Page 139 of Bad Bishop

I leveled my gaze at her. “Cheers.”

God, did my voice just break? Good thing she couldn’t hear it. Only I didn’t mind her knowing.

She shrugged, downplaying it. “You were so touchy about the Tate portrait; I couldn’t send you off without letting you know how I feel.”

Dangerous, now. There was a difference between playing house and fucking one’s delectable wife and actually falling for her.

“And how do you feel?” I asked anyway. I wasn’t normally a reckless cunt. She brought that side out of me.

“I…I think I love you,” she blurted out.

Our gazes clashed.

There were two instances when I never believed someone’s words—when they had a gun pressed to their head or when they just had an orgasm. Lila just had three.

She stared at me wildly, searching my face, her eyes so big, so blue, so heavily lashed, my heart skipped a beat. How easily this unassuming creature had undone me.

“Please don’t go,” she added with a choke.

I said nothing.

“No. I won’t let you leave,” she tried another method, punching the bed.

I was going because I wanted to return.

And I wanted to return because I wanted to be with her.

The only way out was through. I could never live with myself if I let her stay by my side without settling the score with the Rasputins. The code of honor cemented that women and children were beyond the scope of retaliation, but my entire existence attested otherwise.

I’d broken the code myself several times. I wasn’t putting my trust in anyone else when it came to her.

Rolling my nightstand drawer open, I produced the cross pendant Lila had gifted me, securing it around my neck. She stared at me through tear-curtained eyes, and it hurt so fucking much I actually contemplated closing my eye so I wouldn’t have to see it.

I leaned down, cupped her cheeks, kissed her forehead, and stared into her eyes.

“Don’t follow me.”

_______

The drive to the private airport was silent. The journey from the car to the airplane on the tarmac a haze. The sketch burned a hole in my front pocket, and all I wanted was to stare at it until my eye bled, becauseshedrew it.

I was met with stoic Luca and pissed-off Achilles on the plane. The rest of the soldiers were already in Vegas.

Luca plucked a red grape from a charcuterie platter, going over the blueprints of the warehouse we were going to raid. Achilles sprawled across from him in a recliner, thumbing through his phone with a frown.

Luca was the first to look up and acknowledge me. “Jesus fuck, were you mauled by a pack of wolves on your way here?”

He referred to the scratches, love bites, and sex hair.

I plopped on the seat opposite him and lit myself a joint. I didn’t usually smoke. I did now. I needed to take the edge off.

“Who tried to kill you?” Achilles asked. He looked somber. Probably pissed that the assassination attempt failed.

“Your sister.” Smoke skulked out of my mouth, crawling in the air, invading his space. “Fucks like a champ. Thanks for making me spell it out for you.”

Their smug smiles melted away.

The rest of the journey was blissfully quiet.