Page 25 of Devil's Azalea

Even when I was training to become an agent, learning to resist every form of mental and physical manipulation, I never found a defense against those gorgeous eyes.

Not when they look at me like this. Not when?—

My breath hitches when he tilts his head the slightest bit, like he’s going tokissme.

Shit.

I wrench my gaze away from him, forcing myself to focus—back into the office, back on the reason we’re here. But everything is still blurry, and I can barely hear anything over the thunder of my pulse in my ears.

Then I hear it—fear, raw and real, in the waiter’s voice. It cuts clean through the fog.

“I swear, Mr. Moore, I didn’t put anything in the drink,” he whimpers. “I served all the drinks on my tray in the hall, and you chose that glass yourself. That means I would have had to spike everyone’s drink, not just yours. But they’re all fine!”

The waiter’s argument is logical, but logic has no place in this room.

One of Jason’s men steps forward and hits him with the side of his gun. “Every moment you waste lying pushes you closer to your death, swine. Tell us who sent you, and maybe you’ll live.” “I’m innocent!” the poor guy sobs, tears streaming down his face. “I swear, I swear on my mother’s grave, I didn’t—aghhh!” His desperate pleas dissolve into a scream as Jason’s other man shoots him in the thigh. He drops to his knees, clutching his bleeding leg.

I glance away, bile rising with guilt.

This is all because of me.Jason, in all his small-mindedness, could never comprehend that the little dose of poison creeping through his bloodstream came from my lipstick, transferred during that innocent kiss on his cheek. Even now, the telltale stain is still on his face, slightly smudged but unmistakable to anyone who knows what to look for.

He crouches in front of the sobbing waiter, whose face is crumpled in pain and smeared with snot and tears. “Listen, I’m going to give you one more chance to tell the truth,” he says with deceptive softness. “Who gave you the order? Who are you working with?”

The waiter just cries, his lips quivering uncontrollably. “I–I’m innocent. I didn’t do it, I?—”

We’ll never know what he was about to say because, quickas lightning, Jason snatches the gun from his man, levels it at the waiter’s face, and fires—point blank, right in the forehead.

I flinch back against Rafael, instinctively burying my face into his shoulder, seeking comfort in his warmth. He rubs my back gently in response, grounding me with slow, soothing strokes.

“I hate it when they lie to me like that,” Jason tells his men with casual disdain, as if he’s discussing a minor social faux pas rather than the execution he has just performed. “Look into him. I want to know who he’s been meeting with—and what they talked about.”

One of the men nods and steps out.

He won’t find a damn thing. Because that poor guywasinnocent.

He probably had a family. Loved ones he kissed goodbye before clocking in for his shift, not knowing it was the last time.He didn’t have to die.

But he did.

Because of me, what I did, and the cruel coincidence of Jason getting a drink from him after I poisoned him.

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault Jason is a dumb fuck who can’t understand your brilliance.”

I blink at Rafael in surprise. What? Does he think I’m upset that someone else took the glory for my work? But then I catch the glint in his eye—he’s teasing. Trying to make me feel better, in the only twisted way he knows how.

The lines blur.

They’ve been blurring ever since I realized he’s been shadowing me like some sort of perverse guardian angel all those years. But this time, they blur so hard, for one delirious moment, all I want is to go back ten years… back to a time when I could be his without complication or consequence. The guilt of potentially betraying him doesn’t even register against this overwhelming longing.

My eyes drop to his lips.

I haven’t even had time to fully want it before he lifts his hand to his mouth and?—

Wait. Did he just spit on it?

I frown as he raises those saliva-coated fingers and scrubs them firmly across my lips, his eyes darkening to stormy pewter.

He’s wiping off my lipstick.