damaged during an op.”
“No.” A beat. “And it turns out, I wasn’t receptive to the lesson my father wanted to teach me.”
I read between the lines and felt like the biggest asshole on the planet because I hadn’t changed the subject at all. Instead, I’d ended up drawing her focus right back to her blood relatives, right into the childhood she’d given the briefest overview of back at headquarters. I’d read between the lines the week before, too, understanding that during the briefing, there was a lot more she hadn’t said than she had.
So, me bringing her attention back to her family was right up there with Mud smooth.
Brit mentally smacked me across the head, but I didn’t need it. I already knew that the surefire way to get through those walls, to get Ava to trust me, was to not continue to poke at the open wound that was her family.
Shit.
“Tell me about the cameras,” I said, settling on something safer, even as the still-healing injury on my chest and back ached, reminding me of all the poking Olive had done nearly three weeks ago. I wouldn’t say she was strictly happy that I’d moved from light duty straight into a mission, but the team had needed to move quickly, and we’d made sure to have two other KTS teams on standby nearby, in case Ava’s theory panned out.
“I took care of the corridors and stairwells,” she said. “Olive is going to take care of several of the service areas. I don’t think any of us are expecting them to transport lettuce here on the beach, but we’ll make sure those are covered once it’s full dark.”
“Agreed.”
We would keep eyes on the situation, step in and interrupt any “lettuce” shipment if it came to fruition, making sure to do so with only enough firepower to make sure no innocents were harmed.
Our charge for this particular mission was to gather intel and to document any evidence of the Toscalo family and the Mikhailova clan working together. That included—
“Damn,” she whispered. “They really are part of this, aren’t they?”
I turned carefully to look where she indicated with a bob of her head, glancing to the right, to the man I recognized from KTS’s files on the Toscalo family. Since we were less familiar with the Italian mob, we’d spent our time on the flight over going through them. Which meant I knew from a glance that the man was Romeo Toscalo, Ava’s younger brother. Romeo strode through the sand, heading straight for the cabana where he shook hands with Ivankov, the two men laughing like they were old friends meeting for a fun afternoon, rather than two fucking bastards of humanity who were suspected of being involved in a variety of criminal activities around the globe.
Activities, until Ava’s algorithm, KTS had never connected.
We had always treated the crime families of Italy and the Russian mafia both as adversaries who needed to be taken down, but we never received intel that those adversaries may be working together.
“Romeo and Ivankov,” Ava muttered, sitting up and shifting closer when I pulled out my cell. We faked doing a selfie, while actually capturing several high-resolution shots of the meeting, and though this was work—just simple reconnaissance—the way Ava felt curled against my back as we faked our way through a few photographs definitely had nothing to do with KTS or criminal masterminds.
It was me and Ava.
That thread connecting us.
Normally, Ava was all sharp words and extreme focus—or she’d been that way before our time together and after. But during that week, she’d relaxed. She’d given me a glimpse of the woman inside, and I’d fallen fucking hard.
I’d thought it was the start of something.
In the end, she’d made it clear it was nothing more than sex and a good time and that she was going to move to another team if I continued pursuing her.
What could I do?
I either let her go, cherished the memories, and contented myself with the small slice of her in my life as it was, or I pushed . . . and lost all of her.
So, even though I missed the closeness we’d developed that week—talking old missions and TV shows and movies, eating and drinking, and yes, making love to the woman I adored—I knew when she slammed that door that I had to step back.
But I still grieved for what I’d lost. That feeling of utter rightness wasn’t something I’d ever found with anyone else, and the way