Burke stared pointedly at his brother. “What Cole is trying to say in his Neanderthal way is that the elder Delgado was a very bad man and that a rival stabbed and killed him behind bars.”
“He deserved everything he got. The fucker trafficked young women. He filled client orders and sold them to brothels all over South America. He bought and sold girls to fulfill male fantasies, made them prostitutes and sex slaves.” Cole never flinched.
But Jessa did. She paled visibly. “Oh, my god. It’s so horrible.”
“A single word can’t describe that kind of hell.” Cole continued. “We got involved because we did some security work for Bezakistan when we were Navy SEALs. Some extremists kidnapped Sheikh al Mussad, and we rescued him.”
“Why? Is he a dictator? How does Delgado come into this picture? Were they in business together?”
Burke laughed at the thought. “Talib? No. He’s not a dictator, and he would never harm a woman. And he’d certainly never go into business with Marco. Though I will admit his family has a long history of kidnapping females. The women all ended up being very happy brides, however. Tal and his brothers were educated in London, so he runs Bezakistan like a business. A ridiculously profitable business. They’re a small country, but they’re sitting on a wealth of resources. Talib’s father decided to spread the wealth many years ago. Every citizen in the country gets a portion of the money from the oil they put out. It’s the single wealthiest country per capita in the world.”
She bit into her bottom lip as she considered what he’d said. “Then why would someone kidnap him?”
“The region doesn’t look kindly on the way the royal family runs the country. They cling to some very old practices.”
“Oh. The polyandry. Yeah, I know their neighboring countries think it’s a mortal sin.”
“Yes.” Cole smirked down at her. “But the mortal sin of all the brothers in a family sharing a single wife means there’s no need to divide the kingdom or the wealth. Anyway, my team was sent in to rescue the sheikh. Our government didn’t like the idea of a less friendly leader in control of all that oil.”
Cole’s eyes went dark as they always did when he thought of that day. Burke was pretty sure he was the only one to whom Cole had told the whole story. “Tal was in bad shape by the time we rescued him. We were trapped for a couple of days under fire until we got away.”
“Until you managed to kill everyone.” His brother still had nightmares.
Cole shrugged it off. “Same difference. We got cut off from my team, and I got him out of there. Anyway, we got to be friends. He does a lot of work with Black Oak Oil, the company Gavin and Dex run with their brother, Slade. When they were looking for a firm to handle outside security, Talib recommended us.”
“So when his cousin disappeared in New York City, he asked us to look for her,” Burke explained. “The morning we left you, we’d just gotten word that Delgado had a girl for us.”
“So you used a fake last name while you were investigating Marco’s father,” Jessa said. “You didn’t tell me the truth because…?”
“We were posing as men looking to buy a slave,” Cole said bluntly. “We had to build a whole cover story that would check out to Ricardo Delgado’s people. Any loose end could have unraveled the whole case.”
Burke winced at the indelicate way his brother put everything. “We had to work very carefully to even get the elder Delgado to talk to us. It was months before the cautious bastard agreed to a meeting. We took possession of our ‘slave’ about three hours after we left you that morning. When the buy went down, we recorded everything and turned it over to the feds. It started a whole shit storm. The FBI stormed the Delgado compound and arrested Ricardo. He was dead in prison six weeks later.”
“And now his son wants you to feel his pain.” Her fists clutched the folds of the blanket.
“Yes. He figured out that you were our weakness. I’m sure he started investigating us. It wouldn’t have taken much to find out that we’d hired a private investigator named Landry to keep tabs on you while we were gone. And apparently he bribed the PI to keep us apart.”
“What do you mean?” Jessa looked between the two of them as if searching for answers.
Cole scrubbed a hand through his hair. “We got regular reports, Jessa. We knew you went to Scotland, and Landry said that you’d gotten married there.”
Bitterness welled inside Burke. So much time lost. Marco Delgado had cost him in ways Burke couldn’t have imagined. Marco Delgado had made sure he hadn’t been there at the birth of his child. That he hadn’t held Jessa’s hand and comforted her. That he hadn’t been there when Caleb woke up in the middle of the night. Fucking Marco had played them like pawns on a chessboard.
Jessa rolled her eyes, a little huff coming out of her mouth. “He’s the reason you kept insisting that Angus was my husband. So this PI was on Marco’s payroll?”
“Right.” Burke sighed. “And Landry didn’t bother to mention your pregnancy. We would have come home. We were going to leave South America after we rescued Alea and come back to you. But he said that you’d married…” He shrugged. “We didn’t have anything to come home to but a fucking empty condo, so we decided to stay on and rescue as many as we could.”
She shook her head. “I went to Scotland early in March. That was long after you left me without a single phone call or e-mail. Or even a shred of real information about you. Don’t try to cover your asses now. You could have contacted me, asked me about my ‘marriage’ yourselves. I get that you were doing something important. I really do, but I was important, too. Well, I thought I was. I realize now that I misunderstood. I was a stupid little virgin who thought sex meant love.”
This was what he’d wanted to avoid. “Jessa, we told you we love you. I still love you. Cole still loves you.”
She stood, leaving the coffee and food behind. “You also told me you would come back for me, so you’ll forgive me if I find your undying devotion hard to believe. You lied about everything, Burke. You’re two dangerous men who amused yourselves with a little virgin who was dumb enough to get pregnant. I’m sure I was an interesting conquest, but that’s all I was. I’m going to take a shower. No, you are not invited. Just get this guy so I can get back to my son, and you two can get on with your lives.”
Cole reached out and grabbed her arm. “If you think we’re going to let you go at the end of this, you don’t know us at all.”
She pulled away. “Yeah, well, since I just found out your real last name and occupation in the last twenty-four hours, I think I can safely say that you’re right. I never really knew you. Now let me go. Don’t you need to clean your gun or shoot bad guys or something?”
As if he’d been burned, Cole released her. She turned and walked to the bathroom, her face set in stubborn lines. The door closed with a little slam.
“That went well. You know you could tone down the caveman act.” Burke looked down at his sandwich, but his stomach turned. He understood why Jessa didn’t want to eat.
“Yeah, well, your nice guy act isn’t working, either. I’m not letting her walk away. She belongs to us. She’s the mother of our child. I’m not going to sit back and wave as she leaves.”
So stubborn. “Neither am I, but I don’t think tying her up is going to work in this case.”
“I don’t see why not. She can’t leave if she’s bound to the bed with both of us deep inside her.”
His brother’s skull could be so fucking thick that not even a chainsaw could penetrate it. “We fucked up. We got scared for her safety and fucked up. We didn’t want her to know about our work or tell her how often we get our hands bloody. We should have told her everything, but we kept our mouths shut.”
Cole’s eyes turned down. “Yeah, well, would it have mattered? You saw how she reacted just now. Someone as sweet as Jessa doesn’t need a man as hard as me. Our job is dangerous. I’m not good for her and Caleb.”
“She’s not pissed about our work. She’s furious that we didn’t call. And the minute we thought there was an obstacle, we let her go. We shouldn’t have believed Landry or given up on Jessa without checking out this ‘husband’ ourselves. We caused this. We have to make it right.”
Cole’s whole body deflated. “You should work it out with her. I love her, but I’m too rough. I don’t fit into the life she deserves. I sure as hell can’t raise a kid, not when his mom thinks I’m nothing more than a gun-toting motherfucker.”
“Do not let Uncle Martin win. Whatever shit he told you, you aren’t unwanted and unlovable. Were you listening to her, damn it?”
But Cole was done. Burke could see it plainly. His brother turned away. “I need to make a few more calls. Did you get what you needed off the hard drive?”
Burke felt his hands tighten into fists. He knew how much Jessa meant to his brother. Cole had gone off on a two day drunk the day they got word she’d married someone else. Burke wasn’t sure Cole hadn’t been trying to kill himself since. He’d been reckless. Dangerous. Never around the women they had saved, but since he’d learned about Jessa’s marriage, he’d taken chances he wouldn’t have before.
Cole had accepted the loss not because he didn’t love her, but because he didn’t think he deserved her or that she could ever love him in return.
His mouth a flat line, Cole turned back to him. “I’ll kill Marco. My wedding gift to you two. I’ll kill him for her if it’s the last thing I do.”
Burke was suddenly afraid that Cole’s words would prove all too true.
Eleven months earlier, February 14 – New York City
“What did you say?” Jessa asked, her mind not able to really register the doctor’s words.
The middle-aged woman looked entirely competent in her white coat. “You’re pregnant.”
Pregnant. With child. Knocked up. Left behind.
“But I was on birth control,” she sputtered.
The doctor shrugged. She worked a low cost clinic for women. She’d obviously heard it all before. “No birth control is one hundred percent effective. I noticed on your chart that you came in and got the prescription about seven weeks ago. Did our pharmacist explain how it worked? You have to take them every day.”
She wasn’t stupid. “I know that.”
“And you should use condoms for the first month. It takes some time for the hormones to take effect in your body.” The doctor raised her eyebrows over very sensible looking glasses. “Did she go over all of that with you?”
Jessa shook her head, the reality starting to set in. “I told her I didn’t need a lecture. I was running late to a meeting. I thought I knew what I was doing.”
“You’ve never had girlfriends who were on the pill?” the doctor asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“No.” She’d never had real girlfriends, period. Not since sixth grade when her father decided she was far too smart to stay behind with her friends. She’d been accelerated, moved through grades with no thought to her social life. She hadn’t had one. She’d studied and when she could, worked on her art. She’d been far too young to be friends with her classmates. She’d gotten used to being alone.
Except for one week when she’d thought, just for a moment, that she wasn’t any more. Tears spilled on her cheeks.
“Oh, sweetie,” the doctor said, her demeanor changing in an instant. “It’s going to be okay. Can you call the father?”
Which one? She shook her head. She wasn’t going to go into her ménage relationship now. “I lost his number.”
The doctor took Jessa’s hand in hers. “You should look him up. He should know what’s happened. Look, you have options.”
“No. I want my baby.”
“Good. You’re not a child. You have a job. You can come here for your appointments. It’s going to be okay. But he should know.”
The doctor gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and left her to get dressed.
Twenty minutes later, she walked out, the frozen blast of Manhattan air hitting her straight in the chest. What she hadn’t told the doctor was that she’d already tried to find them. After she’d realized she had lost the number, she’d tried looking them up. She knew they lived in Dallas. She knew the name of their business.
Except it didn’t exist. Neither did they.
She walked back toward the hotel where she had to tell her sweet but flighty aunt that she was in trouble again. She was jostled and shoved by the crowd. She was surrounded by a throng of humanity, but she was alone.
