“This is the bombshell,” she says, holding up her hands. “Wait for it . . .”
“Sasha,” Kayden snaps.
She smirks and presses her hands to her hips. “He’ll become a Jackal.”
I gape and Kayden, ever in control, simply looks at her. “A Jackal,” he says flatly.
“Yes,” she confirms. “Which is why I think I should try and get him to run away with me, until you handle whatever it is this meeting is about.”
“Has he been talking to Alessandro?” Kayden asks.
“I’m not sure on that one,” she says. “It’s really a miracle I know what I do. I’ve been in the man’s bed a mere few days, but he runs his mouth after sex. It’s like sex is a gateway drug, and his high is actual communication. I really think I need to stay close to him, Kayden.”
“Yes,” Kayden concedes. “You do. But right now, War Room, Sasha. We’ll meet you there.”
“?‘Get lost, Sasha,’?” she says. “?‘I need to talk to Ella, Sasha.’ Got it. War Room. Leaving.” She turns on her heel and heads for the door.
Kayden and I watch her walk away, neither of us speaking or moving, the implications of Gallo and The Jackals spiking the a
ir. “Don’t slip in the puddle I left behind,” she calls out over her shoulder, and then disappears into the hallway.
I face Kayden. “Alessandro and Gallo? That’s bad, Kayden. He will influence Gallo in the worst way. What are you going to do?”
“Alessandro’s connection to Niccolo is relevant.”
“He said he’d handle Gallo,” I say, following where this is leading. “You think this is part of his plan?”
“I think it’s an odd coincidence if it’s not,” he concludes, “and since I don’t trust Alessandro, you’re right. It’s a problem that could go badly for Gallo, us, or both. I’ll call Niccolo and Chief Donati tonight, but right now I have a meeting to run and a big picture to navigate.”
“And I have a meeting to attend. Before you try to warn me again about what I’ll discover there, save your breath. I’m going, Kayden. Not to prove a point, but because I’m in this fight with you now.”
He doesn’t immediately respond, nor does he reach for me or even offer words of support or otherwise. He doesn’t even give me a look or expression to read. There is just silence, and the thickness of the air, before he says, “I meant what I said. I won’t hold back in this meeting to protect you.”
“That wouldn’t be protecting me or us, Kayden. Any of us. If you did that, you wouldn’t be the man I know you to be. And if I asked or needed you to do that, I wouldn’t be the woman who’s supposed to be by your side.”
He gives me the slightest incline of his chin. “Then let’s go.”
Side by side we exit the store, and Kayden seals it shut behind us. We then cut left down a path I have never traveled, a part of the castle I’ve never explored, the stone beneath our feet. But this long, high hallway is not so unlike the one leading to our bedroom, and identical to the one leading in the opposite direction. So much so that as we pass one wooden arched door after another, I think of the one I’d approached not long ago, to find Enzo lying in a bed while Nathan tried to save him. And failed. Enzo died as I watched the desperate attempt to revive him. It is also in this tower that Kayden’s fiancée and mentor were murdered, and at times I envision what Kayden must have been like on that day. What he would be like if he found me the same way. I think . . . I am strength to him in many ways, a needed partner to fight by his side, but I am a weakness as well, and I don’t know how to reconcile that fact.
“Death lives here,” I say softly as we round a corner, a chill running down my spine as huge, open double wooden doors come into view. “I feel it.”
“As do I,” he agrees. “Every damn second I’m in this tower.”
“Somehow that makes the War Room being located here feel like perfection,” I say.
“Exactly my thought,” he says, his voice a tight band of tension that seems to rip and pull around us as we step in unison, his energy shifting and changing with each second that passes, the walk seeming to last forever.
The sound of our booted feet on the stone floor is hypnotic. Unbidden, it delivers me back in time into a new memory.
I’m inside some sort of gym, a training facility I believe, and a group of students in the same blue sweats and T-shirts are standing around a mat to watch a fight. I blink and discover that I’m in that fight and my opponent isn’t a woman. It’s a man who I’ve managed to flatten on his back, land my foot in his chest, and twist his arm.
“You fight like a girl,” he mocks.
“Says the girl on the ground,” I retort, laughter erupting around us.
“Finish him.” I look up to see our instructor, a big, intimidating black man standing on the other side of my opponent.
“He’s down,” I say.