Delgano: A Dark Contemporary Interracial Romance

“That we have two different ideologies.”

“Be careful, Dr. Bentley,” he gently warned. “You’re like glass to me.”

“See through?”

He grinned. “And a joy to watch shatter.”

CHAPTER

SIX

Mora peered into the hallway to verify that both guards were still there before shutting the office door. “Sayeda, answer me. Did you tell him your real name?”

Sayeda took a seat and removed the head covering whose purpose she’d willfully obliterated in a mere three syllables.

“It was a slip-up,” she said.

The lie came out even more easily than it did with Hannah. She’d walked into the situation planning to tell Adrían at least a few truths. The way she’d seen it, if he knew her name, it would compromise their operation. If she compromised the operation, maybe they would send her home.

From what she’d read about Adrían, she’d expected to spend her days cooking for someone who would never respect her, or a man she would be so afraid of, she would freeze whenever he spoke.

Adrían was neither.

In fact, Adrían was kind of sweet.

“Nihal and Sayeda don’t sound the same,” Mora huffed. “Your name is supposed to be Nihal. Because of your mistake, Hannah had to go in and retrain the boys…and Sayeda, you caused a mess that I, as usual, must clean up. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. Right now, there’s no old life for you to return to. Confidential, top-secret documents were exposed that link me to your sperm donor and the fact that we might have had a child. It’s no time for juvenile attention-seeking. You’re twenty-two.”

Sayeda massaged her eyebrow in an attempt to banish the tension there, building like a rubber band. “I’m sorry, but isn’t it a little dismissive of you to expect me to conform to this new life in such a short period?” she asked. “I’m making the best of it. I’m even now helping Hannah transport innocent civilians to safer environments.”

“You’re so different from your cousin.”

“Because we’re different people, Mora. If you wanted me to be more like you, maybe you should have tried raising me.”

Who in their right mind handed their infant off to her sister only to show up nearly two decades later expecting to be seen as mother dearest? Then, amidst all of that, she’d learned that her father might have abducted her to be able to see her, and she’d lived with him when she was too young to remember him. The way Mora Bentley told it, she’d had no choice not to be a mother, but how were her father’s circumstances any different?

“Are you attracted to Adrían?” Mora asked. “Is that why you’re acting hypersexual?”

Sayeda swallowed a groan and what she suspected was a litany of curse words. Although Mora didn’t raise her, this was still her mother. The least she could do was muster up a modicum of respect.

“Sayeda, you have to be careful. You’re bipolar with hypersexual tendencies.”

“I’m not bipolar,” she said, swallowing another groan. “And I’m still a virgin.”

However, Adrían was so gorgeous, he added an erratic tick to her heartbeat, and that slight Brazilian lilt gave his words a melody that moved the butterflies from her stomach to her veins. Being around him made her feel like she could be herself for the first time in her life. There was no need to be anything but a twenty-two-year-old, especially with so much life left ahead of her.

Theoretically.

“Mora, I graduated from culinary school expecting to work as a sous chef before opening my own restaurant. Then, men in a black van showed up outside my apartment and whisked me away in the middle of the night. When I woke up, it was with you and Hannah standing over me, telling me that the life I had before was over. I mean, I left behind friends. A cat.”

“The cat wasn’t even yours,” Mora said, taking the seat across from her. “It was a stray you fed when you got home from school. And what friends? Were they real?”

“Now I’m delusional?”

“You grew up without both parents. Environments like that are known to cause various mental health illnesses.”

“You’re one of those absent parents!”

“I didn’t raise you because of my job. I signed an oath and had an obligation to my country. Your father wasn’t around because he didn’t love you.”