Page 72 of Marked By the Devil

“I struggled with my marriage to Carina in the beginning because it was arranged. Forced. She was forced to be my wife and I struggled with letting myself think that she wanted to be married to me. That we could find love past the expectation to be together as an arranged couple.”

“I can see how that would’ve been a challenge.” He hadn’t really let any of us see that. He and Carina had gotten along well as far as I could tell. Some distrust was there in the beginning, but they worked it out.

“I think we all witnessed it with Lev and Mila too.”

“Well…” I tilted my head side to side. “That was obviously different. He bought her when she was still a contracted runner for the Cartels.”

“Yes,” he agreed and paused to yawn again. “But I saw how he struggled with that too. That she was only with him because she had to be. Not because she wanted to.”

I shook my head. “I know you can make a parallel to me and Wren, but it’s not like that.”

He sat back and laughed. “You stupid, smartass, whimsical son of a bitch. You kidnapped her. You snatched her right out of an alley after she was doing a stakeout. How is it not like that?”

“It isn’t.” I grinned at his disbelief. “Yes, we started out kind of rocky. I won’t deny that. But it didn’t take me long to see she wasn’t only some woman I captured.”

“Yeah. You realized she was a federal agent and put her to work for us.” He deadpanned. “That’s a hell of a love language you’ve got.”

“Love language?” I rolled my eyes.

“You know what I mean. You took her and forced her to be here. Then you forced her to work for us.” He held up his hands. “I’m not saying that anything you did was wrong. But in hindsight, it’s going to complicate how fast you might get in head over heels for her but prove to be lagging on her side.”

“What you’re not realizing is that she wanted to.”

He gave me another look, deadpan and dubious. “You’re not going to get far in saying she wanted to be kidnapped.”

I grinned. “Now that you mention it, maybe she has some more kinks than what I’ve discovered.”

He groaned.

“No, she didn’t want to be fucking kidnapped. She fought hard to get away and that’s why I had to intervene and knock her out as fast as I could. Wren’s not docile, all right?”

“I’m saying that she wanted to work for us. As soon as I showed her how we had files on Smithson and how corrupt he and Rico Johnson are, it lit a fire under her ass. She wants to make the world a better place, okay? That’s the background I’m dealing with. Her mom was a cop. So was her dad even though she didn’t meet him. She comes from a background of wanting to help the world and get rid of bad guys. That shit still applies. She’s taking a while to really get to the understanding that she’s doing that. That she’s helping to get rid of some of the evil in the world.” I shrugged. “She is. And that’s a good thing. It just so happens that as she stays with me, she does this with our brand of help.”

“And here I thought you were just fucking around with her for the hell of it.” He smirked at me.

“Not anymore.” I smiled. “I don’t know if it even started off mediocre.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to believe in love at first sight now.”

I laughed. “No. She wanted to kill me when she saw me chasing her. And I was too pissed at the time to think straight because someone had just tried to shoot Adrik.”

He shook his head. “I wonder if all this intel she’s getting and going through from that other agent will clue you in to who tried to have her killed.”

“No, it’s not like that. We know who tried to have her killed. Smithson. He put her on that stakeout in his place because he had to have seen the writing on the wall that someone wanted him taken out.”

“Then it’s only a matter of time until his own mistakes kill him. If not by us, then by someone else.”

“Damn right.”

He scooted forward on his chair, ready to get up. “One last word of advice, though?”

I tipped my chin up, all ears.

“Finding Gregori takes precedence over everything else.”

“I know.” And I did. While it was different and invigorating to look forward to the future I wanted to insist on with Wren, I couldn’t avoid that truth.

“I agree,” I told him as we stood. “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t also get excited about when that won’t be the case.”