Page 78 of Targeted By Vengeance

I rubbed his shoulder. “It’s alright if you’re sad or angry or hurt. You don’t have to pretend you’re not.”

“I’m not pretending. Death doesn’t bother me much anymore. Besides, Ares didn’t leave me much to be emotional about.”

“Sure he did; he saved your life. That’s gotta mean something, right?”

“I guess,” Mateo muttered. He lay his hand underneath his chin, his index finger tracing over his top lip.

I could tell there was more he wanted to say, so I waited silently until he was ready to let the words out.

“Our relationship was…complicated,” he said, his eyes glazing over, immersing him in another time. “He’d never taken in anyone that young before. He was always toddling the line between treating me like a normal trainee and treating me like a son. Sometimes he veered on the extreme side of the former to prevent emotional attachment. He could be really hard on me at times, like he was just begging for me to hate him.”

“Did you?”

“I was a bad ass kid with a strict ass guardian. Of course I hated him.”

I smiled.

“I thought about running away more times than I could count. But I didn’t because one: he was just going to catch my ass and two: I didn’t have anywhere else to go. My family thought I was dead, so I…I didn’t have a home anymore. As rough as things were sometimes, I’d rather that than live on the streets alone. Besides, Ares wasn’t bad all the time. We had moments when he was softer - when I could tell he really cared about me. If anything, I’m disappointed we didn’t have another one of those before he died. I just…I just never knew if he was proud of me.”

“He wouldn’t have handed all of this over to you if he wasn’t.”

“Yeah, but…it would’ve been nice to hear it.”

I perched down on his lap as I wrapped my arms around his neck, giving him a tight hug. I knew exactly where he was coming from. Parents smother us with expectations and when we exceed them, they just set the bar higher. Not once do they stop and pat us on the back for reaching it the first time. Now, ours never would.

Mateo’s head fell into the nook of my neck, sinking into my embrace as his arms squeezed me tight.

We sat there for a while, holding on to each other while we floated in the sea of grief. It was harder for the waves to pull us under since we were together, helping each other up every time one threatened to knock us down. Here, in this little life raft, we finally found a safe place to sift through them. And that was better than either of us could ever ask for.

“Will you go away with me?” Mateo broke the silence, his voice small.

“Haven’t I already?” I teased.

“I mean, go away somewhere nice. Just the two of us. I was looking through Ares’s files, and he’d just assigned all the others jobs earlier this week. We’ve got a little time before I have to give them more. It’ll be like a vacation. When we get back, our new work will start.”

“Our?” I raised a brow.

“You didn’t think I was gonna run this shit alone, did you?” He lay his hand on my face and rubbed my cheek. “You’re part of the team now; I’m not doing anything without you.”

Smiling, I pecked a kiss on his lips. “Alright. Where do you wanna go for this ‘vacation’?”

A tiny smirk appeared on his face. “I know the perfect place.”

THE ASSASSIN

Waves rushed over our feet as we walked over the soft, wet sand. The water drenched the hem of Simone’s maxi dress, but she didn’t seem to mind. A smile hung on her face like a portrait, her lips glistening under the moonlight.

Taking a trip back to Turks and Caicos was definitely the reset both of us needed. We’d spent the past few days in one of two places: tangled in bed or wandering around the beach. In our little bubble, there was no sense of time besides night and day and no urgency to get much done within either.

Simone was the only thing on my mind. Her smile. Her scent. Her touch. That’s all I needed during our time here, and I was grateful to have the opportunity to bask in it.

Tomorrow, we’d be back on a plane, heading back home to take our places on the empty seats Ares left for us. But I wasn’t ready to think about that yet.

We still had tonight - and I wanted to make it count.

“Are you alright?” Simone asked. She leaned against my arm and stared up at me with her twinkling brown eyes. “You got quiet on me.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I was just thinking.”