“My mother was having an affair with Conrad. She was trying to protect herself.” Her tone was bitter.
“That may be so, but Luka is a dangerous man and very, very powerful. There’s a reason Reuben has a good shot at a minister position in the next government, and it’s not because Luka is kind and generous and respected by his peers. He is feared by them. When the president wants someone gone, but doesn’t want the taint, he whispers to Luka, and it’s taken care of.
“On paper, Luka has just enough distance from the current president to not have his assets seized in the recent round of sanctions against Russian oligarchs, but only just. And Reuben is shortening that distance, not widening it.”
“If my parents were protecting me, why leave her son behind?”
“I can only speculate there, but in all probability, he was too old to forget his father. And no way would Luka lose his only son without draining the Mediterranean to try to find him.”
Kira placed a hand over her mouth to silence her sobs. Her brother had been sacrificed, left with a cold, dangerous man, only to become one himself.
She thought of her mother’s lifelong sadness and the empty cradle in the portrait that hid in the basement. Her mother had loved her son, but still, she’d abandoned him in an act of selfishness while saving her daughter.
“I’ve—I’ve got to go.” She hit the End button and set the phone on the center console, curled into a ball, and silently sobbed while Rand stroked her back with one hand and steered the car down the Maltese highway with the other.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
There was nothing Rand wanted more than to pull over and hold Kira, but the longer they were in this car, the more dangerous their situation would become. So he drove. And drove. One hand on Kira, one hand on the wheel, until the streets grew busier as they neared Valletta, and he needed both hands to weave through a sea of erratic drivers.
Losing just that small physical contact was disappointing, but she was no longer crying. Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead as she took slow, deep breaths.
This was how she centered herself. He’d seen it before. He wondered if it was something she learned in childhood, when her world changed in an instant, and she later was thrust into social situations she wasn’t ready for.
His grip tightened on the steering wheel as he thought about what she’d told him yesterday about Apollo. He’d been twenty to her seventeen, except now they both knew she’d only been fourteen. It wasn’t Apollo’s fault, and it wasn’t hers. They’d both believed she was old enough to make that choice, but she wasn’t.
No wonder it had left such lasting scars.
Part of him wanted to strangle Conrad Hanson, but he knew the man must have been equally horrified when he saw Kira’s grief for Apollo and realized what had happened.
There was no one to blame but Conrad and Anna, who hadn’t envisioned what Kira would go through when they made the decision to hide her true age when she was only four years old.
His very first meeting with Kira, he’d been surprised by her age, but still, she looked young for thirty-six. He’d thought she was in her late twenties.
But she was close to his age. He’d turned thirty-six in March. Kira’s birthday was supposed to be in August, but it was likely even the month of her birth had been changed. Whenever it was, would she turn thirty-six or thirty-seven?
Freya would probably have that information by now, but they wouldn’t call her until they were at the apartment. And Rand had other, more important calls to make first.
Finally, they reached the massive bus terminal. Rand found a parking spot on the nearby street and walked with purpose toward the main terminal with the lines of buses that pulled into numbered slots in front of a row of food vendors.
“Food?” he asked.
“I don’t think I could eat.”
“How about a gelato?” He squeezed her hand. “Strawberry?”
She paused, pulling him to a stop. She turned and rose on her toes and kissed him. Brief and soft. “I really like you, Randall Fallon.”
He wrapped an arm around her back and lifted her to kiss her longer and deeper. Then he set her down and said, “I think you’re amazing, Kira Hanson.”
He used her American name on purpose. That’s who she was, no matter what she’d learned today. But if she wanted to reject that name…well, at some point, he’d offer her another one.
A wave of cold air hit Kira’s face as she stepped into the apartment. Relief washed through her. Grateful for the air-conditioning and privacy, she wanted to curl in a ball and cry or, better yet, sit in front of a fan and make noises as the blades whirled, the spinning vane distorting the sounds as the fan blew air in her face. It was what she’d done as a child when she was hot and out of sorts.
Weird that she’d remember that coping mechanism now. But then, given what she’d just learned, maybe not. She was going to need every coping mechanism she’d ever developed.
Deep breaths would no longer cut it.
Arms came around her, and they were better than any spinning fan, even if his body was warm against her flushed skin. She turned into his embrace and he held her, finally scooping her up and taking her into the living room and settling on the couch with her on his lap.
She snuggled against his chest. This was what she’d longed for from the moment they stepped into the hidden corridor. They sat there for several minutes before she pulled back. “There’s a lot I want to talk about, but we should probably call Freya.”
“Actually, there is someone I need to call before we can talk to Freya again.”
She cocked her head. His tone was different. Even his expression was guarded. Not the way he usually looked at her. There was an edge to him. Was she getting a glimpse of the SEAL?
“I—I can’t let you listen in on the call. I need to call my CO and make a report.”
Definitely the SEAL was talking.
What did he need to say to his commander that she couldn’t hear? Everything they’d learned was about her. Her father. Her other father.
All at once, it hit her. Fear ripped through her body. “Rand, you can’t tell them I’m not an American citizen. I could—I could be deported. But the only place they could send me would be Russia.”
She’d been frustrated when her father refused to tell her where she was born in the US, but she hadn’t been born in Pennsylvania at all.
