“A future favor,” Elio said, and gave me a smirk. “In case you’reinterested in a different line of work, now that you’re a married man, I was thinking that you join the team as a consultant. We work well together.”
“I don’t know if going from assassin to made man is an improvement or not.” I sighed.
Elio shrugged. “Talk it over with the wife. Decide together.”
“The wife. I don’t know how long she’ll be that, if she gets her way,” I admitted. “She’s not too happy with me about it.”
Elio chuckled. “I know all about that, but I also know that the women we love are far, far too good for us, and far too forgiving.” He made to walk past me. “Speaking of wives, I need to get back to mine. Come and visit us in Atlantic City.”
“Is that an order?”
“It’s a request. And as for the wife... give her a chance to choose you. It works wonders, I promise. That was advice, FYI.” He winked at me in a very un-Elio move and headed out.
Yep, meeting the right woman had changed my stone-cold commander in an irrevocable way. I was jealous.
“So, what are you going to do with the little girl?” Vittorio asked.
“I don’t know. We need to see about her mother,” I said.
“I can make inquiries, or get your IT guy on it. If she has a mother, she might want to go back to her. If not, she has a home here. She’s Katarina’s family,” I told him.
Vittorio grinned at me. “Yes she is, and so are you. Go and see your wife. I’ll bet she needs you right now.”
I foundKatarina in the bathroom. Steam rose around her. She stood naked at the sink, staring at her reflection, bloodied and bruised. I wanted to kiss every dark mark on her delicate skin, butinstead I gave her space. I closed the door behind me and caught her eyes in the mirror.
“Micetta?” I asked softly.
She stared at me for a stretched moment, and then a long line of tears escaped her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
“My mom died,” she said simply. There it was, the grief she had tried to escape from but couldn’t. The terrible, inescapable truth.
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” I said to her.
Her face crumpled, and she fell apart. I was right there behind her, catching her as she fell.
She sank onto the soft rug of the bathroom floor, and I pulled her into my arms, cradling her close to my heart.
“I’m so sorry, my love. I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair while she cried and cried.
Later,an endless amount of time later, when the water had gone cold in the tub behind us and the dawn stained the sky, she shifted against me, her tears all spent. The bathroom rug was surprisingly comfortable when she was in my arms.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, her voice rough. “About your mother. I can’t believe that Sergei was the person you’ve been looking for all along. What kind of irony is that? That I would be his daughter... Your wife is the daughter of your long-lost enemy?”
“Not irony,” I said. “Destino. Destiny brought me to you. The universe correcting the wrong of the existence of a man like Sergei and the awful things he did. Where there is darkness, there must be light. Balance. You and me meeting was just the universe getting the balance right again. I was always going to meet you, and I was fated to love you.”
“You love me,” she whispered, and glanced up at me. “I’m a mess. I’m crazy, haven’t you heard?”
I smiled at her. “Didn’t you hear? I’m crazy, too.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, I did hear that somewhere,” she murmured, and her gaze dropped to my lips.
I lost the battle not to kiss her.
I leaned forward and fitted my lips to hers.
PARADISO
“But already my desire and my will