Passionate Obsession by D.M. Mortier

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Mac

Ireland, a month later…

“Now perhaps you will tell me what all the caveman, over-the-top possessiveness was about?”

I had been back in Ireland for barely an hour before Kat cornered me in my study. To be honest, I had hoped that she would have forgotten about that and moved on. It’s been almost a month since I’ve seen her, and this was what she wanted to talk about?

I arrived in Ireland after successfully extracting the scientists and the generals from Cuba with the help of Colt and Justin. We used the same mission protocols we’d used to extract Dean and his family, except I went in alone to retrieve Dr. Everette, Dr. Forbes, and the Chinese, North Korean, Cuban, and Russian Generals. Colt and Justin hadn’t questioned me on the execution, but when I returned, Colt grinned.

“No wonder these assholes want you so badly.”

“They don’t know about me. They want my sons.” I smirked.

Colt and Justin looked stunned and then confused. Like true lawyers and ex-soldiers, they knew better than to ask any further questions.

With the Director’s contacts, the generals were placed in an Allied military prison without any hope of ever leaving or seeing sunlight again. Due process? Not in my vocabulary.

Colt had wanted to just kill the bastards, but they had intel that would be of benefit to the Agency. It would have been a colossal waste of valuable assets to destroy them prematurely.

The scientists were a different matter entirely. With Dr. Reiner’s records, we had enough evidence to put all three doctors away for life. However, because of the sensitive nature of what they could disclose and the number of U.S. soldiers to die under their government-sanctioned experiments, a congressional hearing would not be possible, nor could the military afford the airing of their dirty laundry in a public trial.

Of course, the Defense Department would insist that they could detain them indefinitely in a U.S. military prison. Given their track record of having sanctioned this shit to begin with, there was no way that the Director was leaving the doctors under any tender military care.

Since he saved my family’s life, Dr. Reiner, along with his wife, was taken to an isolated island in the Caribbean without a passport or any means of travel off the island. His children were placed in boarding school at his insistence, as he didn’t want them exiled as he was. Of course, they could still visit him whenever they liked. He got off lightly, I admit, but he gave me the gift of my family, so, I was feeling a bit benevolent.

“I don’t blame you for not trusting me to not produce the serum again,” he told me with a wry smile. “It may be important to note that I destroyed the formula after my colleagues tried to kill Katia, and I couldn’t remember it even if I tried.”

“That’s good to know.” We both knew that I wouldn’t take the chance that he would ever come into contact with any chemicals to try experimenting again. I would be watching him periodically to ensure he never stepped out of line.

As far as Dr. Everette and Dr. Forbes, again I decided to use Kat’s idea of blind incarceration to get around due process and trials. Dr. Everette was currently in a mental institution in Romania, while Dr. Forbes was in the Czech Republic. Each institution was given a substantial stipend to retain their new patients. Given their crimes, the bastards got off easy.

I sat back in the large leather chair, trying to appear as nonchalant as I could. Legs crossed at the knees. Hands placed comfortably on the armrests. Body relaxed. But I wasn’t relaxed. If the sight of her long legs and ass in those sexy shorts weren’t enough, certainly my insecurities when it came to her would have me hesitating. With the threat of the doctors out of the way, she could live her life as she pleased. The fear of losing her was too acute, too raw.

“I thought we dealt with your appalling lack of wifely greeting skills last month. Are you needing a refresher?” I was proud of that smooth drawl. Yeah, I didn’t want to talk about my Neanderthal behavior because I was very close to doing it again.

Kat came farther into the room.

I deliberately held her gaze because, if I continued looking at her delectable body, she would have every reason to call me a caveman again.

“No. I don’t need reminding, but I want what happened between us last month clarified because, as much as I loved what we did, I didn’t like the negative emotions behind it. I never expected it of you.”

“Perhaps you should clarify precisely what you’re referring to.” I was holding on to my supposed cool by the skin of my teeth and trying to buy time.

“Don’t do that, Ronin,” she said softly. “I have been nothing but honest with you. Why did you react the way that you did when we had to help Trey? You knew we had to help him, but you accused me of manufacturing a reason for going to him instead. I want to know why, especially when I have given you no reason to doubt me.”

Was she for real? “You have spent the past five years telling me how much you love the guy and how much you wanted to contact him. Why would I not question your motives? Where did your great love for him go? Where did the desire to see him go?”

“I haven’t told you I love him for five years. And sure, when I woke from the coma, I wanted to contact him. He was my fiancé after all. I haven’t spoken about Trey in almost four years.”

“You wanted to go to him when we had to go on the run the first time!”

“I didn’t want you to sacrifice your life for us,” she growled at me.

“Tell me that you hadn’t been using your powers to watch him.” How else would she have known about the attack on him? “Tell me that you haven’t wanted to contact him.” I didn’t try to hide the bitterness in my voice. It still irked me that after back-to-back missions, where I hadn’t touched her in days, her only focus had been on getting to the saint. And even now, I haven’t seen her or touched her in over a month, and she wanted clarification about him? What the fuck? I didn’t want to talk about the saint. I wanted my wife.

“First of all, I checked in on Trey from time to time because, whenever I had looked in on him, he was having difficulty moving on from me,” she told me quietly. “I was worried about him, and I’m sorry if it upsets you, but I’m not going to pretend that I don’t care about Trey.”

I scowled at her. I might have growled as well, but my stomach was churning with too much fear and sick dread. What if, after all this time, she decided that it was better to go back to him? She was safe now. Hell, she had enough powers to hold any threat at bay. She didn’t need me. What if she wanted her old life back? I’ve always suspected she still loved the guy, but to hear it? It was like a hot dagger to my gut.

She came around the desk and sat in my lap.

My body was frozen with dread, terrified of what she would tell me next. Was she trying to let me down gently?

“I do care about him, Ronin.” Her voice was so soft, her dark gaze so compelling that I couldn’t look away from her.

I felt as though I was drowning in the depths of her eyes. I swallowed audibly. “Well, you’re safe, and he’s safe now. We have neutralized the scientists, the generals, and no country would dare try resurrecting the experiments given the potential bad press. You can perhaps work something out with him. I’m sure if you explain about how the boys were conceived, because you didn’t tell him that. He thinks we made them the traditional way. If you tell him, he will honor your engagement.” I had been talking so fast I was forced to stop to take a breath.

“I have nothing to explain further to Trey.” She frowned at me and pushed her fingers in my hair in irritation.

“But—”

“I will explain nothing because there is nothing to explain. How the babies were conceived is nobody’s business but ours. You are my husband, they are our sons, I have nothing to explain.”

“He is your fiancé and your love.” Even saying that shit had my mouth drying. I felt as though I had a mouth filled with a bag of cotton.

“I love you, you big idiot.” Her voice bristled with exasperation.

Everything in me stilled. I kept looking at her expecting her to smile as though she were teasing me. But she didn’t. She held my gaze boldly, unflinching and with naked emotion. I had to be misreading her. “Are you sure, lass?” I hated it. Emotion and desperation, unfamiliar and unwanted, clogged my throat and made my eyes over bright. In all the years of my life, I had never been reduced to this.

“Ronin, I’ve loved you for years. And my love has only grown deeper in the past months. How can you not know?”

“B-but you can’t.” Stammering? Me. Really? This was what I was reduced to? I didn’t even know what I was saying anymore. What she was saying to me seemed so impossible. “You don’t know about me. You don’t know about the Agency.” She really didn’t know. How was I going to tell her? I could lose her if she knew. What if she thought I was a freak? I didn’t want to take the chance. I have been making excuses for over five years.

“I know all I need to know about you,” she teased and kissed my lips softly. “As far as the Agency goes, I have some doubts about the people who work there. There have been too many suspicious leaks from the Agency for you to trust them, especially the Director. Are you sure you can trust him?”

I wanted more of her kisses, so I couldn’t resist kissing her gently before responding. And I really didn’t want to talk about this. I wanted to make love to my wife while she still thought she was in love with me.

“You can trust the Agency, lass.” I didn’t want to lose the taste of her, so I kept my lips close to hers as we spoke. I loved the taste and smell of her and knew that I would always be addicted to everything about her.

“How?” she whispered when I finally let her up for air. “Calvin and Martha betrayed us. And the only person who could have possibly known our every move is the Director.”

I sighed, lifted her off my lap, and placed her onto the desk. I couldn’t hide this from her any longer. I stood, paced for a bit, trying to decide how to tell her.

“Mac? He knows everything about us, right? Do we always have to be looking over our shoulders?”

“You can trust the Director because I am the Director,” I told her softly.

“What?”

“I am the Director and have been since inception of the Agency.”

I watched as her frown of confusion deepened as my words finally settled in her mind. “Wait, what do you mean since inception? You told me that the Agency was founded in the fifties.”

“Yeah, it was.” Again, I waited for my meaning to penetrate.

“Would you please make sense? How could you have started the Agency in the fifties when you hadn’t been born yet?”

I sighed deeply, preparing to take a step that I might never be able to recover from. “The drugs seemed to have slowed down my aging.”

“Clearly,” she muttered sardonically.

What was clear was that she still wasn’t getting it. “I’m trying to tell you the truth about me, lass.”

“Yeah, right.” She chuckled nervously. “Would you be serious please?”

“I am being serious. I started the Agency.”

“But…but that would mean…” She stared at me with two deep grooves in her forehead, and then her eyes sparked with outrage. “You lied to me?”

“No. I have never lied to you. I might not have told you everything, but I’ve never lied to you.”

She jumped off the desk to stand glaring at me. “So, every time you told me that the Director said to do this, and the Director said to do that, you weren’t deliberately trying to mislead me? You weren’t lying?” She stalked toward me, and although her head barely reached my chest and I was a thousand times stronger than she was, I had no doubt she would try to kick my ass. “Tell me again how you weren’t lying then.”

“I told you what was required. My being the Director had no impact on our lives before—”

“Don’t even! You have been lying by omission incessantly, repeatedly!” She sliced her hand through the air sharply. “It had everything to do with our lives in the past few weeks when I was worried sick about who to trust.”

“There were so many times I wanted to tell you, but—"

“How old are you?” she gritted through her teeth, cutting me off ruthlessly.

“I was born in 1919,” I said hoarsely. I would have given anything to tell her differently, to have done this in a better way.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she whispered. “How?”

“How do I explain your ability to astral project or our sons’ abilities to move at the speed of light? The serum seemed to have affected all of us in significant ways without killing us.”

“So, you’re over one hundred years old and look like you’re in your early thirties?”

I shrugged. I mean, really, what else could I do? What could I say?

“So, the serum slowed down your aging? You’re not immortal or anything, are you?”

“I have aged since the serum was given to me. I was a young lad of twenty-one when it was given, and now I have the appearance of a man in his prime. So, no, I am not immortal. I age. I just age very slowly.

“Every time I think I can’t be shocked anymore, you go and prove me wrong.” She sounded as though she was at the end of her rope. “The lies, Mac.”

That one hurt. It hurt because she seemed to be hurting and she wasn’t even looking at me anymore. “I didn’t set out to lie to you, lass.” The words didn’t come out as strong as I imagined in my head. I sounded emotional, as if I were about to cry. Fuck that. I cleared my throat manfully. I had to get out of here before I did something that would strip me bare.

“But so much I believed from you was a lie anyway. What else did you keep from me? I feel as though I don’t know you anymore. And you keep telling me important stuff in a drip, drip fashion, handing details out like a bloody miser,” she muttered bitterly. “First, it was your name, the fact that you weren’t an FBI agent, which I and everyone else were fooled about, and then I, by accident, found out that you were meeting with an ex-fiancée, who you secretly visited!”

“I have explained all of that.”

“Yes, but it speaks to a pattern of behavior. A pattern of lying.” She shrieked at me. “You know before all of that happened, if anyone had asked me, I would have sworn on a stack of bibles that you were the most trustworthy man I knew. I trusted you implicitly. If you had told me that the sky was red and the sea purple, I would have believed it. But, no, you’re just like any other man, a damn liar.”

“Enough!” I growled. I’m not gonna lie. I was pissed that she kept bringing up old shit and that she had such a low opinion of me. “Yes, I am a man like any other man, but I am also a man who has had to hide who I am, hide what I can do, and protect millions of people in the bargain! I did what I did because I didn’t want to be a damn lab rat for eternity! I did it because I had to be careful who I trusted with that information. I’m sorry, but you also fell into that category. I’m sorry you don’t like my choices. And I’m sorry that you feel hurt or slighted by my choices, but here we are!” My sardonic sneer ensured that she knew unequivocally that I was anything but sorry. “I did what I did and would do it again to protect my family. To protect what is mine. Deal with it!”