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JOAO

H ave I been up all night waiting for Stefi to show up? Not really. Sure, I logged into our secret chat room as soon as I got back to my hotel room, and yes, I stayed up far too late to see if she’d show up. And okay fine, I might have fallen asleep in my clothes with the laptop on my pillow.

But it’s not because I’m waiting for her; that’s ridiculous. It’s not because I want to talk to her again. I’m here because of the mission, that’s all, and because, as furious as I am with her, I don’t want to see her killed by Andrei Sidorov.

Then my laptop beeps to tell me that someone’s logged in. I instantly come fully awake and sit up. Hello again, little fox, I type, anticipation jolting up my spine. This is better than caffeine. I’ve been waiting for you.

She responds after a long pause.

Stefi

Joao. Where are you?

Zurich. You?

Ha, nice try. Why would I tell you where I am? So, you can show up and point another gun at my head?

Call me.

Why?

I want to hear your voice. Call me.

I type in my phone number and wait, my heart pounding in my chest. Will she call, or will she bail? The old Stefi would have taken me up on my challenge, no questions asked, but then the old Stefi trusted me.

Did she really? Or were you just fooling yourself?

The phone rings. I look at the display, and the number is blocked. No surprise there. “Hello, Stefi.”

“Joao.” Her voice is soft and a little breathless, at once familiar and not.

Don’t get sucked in.

“Are you calling me from Geneva,” I ask lightly. “Or are you hiding your location?”

“You already traced me? Impressive.”

I laugh. As if she’d be stupid enough to call me on an open line. “Oh, come on, Stefi. I already know you’re not in Switzerland.”

“Really?” she asks pertly. “How can you tell?”

“Geneva is three and a half hours away from Zurich. If you were there, you’d have logged into our chat room much sooner. You’re further away. You don’t like to drive at night, so I’m guessing you took the train. You’re going to base yourself in a big city because it’s easier to stay anonymous in them. So where are you?” I look at a map of Europe and find her likely stops. “Paris? Brussels? Frankfurt?”

She doesn’t answer, not that I think she’s going to. Her silence is telling enough. One of my guesses is right. Which one?

“What’s your goal, Joao?” she asks after a long pause. “What do you want with me? Why were you really in Zurich?”

“I told you already. I found out you were alive, and I came to warn you. Zurich was a trap, Stefi. The head of the Sidorov Bratva wants you dead, and he’s sending his people?—”

“Hang on,” she interrupts. “You didn’t tell me any of that.”

“I didn’t?”

“No,” she says. “You just told me to strip.”

I replay our conversation in my head, and, fuck me, she’s right. Making sure she was unarmed wasn’t a bad idea, but the moment she took off her clothes, all thought fled my brain. I didn’t just let her go; I failed to tell her about Sidorov in the first place.

God, I’m a fool. A fool for her.

“Can you blame me?” I ask, as casually as I can manage. “I always lost my mind when you got naked, and that hasn’t changed. You’re beautiful.”

We grew up together, and Stefi was my best friend, but I never thought of her as a girl. That changed the summer we turned sixteen. I’d gone on a training exercise in Ethiopia, and when I returned to Bach’s compound in Latvia, the first person I saw was Stefi, laughing at something her friend Michaela was saying.

And I realized that without me noticing, my best friend had blossomed into a beautiful young woman.

I wanted her with an all-consuming intensity. I barely spoke two words to her that summer, in the grips of a crush that was more painful than any of Henrik’s little tortures.

She sucks in a breath at my words, and that sound brings me back to the present. “There are dozens of people who want to kill me,” she says flippantly. “But the Sidorov Bratva isn’t on that list. I don’t even know who they are.” There’s the smallest hint of shakiness in her voice. “Why should I believe you?”

“Why would I lie?” I counter. “Four years ago, you were hired to kill Aldo Caruso. The name ring any bells?”

I can hear typing on the other end of the line. She’s not looking up Caruso—I know for a fact that Stefi remembers every single kill. As a teenager, she would cry after every job, and I’d wrap her in my arms and do my best to comfort her. She’s searching for information on the Sidorov Bratva. “Yes,” she says finally. “I remember.”

“Aldo’s daughter Mira is married to Andrei Sidorov, the pakhan. You went after his family, Stef. He’s going to hunt you down. He almost succeeded yesterday.” If I hadn’t reached the restaurant in time. . . My blood runs cold. “Antonio’s ordered me to bring you in, and he’s willing to offer you protection. Come back with me to Venice, Stefi. It’s the only way to keep you safe.”

“I’m going to pass on that offer, thanks,” she replies coolly. “I can take care of myself.”

“If I hadn’t been there, they would have killed you yesterday. The threat is real. Stop being so stubborn?—”

“Drop it, Joao.”

She’s on the verge of hanging up, and I don’t want her to do that, so I change the topic. “Can I ask you something? Why did you come for Alina? The Stefi I knew would have never done that.”

She exhales in a long breath. “I didn’t want to,” she admits finally. “Three months ago, I broke into a target’s apartment to take him out and found him in bed with a seventeen-year-old girl. Her name is Charlie. Her stepfather pimped her out to my target, and her mother turned a blind eye to what was happening.”

I hate all rapists, but there’s a special place in hell reserved for men who prey on children. If it had been me in Stefi’s shoes, I would have taken my time killing the stepfather. I’d have started by chopping his dick off. I don’t enjoy torture, but a quick and painless death is a mercy that not everyone deserves. “You killed the stepfather.” I don’t ask it as a question because I already know the answer. I know what my wife would have done.

“I did, but it wasn’t straightforward. He worked for the Cosa Nostra. I couldn’t take him out in Sicily—that would have been a suicide mission. I needed to wait for him to leave Italy, but finding out when and where he’d be traveling was difficult. Vidone Laurenti offered to sell me that information.”

“In exchange for Alina Zuccaro’s capture.”

“Yes,” she says, sounding deeply troubled. “I hate that I got her involved, but I had to protect Charlie.” She hesitates. “Do you know if she’s okay?”

“You haven’t checked?” I ask, surprised.

“I haven’t been able to bring myself to look her up.”

“She’s fine. Tomas reached her before your goons showed up.” Something’s been nagging at me ever since I found out that Stefi drugged Alina. The whole attempt was so uncharacteristically sloppy, and that’s not at all like my wife. “Hang on,” I say slowly. “You took her to an out-of-the-way spot along the canal. You could have gotten her out on a boat by yourself, but instead of doing that, you hired a couple of low-level criminals to finish the job. Why?”

“I was careless,” she murmurs evasively.

Stefi is never careless. “That’s not the only thing that doesn’t make sense,” I continue. “You drugged Alina but got the dosage wrong. She regained consciousness before your guys could get her on the boat. Even more importantly, you left her with her phone.” The pieces fall into place with a click. “You wanted her to wake up and call for help.”

She doesn’t respond.

“You’re not answering my question.”

“You didn’t ask me one. What do you want me to say, Joao? I was in a rush to save Charlie, and I got sloppy.”

“No, I don’t think so. You forget I know you, Stefi. You don’t make mistakes.” My voice softens. “Ali’s phone was transmitting her location; there’s no way you’d forget to destroy it. You left Tomas a trail to follow and made sure there’d be enough time for him to get to her. Faced with an impossible choice, you did everything you could do to protect her. Why won’t you admit it?”

Her voice, when she replies, is shaky. “I’m not the person you think I am.”

I frown. What is she hiding from me? “I’m not going to stop hunting you,” I growl, a threat and a promise rolled into one. “I’m not going to let go. I will chase you to the end of the earth.”

“And then what?” she snarls. “You’ll take me to Venice? You’ll have to find me first.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve clashed, and it won’t be the last. I can picture her in my head, face tilted up to me, green eyes spitting fire, hands clenched into fists. I can picture cupping her chin in my hand, tugging her close, my lips finding her soft ones, feeling her anger melting into pure sweetness as she kisses me back.

My cock hardens at the image. Where is she right now? Is she in bed, too, naked under the covers? Is our clash turning her on? Once we started dating, our fights always ended in bed in an explosion of raw passion. Does she remember?

“I’ll find you.” My voice dips lower. “I’m going to keep you safe, whether you like it or not.” I finger the scrap of silk next to me. “You left your panties behind. They’re very pretty.”

“You took them?”

“Of course I did. You can’t leave DNA behind in a crime scene. Send me your address, and I’ll mail them to you.”

She chuckles, the sound rich and warm against my ear. “You really think I’m going to fall for that?”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to keep them.”

This conversation reminds me of all the times we used to call each other on jobs. We’d talk for hours about everything under the sun, and invariably, because we were horny teenagers who couldn’t keep our hands off each other, we’d end up having phone sex.

Some madness prompts me to bring that up. “Remember our phone calls? Are you going to think about me when you masturbate tonight, little fox? When you come, will it be with my name on your lips?”

She sucks in a breath. “You’re delusional.”

She’s trying to sound defiant, but once again, she sounds a little breathless. I hear the hitch in her voice, and intense satisfaction surges through me. Stefi’s not as unaffected by me as she’s pretending to be. She’s my wife. I know exactly what buttons to push, and I’m enough of an asshole to push them.

“I’ll be thinking of you tonight,” I continue. It’s a lie: I’m not planning to wait until tonight. I cannot . I only have to close my eyes and she’s here, standing in front of me, dressed in this scrap of black silk and nothing else. “Thinking about how hot and tight you felt when I thrust into you. You remember how you’d rake your nails down my back? Because I do. I’m going to fist myself with your panties wrapped around my cock, Stefi. And when I come, it’ll be you I’m thinking of.”

“Joao,” she whispers. “Please. . .”

What. The. Fuck.

I snap out of my trance at the sound of her soft plea. For the second time in twenty-four hours, my assignment is nowhere on my mind. Once again, I’ve lost sight of the mission, and I’m burning for Stefi, ready to drown in her remembered sweetness.

But the past is a lie, and my memories can’t be relied on. And if I don’t get my head out of my ass and focus on finding Stefi, Andrei Sidorov’s men will kill her before I can get her to the safety of Venice.

“Talk to you later, Stef,” I say tersely. Then, before I can do something stupid again, I hang up.

My fucking cock is hard as a rock. I’m holding her panties in my hands, and the sound of her voice is still in my ears, the scent of her on my fingers, and I can’t stop myself. I jerk myself off, stroking hard and fast, my hips bucking, my breathing shallow, the silk sliding on my erection, and I erupt almost instantly, her name on my lips.

Fuck.

The buzz of the orgasm fades, and common sense slowly returns, and with it, bitter self-recrimination. What the hell am I doing? One conversation with my wife, and I completely lose focus. It’s always been this way, and it looks like nothing’s changed in eight years. Stefi’s under my skin, tattooed into my heart. Instead of being furious about her long disappearance, I’m fantasizing about her. Instead of planning my next move, I’m jerking off to the sound of her voice.

I head into the shower, stand under freezing cold water, and give myself a stern talking-to. I make myself remember all the reasons that I don’t trust Stefi. Vanishing without a trace, letting me believe for eight years that she’s dead. Killing thirty-five people even though she escaped Henrik because she couldn’t bear to be an assassin anymore.

It’s only when I’m toweling myself dry that I realize that during our conversation, she inadvertently gave me a clue.

I know how to find Stefi.