happened to her. I moved away from my village, and I understand that eventually, she came over here as I did. I also understand she got mated and had some young. Two, I think. Which is a blessing.” He rubbed his eyes. “After everything she did for me when I was a young, I just wanted her to have a good life. A long, happy, healthy life.”
“So you did love her.”
“I told you. It wasn’t like that.”
“No, I mean—you loved her as in she mattered to you.”
“She did.” The breath that came out of him was sharp and short. “But enough about her.”
“Okay.”
He cleared his throat. “I was a natural born soldier. I was good at… what I did. So I was recruited to fight the enemy.”
“Was this just after nine-eleven? You must have been so young. I mean, how old are you? And what country did you fight for?”
“In times of war, you do what needs to be done. And it was the best use of me. Before the structure of my… unit, I guess you’d call it, I was doing contract killing. My cousin was the one who got me into the service—”
“Wait.” Jo glanced over at him. “Contract killing?”
“Yes.” He looked at her. “Don’t make a hero out of me, Jo. It won’t serve you well.”
“Do you ever regret what you did? What if you killed someone who was innocent?”
“I didn’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I only accepted certain kinds of jobs.”
“I can’t imagine taking someone’s life.”
“Sometimes it’s easier than you think. If someone threatened you, your immediate family, your blooded kin? You’d be surprised what you can do in that moment. Civilians can turn into soldiers pretty damn quick in those circumstances.”
“You definitely see things like a military man,” she murmured.
“Always. And I will defend me and mine against all comers. It doesn’t matter who they are or how otherwise virtuous they may be. If you are a danger to me? To my brothers? To those I serve? You will submit to me. I will take the payment for your indiscretion out of your flesh. And when I am finished? I will never think of you again—not because I am troubled by what I have done, but because you do not matter to me and neither does your death.”
A cold fear curled in Jo’s chest. “I cannot fathom those deductions. That conclusion. I mean, a life is a life.”
“Then you haven’t looked into the eyes of someone who is going to kill you solely because you are not like them. Because you do not believe the same things they do. Because you are living a different kind of life. Wartime is not the same as peacetime.”
Jo shook her head. “Anyway, so you said your cousin got you into the military? What branch? Or was it, like, Special Forces?”
“Yes, something like covert ops. We fought for… years over in the Old Country. Then the focus of the conflict changed course and I came to America with the leader of my squadron. After some… reorientation… we fell in line with the powerful male I work for the now. And that brings us up to date.”
Jo thought of the flash of attraction she had felt when she had seen him in all that leather, with all those weapons on his body. He had seemed so thrilling and mysterious. Now, she confronted the reality of what the guns and knives were used for. What they did. What his body had done to other bodies.
“What would you be doing with your life if the war hadn’t happened?”
There was a pause. “I would have been a farmer.” He shifted in his seat. “I would have liked to have a plot of land I could cultivate. Some animals to care for—horses to ride, cows to graze and milk. I would have liked… to be one with the earth.”
As Syn seemed to become steeped in sorrow, he lifted his palms and stared down at them, and she imagined he was picturing his hands in good topsoil, or traveling down the flank of a healthy horse, or cradling a newborn calf.
“A farmer,” she said softly.
“Aye.” He put his palms down on his thighs. “But that is not how things went.”
They were silent for a while. Then she felt compelled to say, “I believe you. Everything you said, I believe.”
He leaned to the side and rooted around inside his leather jacket. Taking out a slim wallet, he presented her with a laminated card.