and terminal with a military-hardened countenance, he stepped off the plane and held his hand out to Luna. “It’s been a long time, André.”
“Too long,” Luna agreed as they shook.
Trefor held his hand out to me. “After all these years, if you weren’t in a Luna and Associates shirt, I still wouldn’t be able to tell you apart from Vance.”
“You aren’t the only one.” Most people couldn’t.
In a rare show of emotion, Trefor half smiled. Then his expression locked back down. “Did your brother brief you?”
“No.”
Trefor nodded once, but he didn’t elaborate.
“He called me a half hour ago.” Luna tipped his chin toward the Gulfstream. “Who’s the client?”
Trefor’s vigilant gaze swept across the tarmac, and he took in the terminal again. “Not a client.” He glanced at Luna. “More like a favor.” His gaze cut to me. “An old friend of you and your brother.”
We didn’t have any of the same friends. We never had.
Trefor watched me for a reaction. When I gave him none, he nodded as if in appreciation. “Still keeping it close, I see.” He turned toward the Gulfstream and glanced up at the pilot, giving him the hand signal for enter. “Let’s talk on the plane, gentlemen.”
The pilot disappeared from the cockpit window, and a moment later, he opened the door. With his hand on a 9mm in his shoulder holster, he took in the airport and the three of us in a single glance. “All clear?” he asked Trefor.
“Affirmative,” Trefor answered, ascending the steps. “André Luna, Ronan Conlon, this is one of my men, Zane Silas.”
Luna eyed Silas as he held out his hand. “I think we’ve met.”
Silas nodded. “Once. Helmand Province. Helped your unit out of a jam.”
“We got into a few,” Luna admitted.
Silas smiled. “Seemed to happen a lot when Neil Christensen was around.”
Luna chuckled. “That would be true.”
“How is Christensen?” Silas asked.
“Exactly the same,” Luna replied.
“Not surprising.” Silas turned to me. “Heard a lot about you over the years. Nice to finally meet you. The resemblance is uncanny though. Not sure I could tell you two apart.”
“Don’t listen to him,” someone with a pitch and timbre identical to mine piped up from behind Trefor. “I’m better looking.” His smile wide, Vance stepped toward the front of the cabin and slapped me on the shoulder. “It’s been a minute, brother.”
Three pairs of eyes took in me and my twin standing next to each other.
Vance chuckled. “The way they’re staring, you’d think they all saw a ghost.”
A female voice, lilting and haunting, one I never thought I would hear in person again, spoke from behind Vance. “Maybe I’m looking at a ghost.”
Vance moved aside, and my heart fucking stopped.
Stunning and regal, my past stared at me.
Sanaa Narine.
Known simply as Sanaa.
The single biggest female recording artist in the world took me in with her dark-eyed gaze. “Hello, Ronan.”
My heart faltering worse than at my first sold-out concert, my eyes drank in the one sight that could bring me to my knees.
Ronan Conlon.
My first love.
My only love.
Taller, darker, angrier, and more muscled, he stood before me a man.
A man who’d gone to war thinking I’d betrayed him in the worst way possible. A man who’d defended me even after I’d hurt him.
Knowing how to perform, my voice didn’t falter. “Hello, Ronan.”
The place on his throat I used to hold my hand over every time he spoke, because it was so mesmerizing as the vibrations tickled my fingers, moved with a swallow.
Dark, quiet, my name passed his lips. “Sanaa.”
The five letters my mother had given me didn’t leave his mouth with reverence like they used to, but instead with the force of a sin said aloud.
All the air left my trained lungs, and I wondered if he called out for me late at night like I did for him. After all my words had been poured onto paper, after I’d worked my fingers raw strumming my guitar, after shedding tears and giving every hurt into the only thing keeping me sane—that’s when I ached for him the most.
Wondering if he slept alone, wondering if his skin still tasted like hot Miami sun and promises, wondering if his embrace would still feel like the only home I’d ever had—I drank him in.
But Vance had lied.
He wasn’t the better-looking one. Vance never was. His brother was everything he wasn’t. Beautiful, harsh, and darkly quiet, his whispered compliments could slice you as easily as his intense stare. Ronan had been my everything. My future, my escape, my heart.
Now there was