Lib Novel Page 10
She rose to her feet, standing there in my blood-stained living room—a woman I knew so intimately and not at all.
“Maybe you don’t know my past, Nathan,” she said with an unwavering voice, “but you know me. You’ve seen me raw, unguarded.” She stepped closer, her presence filling the space between us. “My darkest secrets, my dirtiest fantasies—you’ve been a part of them all.”
Her words hit me like a punch to the gut. Because she was right; I knew Abby in ways that no background check or dossier could reveal.
Yet, there was a chasm now, wide and deep, born of lies and omissions.
“Keep cleaning,” I managed to say.
She sighed, her gaze dropping to the bloodied floor before returning to mine. “The job at the Red Lantern was my first assignment. I was supposed to just keep an eye on the neighborhood, inform on the comings and goings of Triad operatives.”
“First assignment, huh?” My voice was flat, the pieces falling into place. The Red Lantern—Grant Avenue Floral’s nextdoor neighbor, and she had been right there, a spy in our midst.
“Nothing personal,” she added quickly, as if reading my thoughts. “It was just…opportunity.”
“And the owner at the Red Lantern—did he know?” I asked.
“No, and he’s a good person so…please, just leave him out of it,” she said. “It was just an open job. The fact it was right next to your shop was pure luck.”
“Did you ever think it would end up like this?” I asked, the question slipping out before I could reel it back.
“Never,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I didn’t plan on…any of this.”
“Neither did I.”
I looked at her, really looked, seeing the woman who’d shared my bed, who’d laughed at my jokes, who’d fought by my side.
She was a stranger.
“And you really didn’t know who I was?” My question cut through the silence as I scrubbed at a patch of red. “When you seduced me…made me trust you.”
Her hand stilled, sponge hovering above the floor. She looked up, eyes meeting mine, and there was something raw in that gaze. “Nathan, I swear to you, I had no idea. The chemistry between us…it was real.”
“Real,” I echoed, tasting the bitterness of the word.
“Every laugh, every touch, I never faked a moment with you,” she said earnestly. “From the moment you gave me that bouquet, I was in.”
I let out a humorless chuckle, tossing my rag into the bucket. “And the night we first hooked up? You just happened to follow me to the flower shop when I left the club?”
She bit her lip, hesitating for a fraction of a second—a telltale sign I’d come to recognize as her wrestling with the truth. “It should be obvious, shouldn’t it?”
“Spell it out for me, Abby,” I pressed, standing up to face her. “Because right now, nothing about us is making any damn sense.”
Her shoulders squared as if she were girding herself for the next blow in a relentless bout. Her next words came not in English, but in fluid, flawless Mandarin. “I overheard your conversation.”
The foreign syllables hung in the air between us, and I stared at her, dumbstruck. My laughter erupted before I could stop it, a deep, incredulous sound that felt out of place in the grim tableau of our makeshift cleanup.
“You speak Mandarin? And not just that, but…hell, your pronunciation is perfect,” I said once I managed to catch my breath, the absurdity of the situation striking me all at once. “What else have you got tucked away? A black belt in karate? A secret recipe for the world’s best dumplings?”
She didn’t retort with her usual quick wit. Instead, Abby joined in with a laugh, lighter than mine, but it was tinged with an edge of something else—regret, maybe, or resignation.
But then, as quickly as it had come, the laughter faded, and a heavy silence settled over us like a shroud. We looked at each other and saw the cracks in our foundation widening into chasms. The trust we’d built, fragile and beautiful in its rarity, was shattered again, the pieces too sharp and scattered to reassemble.
“Abby…” I began, my voice a wreck of uncertainty. “What do we do now? We’re tied up in this…mess. Chemistry or not, the bombings haven’t stopped. My family’s still in the crosshairs, and if anyone finds out who you really are…” I trailed off, the unspoken consequences hanging in the air like an executioner’s blade.
“Both our lives would be worth less than nothing,” she finished for me, her voice steady but her eyes giving away the storm within.
Her gaze dropped to the floor, where the blood was almost entirely cleared away. “And now there’s a dead FBI agent in the mix, too,” she added, almost as an afterthought. Her dark humor didn’t mask the gravity of our predicament.