Chapter 10 - THE CONFESSION EVAN COULD NO LONGER HIDE
Jenna waited until we were alone.
Then she closed my office door.
“You love me.”
It was not a question.
I looked at the city through the windows.
“That’s what you got from all this?”
“Daniel wrote ‘until Jenna chooses him.’ Ryan keeps saying I matter to you. Your entire security team acts like my coffee preference is classified information.”
I said nothing.
She stepped closer.
“How long?”
“Jenna.”
“How long?”
There are men I have interrogated for hours without revealing anything.
She broke me in six seconds.
“Two years.”
Her face softened.
“Since when?”
“Before I hired you.”
“You knew me before the interview?”
“I saw you at the Denver Children’s Foundation gala.”
She frowned.
“The night that investor yelled at the waitress?”
“You told him if money made him cruel, he was spending it wrong.”
Her lips parted.
“You were there?”
“I was across the room.”
“And then my résumé appeared?”
“Three weeks later.”
“You hired me because you liked me?”
“I interviewed fourteen candidates.”
“That was not my question.”
“Yes.”
She stared at me.
Then laughed once, almost disbelieving.
“You spent two years pretending you barely tolerated me.”
“I thought it was safer.”
“For whom?”
“Both of us.”
“That worked beautifully.”
I smiled despite myself.
She stepped closer.
“Evan, what happened on that balcony wasn’t fake for me.”
My pulse changed.
“It wasn’t fake for me either.”
“Good.”
Then she kissed me.
This time there was no audience.
No Ryan.
No family.
No excuse.
When she pulled away, I rested my forehead against hers.
“I love you.”
She smiled.
“You look terrified.”
“I’ve been shot twice.”
“And?”
“This is worse.”
She laughed.
Then every alarm in Blackwood Tower activated.
Red emergency lights flashed.
My phone showed a security breach.
Private elevator.
Top floor.
Someone was coming directly to us.
I pushed Jenna behind me and drew my weapon.
The elevator doors opened.
A man stepped out slowly.
Thinner than I remembered.
Scarred along one side of his face.
Walking with a cane.
But alive.
I forgot how to breathe.
“Daniel?”
My brother looked at me.
For six years, I had imagined what I would say if I could speak to him again.
Nothing came.
Daniel smiled sadly.
“Hey, Ev.”
Then he looked at Jenna.
His expression changed.
“We have to leave.”
“Why?”
He closed the elevator doors behind him.
“Because Victor knows I’m alive.”
May you like
Daniel looked at the security monitor.
“And the men downstairs don’t work for you anymore.”
