“Here.” I show her to the biggest bedroom and sit her on the bed. The room is sparsely decorated but has a comfortable bed and a closet full of clothes and items we both use. Nova was careful to get dupes of almost everything Quinn has at our penthouse.
“This is like a bad dream.” She puts Harley down, and he trots to the foot of the bed and curls up. “This morning, I was just, you know, I was so excited about the baby.” She rests her hand on her stomach. “And now I don’t even know who you are. And I saw you … I saw you kill a man.” She finally meets my gaze, her eyes still swimming with tears. “What’s happening? Who did I marry?”
“I’m Logan, sugar. I’m always your Logan.” I cup her cheeks.
She pulls back. “No. I don’t want your sweet talk. You owe it to me—and this baby—to tell me everything. I have to know. We can’t keep going like this.” She laughs, and it’s high and thin. “I already knew we couldn’t keep going on like this, and that was before you pulled a knife from nowhere and skewered a man’s face.” She shivers.
I want to embrace her, to hold her tight until she stops crying. But the tone of her voice tells me I have to tread so, so carefully.
“Are you sure you don’t need to rest first? The baby—”
“No.” She pulls her knees up and hugs them, putting distance between us. “Talk. Talk now, Logan Pruitt, or I’m walking out of here.”
I swallow hard, then take a deep breath to calm my nerves. Funny how I can kill a man without a second thought, but right now—right this second—my palms are sweaty as all hell, and I can’t seem to catch my breath fully. But I can’t let her walk away from me. Not when all I’d do is follow her and carry her back here kicking and screaming. She’d hate me. And that thought alone is worse than any wound I’ve ever endured.
She waits, her tears finally slowing as I try to collect my thoughts.
Then I start. I tell her how I started nowhere and with nothing. How the only skills I’ve ever had have been physical. I can fight. It’s the only way anyone can survive a childhood like the one I had. I learned to impose my will on anyone who tried to hurt me.
I talk for what feels like an hour, telling her about my days as an apprentice to Carl Winsten, an old Brotherhood assassin who’d taken me under his wing. His wife, Virgie, was mean as hell, but they both taught me how to use knives, guns, and my fists to take care of myself and make money. I spent years honing my skills, and then I got good enough to take contracts. I’m so goddamn good at taking lives. Mostly mafia assholes or white-collar crooks, but terrorists and others mixed in. I was nothing but a killing machine—until the day I met Quinn.
She listens to everything. Every word.
“Ben and Nova, they’re both contract killers, too. Ben is my apprentice. Nova is a freelancer.”
“She was never my friend.” She wipes another tear.
“She’s your friend.”
“No, you planted her.”
“Sort of, yes. I wanted a trained operative close to you at all times. My work is dangerous, and I never wanted it to touch you. That’s why Nova lives near us, why your work is at home, and why I have the control room and armory in our closet.”
“I’m so stupid.” She shakes her head.
“No, sugar. No.” I scoot closer.
She recoils. “Please, leave. Just go and let me think. I have to think.” She rubs her temples.
I want to fight her on this, to show her that I’m still the same man who loves her unconditionally.
“Go!” She covers her face with her hands.
I stand, my heart tearing to ribbons. “Sugar, I love you. That’s never changed, and it never will. I’ll go, but I won’t be far.” I pause at the door. “And if you try to run, I’ll find you.”
15
Quinn
My tears have stopped coming. I forced myself to relax when I realized being upset isn’t helping the baby. Logan promised me that Nova would be fine. That gives me some comfort. When she hit the floor, I think I stopped breathing.
Even with everything going on, I still trust Logan. I shouldn’t. I’m crazy and naïve, but the truth is I’m also madly in love with a man I’m not sure I fully know.
When he’d poured out his life to me, I’d been torn in half. On one hand, I was upset that he’d kept it from me, and on the other, I wanted to grab him and pull him into me. Like I could protect the young Logan from a shitty childhood. It’s almost laughable. My husband doesn’t need protection based on the way he threw that knife earlier. Or maybe he does, but only in a different kind of way. My compassion for him isn’t something I can just turn on and off. That’s never been me, and certainly not with him. I love him unconditionally, and it hurts that he doesn’t understand what that means or just how far I’d go to make him happy, to be with him, to keep our love alive.