Page 25 of Destroyed With You

My entire body goes cold, but I hold his gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes,” he says. “You do.”

I say nothing for a moment, weighing my options. And the sad truth is. I don’t have many. Many? Try none. So I don’t argue. I don’t protest. I don’t deny. I just turn my face away from him and say, very simply, “Put a blanket over me.”

I want to cry. I never wanted him to know that truth. But, dammit, I’m too well trained. And though I close my eyes, the tears won’t come. I can’t even fake them and hope for his sympathy.

To his credit, he doesn’t flout his victory. Instead, he puts the blanket over me, just as I’d asked.

I swallow, then murmur, “Thank you.”

“Tell me about Hades.”

I fight the impulse to open my eyes and turn to look at him. His voice is further away now as if he’s standing across the room.

“Tell me the truth this time,” he says.

I stay silent.

“Damn it, Linda, Michelle, whatever the fuck your name is, I deserve the truth. What the hell, right? It’s not like I can use it against you.”

That confuses me enough that I do turn my head and look at him. He’s grinning, looking straight at me with an expression so cold and dangerous I feel even more exposed despite the blanket.

“Spousal privilege, darlin’. Like you said—we’re still married.”

“If I believed there was even a kernel of anything real left between us,” I say, “I’d tell you everything.”

“And if I believed there was ever anything real between us, I’d untie you.” He stares down at me. “Talk.”

I stay silent.

He draws an exasperated breath. “As far as the world knows, you’re dead. Which from my perspective, means that you can leave this room as you are or as the public records think you are.”

“You wouldn’t kill me.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“You forget how well I know you.”

“Knew me,” he says. “You don’t have a clue who I am now.”

He’s right about that. Maybe he consults for Hollywood, and maybe he doesn’t, but the man who tied me to this bed and knows that I’m an assassin is neither naive nor uninformed. I don’t know how deep his clearance goes, but I’d lay odds he’s in intelligence. Probably got pulled in after my purported death. He’d have wanted answers, after all.

As for the threat, though … well, about that, he’s bluffing. I’m almost certain of it.

Too bad almost could get me killed. And while sometimes I think that dying would be easier than living the life I’m stuck with, I’m not ready to leave this earth.

“I’m waiting,” he says. “And we both know you owe me the truth.”

Chapter Nine

Winston wanted to hate her. That longing—that need—sat in his gut like a stone.

He wished he could erase her from his mind, the pain he’d felt after she died and the joy he’d known during their time together. Yes, even that. He wanted it gone. Wiped out of existence.

Because what she was now stripped it of all meaning. An assassin. A fucking assassin. It was surreal, and the sooner he could hand her off to an SOC agent and then bring Bartlett and the laptop in safe, the better.

And he’d do that soon—he would.