Chapter Eighty

Ghost

"Y ou assassinated Ibrahim al-Hashimi."

Eight years, eighteen women, eighteen trafficking rings, five satellites, four hundred and thirty-seven kills, nine zeroes in offshore accounts, not one single digital footprint, and I was just burned by a sheepherding girl from Turkey.

I dropped her hand and pulled the SUV over.

Then I turned toward the only woman who had ever seen the real me. "Tell me everything you think you know."

"I think…." She cleared her throat, clasped her hands, and looked straight ahead. "I know you killed the head of ISIS."

"Look at me and say that again," I demanded.

A dark-eyed gaze that was now full of something too damn close to fear met mine. "You killed the head of ISIS."

"And?"

"You married all of those women to get them away from his sex traffickers."

"And?" I repeated, giving her one goddamn time to say it all. Then I was going to put a fucking end to it.

"And that is what you were doing for eight years. Why you were always gone. Why I got kidnapped. Why I, specifically , was taken a second time." With every word, her voice turned weaker, quieter. Less sure.

"Anything else?"

She stared.

I ran it down.

Every angle, every step, every fucking interaction.

There was only one possibility.

The firefight at the compound. That split-fucking-second I picked her up off the floor. I thought her eyes had been closed. I hadn't shielded her. She'd caught a glimpse inside the room.

I'd fucked up.

I'd more than fucked up.

I didn't need to ask how she knew who the hell al-Hashimi was. She'd lived on two continents where he was a household name synonymous with the very fucking definition of terrorism.

Dragging in a sudden and sharp breath, she took her eyes off me. "Did you… touch them? The other women?"

"Yes." She saw everything at AES. I wouldn't insult her by withholding intel on this particular subject matter now.

Her gaze dropped to her lap, and she nodded.

"Ask, Safiya."

"I just did."

I didn't buy into the aura bullshit Raine had drilled into me since I was old enough to walk and she told me not to step on fucking insects. But the psychology behind what Raine had said to Safiya wasn't far off the mark. Safiya was harboring shit. She was also missing the key elements behind what Raine believed was in a blue aura—balance, calm, contentment. And that was what I was after for Safiya. Predominantly, that fucking balance.

I wanted my wife to be able to separate who I was from what I did.

I wanted her to be able to make fucking peace with it.

The latter I would never force on her. But getting her to talk to me?

I'd use every weapon in my arsenal for that.

Grasping her chin, tilting her head, and getting a lock on her eyes again, I repeated the demand. "Ask me what you need to know."

She pulled away. "Your business is your business."

Bullshit. "You think my life doesn't intersect with yours? That you don't have a right to what you're feeling?" I grasped the side of her face. "Come on, beautiful, give me the words." She needed to say them, and I needed to know she was capable of using her voice with me when it truly fucking mattered.

Her chest rose with a shuttering breath, and her eyes closed. Then she blinked twice, looked me dead in the eye, and gave me the girl who was going to run at an insurgent unarmed. "Did you kiss the other women?"

"Yes."

Her nostrils flared, but her tone held. "Where?"

"Head, face, lips." Come on, woman. Fucking ask.

Her breathing accelerated. "Did you kiss them like you kissed me?"

There it was. "No." Never.

She exhaled. "Did you sleep with them?"

"Yes."

Her chest rose, and the rapid breathing came back. Her voice quieted. "All night?"

"Yes." Technically daytime hours too, but the answer still held.

Her hands shifted in her lap. "More than once?"

"With the same woman?"

Hurt eclipsed her expression, and her voice dropped. "Yes."

"Yes." Number four. I'd fucked up the exfil. We'd hidden in a shithole outside Eretria for three days until I could get us out.

"Why?" she demanded.

"Circumstances."

"You did not love her?"

"Her or them?" The answer was the same, but she needed to fucking ask.

"There was more than…." She swallowed hard. "You slept with all of them all night?"

"No ." Come on, hayatim.

A flash of anger crossed her face. "Stop being purposely obtuse."

"Stop avoiding what you really want to ask."

"Did you sleep with them how you slept with me?"

A shared bed was a shared bed. I wasn't fucking with technicalities now. "Yes."

She whipped around, grabbed the door handle, and threw it open.

I caught her arm before she had a foot out the door. Then I gave her the best damn thing I had to offer. "If you run now, I'm letting you go."

For twenty-eight seconds, she didn't move.

Then a sheepherder from Turkey who owned my fucking sanity let loose.