Page 46

He ended the call, his mind a jumbled mess.

He would have told Smitty twenty minutes, but he couldn’t just leave.

Keeping a secret of this magnitude would only fester until it consumed him.

What would Gina say when he told her he was the case agent who’d sent her father to his death? She’d hate him for all eternity.

As he lowered his head in his hands, it felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. His heart was seconds from cracking in two.

He’d lose Gina . And he’d only just found her.

The bathroom door opened. Gina held a glass of water and wore the same green satiny robe that draped so lovingly over every one of her curves. He soaked in her beauty like a dying man. This might be the last time she’d ever look at him without hating his guts.

Her eyes widened as she set the glass on the bureau, then rushed over to kneel in front of him. “ What’s wrong?”

He swallowed as a giant lump lodged securely in his throat. The shroud of guilt that had plagued him for fifteen years tore open. He had done it right. She wouldn’t see it that way.

“ For god’s sake, tell me what’s wrong.” She rested her hands on his knees and gasped. “ Is it Kinsey ? Did something happen to her?”

“ No , it’s not about Kinsey .” Her question snapped him out of his stupor.

“ Then what is it? I can tell something’s happened. Please , Jack . Tell me .”

Without looking up, he clasped her hands, interlacing their fingers. There was no sense putting off the inevitable. “ Angelina Perotti ,” he whispered.

The fear faded from her eyes, replaced by shock. She yanked her hands from his, and he let her go. Slowly , she rose to her feet. “ How did you find out?”

“ When I first met you, I ran a background check. It just took a while to come through.”

Her shoulders slumped as she nodded. “ That’s part of what I didn’t want to talk about.

After my mother died, I changed my name because I couldn’t get away from the stigma of being the daughter of a mob bookie.

Despite what he did, I loved my father very much, and he didn’t deserve to die the way he did. ”

“ I know,” he said quietly, letting his words sink in. He knew the very moment when they did.

Her brows lowered, her eyes lasering into him like a double-barrel shotgun coming on target. “ What do you know?”

Part of him wanted to lie or say nothing. As much as it killed him, he had to tell her. “ I knew your father.”

Her nostrils flared. “ How ?” she asked tightly.

“ He got caught up in a small sting operation. It was the first case I ran independently as an agent.” He could barely choke out the words. “ I was the arresting officer.”

For a moment, her face went slack. “ It was you,” she whispered. “ You forced him to wear a wire. You didn’t give him a choice. It was either that or go to prison. And then you sent him to Franco Falzone .”

The breath he took next was so painful it might as well have been poison gas. “ Yes .”

Her body trembled. She clenched her hands into tight fists. “ You killed him.”

“ Dammit , Gina !” He bolted from the chair to grip her forearms. “ I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am.”

She attempted to extricate herself from his grip, but he wouldn’t let her.

Her eyes went wild and stormy, like the Atlantic in a hurricane. “ How long have you known? How long ?”

When she tried jerking away from him again, he let her go. “ Two minutes.”

“ How could you do that to him?” Her trembling intensified, and her knuckles went white.

“ Why did you force him to wear that wire? Why , Jack ? He wasn’t a hardened criminal.

He had a wife and a daughter he loved. Me .

” She jabbed a finger at her chest, then advanced on him.

“ Because of you, I have no father. If my father were still alive, my mother wouldn’t have taken up with a man who beat her to death. ”

Jack knew her mother was dead but hadn’t known how she’d died. Now he felt even worse. He dragged a hand down his face. “ If I could change the past, I would. But I can’t.” The look of fury on her face ripped into his heart like nothing else could.

“ No . You can’t .” She stood less than six inches from him, but it felt like a mile, and she was slipping further from his life with every passing second.

“ Gina , please.” He didn’t know what to say or do to make her believe him, to help her understand that this was the world he lived and worked in, and it had been her father’s world too.

She took a step back. “ You and Franco took everything from me. Everyone I held dear and loved.”

“ I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger.” The words sounded stupid, even to him. He had nothing else left in his arsenal.

“ How can you say that?” Tears streamed down her pale cheeks, each one gutting him as surely as a knife strike. “ You put him in front of the gun. You put him in front of that bullet. Just like I did to Kinsey . That will always be my fault.”

Jack exhaled a short breath. He’d been hoping they’d gotten past that trail of guilt. It would suck hearing it, but she had to hear the truth. “ Your father was working off criminal charges. He got caught up in the system, and?—”

“ The system?” Her eyes widened. “ The system ?” She lunged for him, pounding at his chest with her fists, and he let her. “ You bastard,” she cried, and kept pounding until her hits lessened in strength and she crumpled to the floor, covering her face with her hands while she cried.

Jack gritted his teeth. She was in pain, and he was the cause. There was nothing he wanted more than to pick her up off the floor, cradle her against him, and find a way to make her love him the way he loved her. That wasn’t possible now. Or ever.

Just when he’d convinced himself otherwise, doubt crowded in. Maybe he had killed her father. As surely as Franco had pulled the trigger.

“ Get out,” she said quietly, then with more volume until she was shouting at the top of her lungs. “ Get out, get out, get out! ” she screamed.

He couldn’t believe it had come to this.

Numbly , he shoved his feet into his shoes, then collected the rest of his clothes and his weapon.

Gina remained on the floor, staring glassy-eyed at her fists.

This wasn’t the right time to tell her, but he might not get another chance.

“ There’s one more thing you should know.

” She lifted her red, watery gaze to his.

“ I love you. I love you so much…” It hurts.

More than that. He loved her so much it was killing him.

Her eyes widened a fraction, flaring with acknowledgment. Little by little, the light in them died. “ Get out,” she said in a voice completely devoid of emotion.

His heart thudded dully in his chest. He resisted the urge to shake some sense into her, to convince her they could get past this. The vacant look in her eyes told him otherwise. He was a man of action, and he was utterly powerless to fix the mess he’d created. Fate really was a bitch.

He turned and walked out of the bedroom, rubbing the center of his chest with his palm.

The grandfather clock ticked away in the foyer, reminding him of all the time he and Gina had shared and all the time they never would.

He stepped outside the apartment and into the hallway, closing the door behind him and feeling as if he were leaving his entire world behind.

Five minutes ago, he’d stupidly, naively imagined having a life with the woman he loved. Now , he had nothing.

Anger balled in his gut at how many lives the Falzones had destroyed over the decades. He punched the elevator button so hard the plastic cover cracked. When the elevator arrived, he walked in and leaned against the wall.

Without knowing it, the Falzones had extracted the ultimate vendetta against him. They’d taken away what he loved and cherished most.

Gina .