Luke’s face went from compassionate to utterly impassive instantly. Almost cold. Isabella realized he was hiding all his emotions. “What happened?” he asked.
She swallowed, afraid to continue, but knowing she had to. Luke had confirmed her hopes, that there was more to the story than him simply judging his father for being imperfect. A woman had died because of him, and he’d almost crossed a line for which he could never have forgiven himself. Despite the fact that he’d pulled himself out of it and changed who he was, his blame and self-recrimination was relentless, and it broke her heart.
For that, she would trust him with her secret. Because she had to. His story had opened her heart to him even more, and so had making love. She couldn’t go any further, wondering if he would ultimately reject her. She needed to know now. “My mother was a prostitute,” she said.
She kept her gaze pinned on his chest, unwilling to see the possible censure in his eyes. “It was the only way she knew to earn money to provide for us. But when I was fourteen, she got a job as a secretary and quit working the streets.” She still remembered when she and her mother had burned her mother’s wigs in a
small fire in the alley behind their apartment. “My mom was so happy that day,” she whispered. “It was the first time I’d ever seen a grown-up cry with happiness.”
Luke began to stroke her hair, and she leaned into his touch.
“For three years, she worked at that office. She made me promise I’d go to college. No matter what. Nothing less than an A was acceptable, because she wanted me to have the future and the choices she hadn’t had.”
“She sounds like a great mother.”
Isabella looked up at the softness of his tone. His eyes were dark, and kind. “She was.”
He smiled. There was a tinge of sadness in his expression, and she realized he was remembering his own mother. “What happened?”
The warmth in her heart faded, replaced by tightness as she tried to block the pain of the memories. “She met a man. A wonderful, amazing guy named Stanley Henderson. He had money and could take care of her. He treated her like the princess she’d always wanted to be. They fell in love and he proposed to her.” She smiled at Luke. “You should have seen her dancing around the apartment. I’d never seen her like that in my whole life. She was practically radiating joy. We would dance and sing and run down the street screaming, just to be silly.”
Luke returned her smile. “She deserved to be happy.”
“She did.” Isabella’s joy faded, and she toyed with the hair on Luke’s chest, unable to meet his gaze as she continued. “The night before the wedding, my mom decided she had to tell him the truth about her past.”
“Oh…hell.”
“Stan walked out the minute she told him.” Isabella
brushed the back of her hand over her damp cheek. “He told her he could never touch her again, knowing how dirty her body and her soul were.”
Luke swore. “Son of a bitch.”
Isabella blinked back tears. “My mom was devastated. Just crushed. It hadn’t even occurred to her that his love was conditional.”
Luke began stroking her hair again, and his touch felt so wonderful. It chased away some of the pain and loneliness that had held her heart hostage for so long. “I was at the library studying, and she called me up, absolutely hysterical. I tried to talk her down, but she was insane with grief. She told me she was going back to a life where the men never rejected her.”
Luke’s fingers tightened in her hair. “Shit.”
“I screamed at her not to go, but she hung up on me. I raced home.” She wiped the back of her hand across her damp cheeks. “I ran as hard as I’d ever run, my heart screaming for her, but when I got home, she was gone.” The grief and horror from that night welled up hard and fast, just as painful as they had been in that moment. “I was too late. I called her pimp and I had to threaten him with the cops before he told me where he’d sent her.”
Luke was rubbing her back now, but it didn’t stop the pain, the tears. “It was some high-class club. They wouldn’t let me inside. I kicked one of them in the shin and then ran inside, searching for my mom. I couldn’t find her. I looked everywhere. The dance floor. The tables. The lap-dance rooms. I looked and looked and there were so many people and then I found the other rooms. The ones with beds. I pounded at each one, and no one would help me, everyone was just doing their thing and too busy to care, and then I reached one and
I heard my mom screaming.” She covered her ears at the memory of that sound. “She was screaming, an awful, awful noise. I got the door open, I don’t know how, I don’t remember, but when I got in there, my mom was on the floor and this man was beating her, and I couldn’t stop him, and he grabbed me and tried to touch me and I got away and he went back to my mom and I hit him with the lamp again and again and again and then he finally stopped and he fell to the ground…”
She shuddered. “There was so much blood,” she whispered. “Mine, his, my mom’s…”
“Isa.” Luke wrapped his arms around her and hugged her against him. “I’m so sorry, hon.”
Isabella buried her face in Luke’s chest. “I called an ambulance and then crawled over there to hold her. She was so broken and battered. I held her on my lap and told her I loved her and that it would be okay and that the ambulance would be there soon…” Sobs caught her off guard, and Luke’s arms tightened around her. “It took an hour to come,” she whispered. “They said afterward that the internal bleeding was just too bad and too fast. By the time the paramedics were there, it was too late. If they’d come right away, they might have had a chance. But no one came for her. She wasn’t worth it.”
“Oh, babe.” Luke pulled her tighter and rocked her gently back and forth. “I’m so sorry.” He kissed her head, his face pressed in her hair. “I’m so sorry, hon.”
“Stan didn’t come to her funeral,” she whispered. “I called and left him a message, and he didn’t come. He didn’t love her, and he wasn’t worth my mother, but she gave him the power to kill her.”
Luke rubbed his cheek against her hair, and she concentrated on the feeling of his skin against hers, the
heat of his body, the reassurance of his arms wrapped around her.
“I was tried for murder,” she whispered. “He was an important man, and his murder had to be addressed.”
Luke swore and pulled back. “It was self-defense,” he snarled.
His outrage brought a teary smile to her face. “I know. And it was dismissed for that reason. The case was sealed because I was seventeen when it happened.” She spread her hands. “There was no record of my involvement, but they never bothered to try him for the murder of my mother. They were both dead, but he was the one whose murder was investigated. Not my mother’s. There was no point in tarnishing the man’s pristine reputation for the sake of a hooker, not when they were both already dead.”
“No justice.” His voice was angry.
She shook her head. “No justice,” she whispered.
“Oh, babe.” Luke pulled her up on his chest so he could look at her. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
She was stunned by his gentle tone. By the kindness in his voice. He hadn’t judged her. Hadn’t shut her out. Something in her heart began to melt, something hard that had been there for as long as she could remember. Even Marcus didn’t know about her past. “My mother was a prostitute and I murdered a man,” she said quietly. “It’s not exactly first-date conversation.” She couldn’t believe he was holding her so tightly after her revelations. But he was. He was rubbing the small of her back, and his lips were pressed against her temple. It was intimate and cozy. He knew the truth about her, and he accepted it.
He accepted her as she was.
Tears threatened again, and she blinked them back.
I found him, Mama. I found the man worthy of us. You would like him.
“Yeah, I guess it is a little heavy for first-date intros.” Luke rubbed her shoulders, his touch gentle and reassuring. “That’s why you worked for Marcus,” he said thoughtfully. “Security. A man with enough darkness in his past that he wouldn’t judge you by yours. A man who could fill in for the parent you’d lost, giving you the home you’d never had.”
“I took the job with your dad because he’s a good man,” she corrected sleepily. It felt too good in Luke’s arms, and she was so tired. She was so exhausted, and now that he knew the truth, all the strain had just fallen away. “He’s not perfect, any more than my mother was. But that doesn’t change that he’s a good man. He loves me, and he loves you and—”
“No.” Luke pressed his index finger to her lips. “Your mom was a good woman, and she did what she had to do to protect you. Marcus is about greed and wealth and power. He’s had plenty of other options his whole life, and he’s chosen a lifestyle that hurts others. It’s not the same thing.
He murdered my fiancée.
”
His sharp tone penetrated Isabella’s sleepy state, and she lifted her head so she could see his face. She simply couldn’t believe Marcus would do that. “How do you know? Did he tell you he did?”
Luke snorted. “Hell, no. He denied the whole thing. He claimed it was an accident.”
“So how do you know? Maybe it was. He’s not the monster you’ve created in your mind—”
“Isabella.” Luke gripped her arms. “My father taught me to shoot to kill. He had Leon teach me how to live with the ramifications of taking a life. He tried to make
me into a man who would murder my own father. For God’s sake, you got a bullet in the shoulder already. Do you have to die before you understand what he’s like? Before you realize he’s a bastard who will use you and throw you away when you’re no longer necessary to him?”
Isabella shuddered at the coldness in Luke’s voice. “You can’t really believe that,” she protested. “Not if you’re going back to Boston to save him. It’s okay to admit you love him, despite his flaws—”
“No.” Luke interrupted. “I’m not going back to Boston to save him. I’m going back there to destroy him. To wipe out his business. To do whatever I have to do to end this shit forever. To finish what I didn’t have the courage to finish before. I held back, and more people have been hurt.” He tightened his grip on her. “I’ll do whatever is needed ensure you, Cort and Kaylie are never threatened.”
His words were cold and hard. No love. Just ruthless mercenary. The sharp knife of betrayal pressed against her chest and she sat up, suddenly feeling raw and exposed in her nudity. “You’re going to kill him?”
He flinched, but then nodded. “If I have to.”
She couldn’t believe it. After his story, she’d been so certain the trauma of that night had been too much, that he’d never let himself become that man, no matter what. “But I love Marcus. His business is my career. It’s my life. His home is mine. You can’t destroy it. I came out here to get your help to save him, not kill him!”
She scrambled away and grabbed her sweatshirt, clutching it to her chest. Her stomach turned with the pain of betrayal. She’d trusted this man with her heart, her body and her deepest secret, and he was repaying her by stealing the only thing in her life she cared
about, the only human who kept her heart alive, the man who had plucked her out of the gutter and given her a chance at a new life.
“Luke, for God’s sake,” she cried. “Stop talking like that! It will break you if you hurt him. He’s your father! Give him a chance to explain what’s going on. For all we know, it’s Leon driving this whole thing and your father is an innocent pawn, just like you were.”
But there was no mercy in Luke’s face. No sympathy. Nothing of the man who had just held and comforted her. She saw only a man who had reached the end of his tolerance. A man who saw his father in black and white.
A man who was prepared to kill.
Dear God, what had she unleashed?
Luke felt like shit.
And it wasn’t simply that the pilot had just announced they would be landing shortly at Logan Airport in Boston. A place he never thought he’d set foot again. And he was doing it with the lives of people he cared about at stake. Again. But that wasn’t all that was grinding at him.
No, what was dragging him down was the hostility emanating from Isabella ever since he’d admitted to her the reason he was going to Boston. That haunted look in her eyes, that utter betrayal, the disbelief. It had hit him right in his core, and then she’d turned her back on him.
She hadn’t spoken more than the bare necessities on the entire journey from Alaska to Boston, and they’d slept in separate rooms at his cabin. No warmth in the morning as they’d prepared to leave. She’d tried to convince him not to accompany her once they’d gotten to the airport, but she’d stopped protesting when he’d booked the tickets using one of several fake identities he kept in a safe in his house, safeguards he’d created eight years ago in case Marcus found him again. She realized he had resources to help them slide through the airport
without alerting Marcus and Leon, but he knew she was going to ditch him at the first opportunity.
“Oh, God, we’re home,” Isabella whispered, putting her hand over her heart. Her voice was reverent with a joy he simply couldn’t relate to. “I missed it.”
Luke leaned over and peered out her window. He tensed at the sight of the Boston skyline. How many times had he seen that on his return to the city after another run for Marcus? It had never been home for him. It had always been hell. The eight years of absence fell away, and he was back in that moment, returning from that last trip to South America. He could almost feel those earrings burning a hole in the pocket of his jeans, Anna’s blood on his soul.
He swore and leaned back against the seat. It was time to focus.
Isabella had to lose Luke.
Now.
There was no way she could allow him to go after Marcus.
But what chance did she have without his help and support?
He had his hand on her elbow and he was guiding her swiftly through the airport crowd. He was constantly surveying their surroundings. His handgun was tucked away in his checked baggage, not that he could use it there anyway.
She knew Leon probably had men canvassing all the nearby airports, watching for them.
But facing them down by herself was a risk she had to take if she had any chance at saving Marcus. Bringing Luke with her would be like putting a bomb in Marcus’s business and possibly his life. It was time to
separate. “I’m heading to the bathroom.” She pointed at the ladies’ room she knew had two entrances. “Back in a second.”
Luke scowled, but he nodded his agreement and leaned against the wall to wait for her. He was large and powerful, his dark jacket and broad shoulders making him appear intimidating and lethal. But there were shadows beneath his eyes, and she knew he’d been distracted since his announcement that he was going back to take out his own father.
Regret?
No. She couldn’t risk her life or Marcus’s on the off chance Luke would suddenly develop familial bonds. She understood his fury over Anna’s death. She knew what guilt he’d been carrying after shooting an innocent woman. For the first time, she really understood why he’d left and rejected Marcus. But that didn’t change that what he wanted to do would strip her of all she had.
Luke’s eyes narrowed. He checked out her clenched hands and her nervously tapping foot, and he shifted ever so slightly.
She knew then he had already figured out she was planning to run. “Luke—”
He tapped the face of his watch. “I want to be at the baggage claim in three minutes. We need to retrieve our bags and get out before we’re tracked.”
She hesitated. He wasn’t going to stop her? “Okay. I’ll hurry.”
He gave her an assessing look. “Go. I’ll wait.”
She knew he wouldn’t wait long. He was going to allow her go. Of course he was. She was his conscience, so he wouldn’t want her around when he went into his assault mode. They both needed to be free to do what
they wanted. Did that mean he was worried she could change his mind? If there was a chance, she had to try. “Luke?”
He raised one brow at her, but his attention was on the crowds around them.
“Every night after dinner, Marcus takes a bourbon into his office. He picks up a picture of your mom and you on a beach, and he sits at his desk studying it until he finishes his drink. Every night.”
Luke’s gaze swiveled toward hers, but his expression was unreadable. “What beach?”
“I don’t know. But you look like you’re six or so, and you’re wearing an orange hat that has stripes like a tiger.”
She remembered the photo so clearly, and she would never forget the look on Marcus’s face the day she’d caught him looking at it. The photo had been on the desk, and he’d been leaning his head in his hands, staring at it. When she’d opened the door and walked in, he’d jerked his head to look at her. Tears had been streaming down his cheeks. They’d looked at each other for the longest time, and then Isabella had quietly left. It had taken Marcus six months before he’d pulled out that photo and showed her what it was. “Your mom has an American flag bandana in her hair, and she’s wearing a black one-piece suit. He keeps it in a locked drawer in his desk.”
A muscle twitched in Luke’s neck. “Fourth of July on the Cape,” he said quietly. “I was seven. Marcus took that photo. One of the few vacations he’d come on with us.”
Hope flickered at the lack of anger in his tone. It wasn’t soft, but she felt the emotion beneath it. Was
he reachable? “He cries over that photo, Luke. He loves you.”
His face hardened again. “He should cry. He killed my mother. The bastard should cry every fucking day of his life.”
“But—”
Luke glared at her. “If he truly regretted what happened to my mother, he would have changed his life. He would have taken his son and disappeared to a world where we were both safe. But his response was to amp up the business and bring me fully into the situation. He didn’t need the money. He wanted it. Big difference.”
Anger glittered in his eyes, and Isabella couldn’t deny the truth of his words. They did make sense…on some level. But she’d seen Marcus’s grief and his regret, and she knew the situation was more complex than Luke gave it credit for. “I’m sorry you see it that way.”
He shrugged. “I’m not. Better to be smart than dead.”
Isabella sighed. “Okay, I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll be back in a sec.”
He raised his brows. “Will you?”
She couldn’t meet his gaze. “Yeah.” Without a backward look, she slipped inside the bathroom.
She paused just inside the door, her heart aching at the thought of leaving him behind. But she had to get to Marcus before he did. She had to stay true to her own heart, because the more Luke talked, the more he made her doubt her own convictions about Marcus. She would not let him take away what she’d worked so hard to create for herself.
She had to do it.
Isabella hugged her purse under her arm and jogged
past the stalls. She ran out the other entrance, then pressed up against the wall to survey the crowds the way Luke had. So many people. How could she possibly determine if someone was stalking her? The man by the phones in a suit. On his phone. One of Leon’s new cronies?
The man in jeans lounging by the gate. A magazine was open on his lap, but he was watching the crowd. He turned his head and made eye contact with her.
She tensed, and then he moved on with his survey.
Dear God. How could she do this by herself? For a moment, she considered going back through the bathroom, to Luke. For what purpose? She had to do this on her own. She was the only one who cared.
Cautiously, she moved away from the wall and began walking down the corridor toward the baggage claim. She didn’t have time to get her bag. She’d have to skip it—
Someone bumped her and she jumped to the side as a woman in a suit hurried past.
“Okay, Isabella, you need to chill.” She took a deep breath and hunched her shoulders. She tucked her head down and began to walk fast, trying to keep up with the crowds hurrying toward their flights. All she had to do was make it to—
A hand caught her elbow. “Welcome to Boston, Isabella.”
She went rigid at the sound of the harsh Boston accent she knew so well, and her shoulder began to burn. She jerked her head up and stared into the pitch-black eyes of Nate Sampson. His nose was swollen and bruised, and there were dark purple and black bruises around both eyes. How could she possibly not have noticed him?
He smiled, a flat, unemotional smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Where’s Fie?”
Isabella shook her head. “I don’t know. I left him.”
Nate looked past her and surveyed the airport. “No. Fie wouldn’t have let you go. He’s watching you.” Nate took her arm and began to haul her through the crowd. “You’re working just fine as bait.”
“Bait?” Isabella had a sudden realization as Nate dragged her along. “I’m bait? Have I been bait all along?” She stopped and ripped her arm out of Nate’s grip. “Was the whole thing a setup?” Her mind started racing through everything that had happened prior to her going after Luke. Had she been played all along?
If she had, then that meant Luke had been the ultimate target all along.
Why? Why would they want him so badly? And why now? After eight years? What had Luke not told her? If it had anything to do with Marcus—
“In here.” Nate steered her toward an exit door. Not the main one. A small side one. Like the one Marcus had used many times to slip out to his private vehicle that would whisk him away without anyone knowing.
If she went out there, it was over.
He punched the key code on the door.
“No!” she screamed and started fighting him. “Help! Help! Let me go! Someone help!”
“Goddammit, Isabella!” He slammed his hand over her mouth and shoved her outside. The door locked behind her and she heard someone crash into the door, yelling for the police.
She slammed her elbow back into his gut, and he bent over with a bark of pain. She whirled around and palmed his broken nose with her hand. He screamed and fell to his knees.
There was a shout, and two men got out of a black car and ran toward her. “Shit!” She quickly punched in the same code Nate had used and then yanked on the door.
It opened.
“Get back here!” Nate lunged for her. He caught her purse, and Isabella dropped it as she ducked in the door. She ran right into a security guard. “He’s out there! He stole my purse!”
The uniformed guard charged past her and Isabella was caught by another guard. “No, no, let me go!” She tried to squirm out of his grasp, knowing it would take mere seconds for Nate to talk his way out of it. “Let me go!”
He dragged her to the side. “You’re under arrest.”
“Me? Why me?” But she didn’t need the answer. It was an airport, and she’d been screaming. Of course they would be cautious. But she knew Leon had to be nearby and if he found her—
There were shouts from outside and her captor swore. He edged closer, and she saw the security guard was fighting to subdue Nate, who was demanding they check his ID. Shit! Of course he would have some sort of ID to get him out!
“Hey!” There were more yells and suddenly more armed guards swarmed down on them. They shoved through the crowds, and her captor started shouting at them, directing them outside. Mass chaos—
Someone jerked her arm and yanked her backward, hard. Her captor lost his grip on her and she tumbled backward, hauled into the crowd.
Dear God, had Leon found her?