No Love Lost (Masters & Mercenaries The Forgotten #5) - Lexi Blake Page 0,11

had bought her way in. The minute they realized she had a trust fund worth more than the gross national product of some small countries, they assumed she was in to be immediately promoted to a power position and dismissed her. Levi had been the only one who understood she wanted to be an operative, to do some good.

“We were friends,” he said quietly. “I am more your friend than anyone in your life. You simply can’t see it. I’ve stood by you even when you left me, even when you chose that bastard over me, even when you turned your back on me, I was faithful.”

“Faithful?”

He shrugged slightly. “Well, not in a physical sense, of course. A man has needs. But I’ve never cared about anyone the way I do you. Who saved you when you were in trouble in Hong Kong?”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.” He’d been the last person she would have called. By then they’d already had their falling out and she’d seen Levi in a different light.

“It certainly wasn’t Beck. He didn’t care. He was far too busy tanking his own career by assassinating an asset.”

“You can’t prove that.” Beck had been assigned to deal with the leader of a small nation with resources the US had needed at the time. Unfortunately, the leader had been a brutal dictator who killed and raped his way through his nation. Beck had been the one to pull the trigger and set off a revolution that had led to the birth of a new democracy.

But it had cost Beck a lot. He’d lost his golden boy status within the Agency and he’d never gotten it back. It had been that mission that led him to McKay-Taggart and the Lost Boys.

She’d found that trying to do good in the world was complex when working for the Agency. She’d been naïve. Not that she hadn’t understood there would be shades of gray. But it was all the red that really bothered her.

“Everyone knows it was Beck,” Levi said as though they were talking about a prank or something casual. “The fact that they couldn’t prove it merely means he’s good at covering his tracks. The point is while Beck was indulging his own bourgeois sense of morality, you were in MSS hands.”

“I was on the run from MSS,” she corrected. “Don’t make it sound like you rescued me from enemy forces.”

“I did rescue you from a dank basement where you’d been hiding for weeks,” he pointed out. “I got you out and you didn’t even thank me. Nor did you thank me for saving your life in Colorado.”

She really wished she could punch him. “You’re the reason I was shot.”

He waved that off. “It wasn’t me. It was a bad hire. Civilians. We really shouldn’t work with them. Give me a Special Ops team. I love those flag huggers. Well, most of the time. Every now and then you get that one bad apple.”

She didn’t mistake him for a second. “Don’t say his name.”

“Why not?” Levi asked in that smooth as silk voice of his. “After all, Beck makes everyone say it. Do you think Beck would go around calling himself by his dead half-brother’s name if he knew how many drugs the real Ezra Fain had run? If he knew that his sainted medic brother was a drug addict who used his position to help drug lords?”

She turned Levi’s way, pointing a finger at him. Well, all her fingers really since her hands were bound together. “You promised you would never tell him.”

It was one of the things that kept her awake at night. It was one of the secrets Levi held over her head. If Beck ever found out, he might kill her himself.

“And I’ve kept it. I’ve kept it despite the fact that I hate Beck and it would be so satisfying to let him know, to send him my report on his precious brother. Do you think I don’t sit up at night and imagine the look on his face? Only the fact that the fucker died kept me from parading him in front of the press.”

“But Ezra did, and Beck’s paid enough for that.” She’d paid. God, how she’d paid.

He sat back and sipped his champagne. “If you say so.” He was quiet for a moment, that hard truth sitting between them. “I think Beck took your arrest well.”

“Did you think he would try to rescue me and then you could kill him