Page 12 of Love Me (Touch of Death 3)
A throat clears, and I’m instinctively on my feet, hand on the gun holstered at my thigh in a heartbeat.
Gabriella stills, raising both hands. “It’s just me.”
I relax, and she lowers her hands. She’s still wearing her formal-looking dress, but her shoes are gone, and she now pads barefoot over the carpet like grass.
“Sit down, Sasha,” she orders as she drops onto one side of the bench, and I perch on the cool stone as she lets out a sigh. “Adelina needs you,” she says.
“I’m here in a professional capacity, Gabriella.”
“I know she hurt you.”
“What Adelina and I had was a moment of weakness.”
She stares out over the ocean, and the sun makes her inky black hair shine. “You love her.”
“That time has passed.”
She narrows her eyes, studying me intently. “Has it? Or are you just hurt by her actions?”
I shutter my expression entirely. “Do not try to place normal emotions on me. I assure you, I have none.”
Her lips twitch before a smile that annoys me graces them. “You don’t believe that, Sasha. Whatever you once were, you aren’t that anymore.” She lifts a brow. “You can glare all you like, but having emotions doesn’t make you any less of a soldier.”
“No? What if someone hired me to kill you and I was in love with Adelina?”
“If you weren’t in love with Adelina, would you kill me anyway? Knowing me.”
“In a heartbeat.” It’s not a lie. I’d do it on pure principle because weakness must be purged like a sickness.
Her face falls a little. “Even when you risked your life to save me from Bianchi.”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“But you did. For Adelina.”
I release a slow breath. “Tell me again that emotions don’t hamper a soldier’s effectiveness.” I push to my feet. “I need all the information you have on Matteo Santori.”
“I thought you weren’t helping her.”
“I’m tasked with protecting her. That means assessing all possible risks.”
Gabriella’s hard eyes meet mine. “So, just business then?”
“Always.” I walk away.
I allowed myself to step out of bounds before and look where it got me. My rules are my safety; boundaries are the clear constraints of my own mind. Adelina’s issues are not mine. In the Elite, we were always neutral. It was understood by whoever hired us that we were completely impartial. A man might hire us to remove an enemy one week, and the enemy might hire us to take out the very same man the next. As long as we were paid, we did it without any repercussions on us. To be Elite is to be a ghost, without motivations or care for why you are killing, only that it is the job set before you. I almost miss the time where thoughts and choices simply were not an option. I miss a rigid routine and orders, the lack of initiative.
That is why I killed Eduardo Ricci. He was a faceless job and nothing more.
5
Adelina
“You need to make up with Sasha.”
I look up from the book in my lap and find Gabriella lingering in the doorway to the library. My father used to spend all his free time here. I came in here to feel close to him.
“I’m trying. He hates me because I married Enrique.”
Gabi’s eyes fill with sympathy. “Can you blame him? He loved you.”
“I did what I had to!” How dare he be angry with me after what he did. I’m filled with this hatred that won’t abate, and it’s all directed at him.
“Adelina.” She has that disapproving tone that my father always used when he was annoyed with me. “He has every right to be mad. I know I was. I still am.”
I want to tell her that Sasha killed Daddy, if nothing else, just to bring her to my side. But I can’t. I don’t know how she’ll react, and if her behavior changes toward him, she might ruin everything. Sasha and I are dancing on a fine line. I hate him, and he hates me for entirely different and far more inconsequential reasons. I need his love, though, and he needs to believe mine. I can put on an act. I’ve been doing it with Enrique for so long, I’m practically a master. Lies are now my forte.
I simply can’t expect my sister to be able to hide the pain of facing my father’s killer, to act as though she doesn’t know. She was right there with Daddy when that bullet ended his life. I love Gabi, and I trust her, but I can’t burden her with this. It’s too much. I just hate lying to her.
“Just leave it, Gabi.”
“No, I won’t leave it. Enrique is dead. Sasha still loves you; I know he does. He’s a good man, Lina.”
Oh, how little she knows. All the lies are starting to build up into an insurmountable wall. I can’t tell her that Enrique is alive, either, because then she’ll ask why I’m lying, why I’m here. And so the web becomes ever more entwined, and I sink deeper into my own abyss, falling further away from the only person I have left in this world. Guilt eats away at me, but I promise myself that I will tell her. When this is all said and done, I will tell her what Sasha did as I present her his head.
