more like a prayer than a threat.
"You should." He helps me to my feet with the careful gentleness of someone handling something precious. "But you won't."
"Why are you so sure?"
"Because you're beginning to understand that everything you think you know is wrong." He releases me and steps back, and immediately I feel colder. Like his presence was a shield against more than just the flames. "The Ghost you've been hunting doesn't exist, Mariana. Not the way you think he does. But that raises another question: who wants you to think he does, and why?"
Sirens wail in the distance, getting louder. My backup, finally arriving. Rodriguez is probably losing his mind trying to coordinate the response while I'm missing in action.
"Viktor Orlov—"
