Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three (53 page)

Sam sat back in her leather chair, thinking. “Okay, if Lightner could out you, let’s out him first—tit for tat. I’ll have Jaime send his photo and all known aliases to al Jazeera right now. Let them break the story. By morning, everyone in the Middle East and most of Europe will know what Lightner’s new face looks like. Even if he’s in Mossad custody by then, everyone will know that he’s alive and exactly what he looks like. That buys us time and takes away his options. It also means Mossad can’t bury him without public outcry if they get to him first.”

“But he could still—”

“Let’s not devolve to worrying about hypotheticals,
mija,
” Sam interrupted gently. “Anything he says after that will seem like a ploy for a deal. No one believes desperate madmen who are backed into corners. Now get back here, but keep monitoring his phone. I want to hear every minute of this as it goes down.”

As soon as she hung up, Alejandro pushed away from the desk, thrusting his hands through his hair. “This is bad, Wyatt. We can’t get our hands around this guy, and now he knows Rox is alive.”

“Why did she fake her death to begin with?” Jack asked quietly, crossing his arms as he leaned against her desk.

“She didn’t,” Sam answered, rubbing her brow. “I did.”

Alejandro made a frustrated sound. “I should have been there. Not a goddamn day goes by that I don’t regret not killing that piece of shit myself.”

Sam shook her head at him. “Don’t relive this, de Soto. You were on a mission. No one blames you.”

“
I
blame me,” he said harshly, slapping his chest. “If I’d been a better brother. If I’d gone back to Chicago more—I would have known what Rox was getting into. I could have stopped it—”

“Could have, would have, should have doesn’t change anything,” Sam interrupted, holding her hand up. “Trust me when I say this, Alejo: Leave the past in the past. You can stretch yourself on the rack as much as you want for all your sins, but what good will it do you in the end?”

Jack’s mouth curved in an ironic twist. “You realize the same could be applied to you, don’t you?”

Sam sighed. “I know; I know—it’s easier to preach about it than to apply the same logic to myself.”

“Excuse me. I need to go beat on a bag for a few minutes,” Alejandro said as he opened the library door and walked out.

Jack watched him go before turning to her. “Will you tell me what you meant when you said you faked her death?” he asked quietly in the cool, calm of her office. “Jaime found her death certificate. The coroner’s report said that she’d been killed in a warehouse fire six years ago.”

Sam dropped her head back on the supple leather of her father’s desk chair. She listened to the familiar creaks as she rocked back, staring up at the exposed beams in the ceiling. She recalled that long ago night, remembered the frantic call from Rita on an aircraft carrier somewhere on the Indian Ocean.
God, that had been so long ago
. The genesis of her new life, the foundation on which she would later use to build Lennox Chase with Carey…the beginning of Rox’s rise from the ashes into the powerhouse she was today.

“Did you know Rox when she was younger?” Sam asked.

Jack shook his head. “Honestly, I barely knew Alejandro. He came around to the gym a few times when we were growing up. Dad used to coach boxing for the Italian Youth League, and he brought Alejandro down a few times, trying to keep him out of trouble. He was a good boxer, even then. Big chip on his shoulder, from what I remembered. Use to argue with the ref constantly if he didn’t like the calls.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Sam smiled in spite of herself. “Rox is Alejandro’s kid sister. Total punk when she was growing up. I remember meeting her when she was like thirteen or fourteen. Even then she was a little
chola
.” She laughed at the memory of little Roxy trying to look all hard with her Sharpie eyeliner, big hoop earrings, and baggy flannel shirts. “That girl was full-on thug-life. Started getting mixed up with the Latin Kings and Queens after Alejo went to college. He and Rita were constantly worried about her.”

Jack cocked his head. “Who’s Rita?”

She rubbed her brow again. There was so much she never told him. He’d always been so open about his life, and she’d spent so much time cutting him off at the pass, only letting him close enough to get glimpses, it had been nearly unconscious on her part. For the first time, this vast expanse of the past that she’d never even considered sharing with Jack mortified her.

“Marguerite Ramos was Alejandro and Rox’s first cousin. We were in ROTC together at Texas A&M.”

“Was…” he murmured quietly, picking up on her use of the past tense.

“She was killed in Tikrit on her third tour. I loved her like a sister,” she admitted, struggling to tamp down on the wellspring of old sadness. “She was my best friend since I was eighteen. We went into the Navy together. For a while there, we were inseparable.”

Jack nodded slowly in understanding. “Another terrible loss.” He slipped behind the big leather chair, settling his hands over her shoulders, gently kneading the stress accumulating there. She leaned back, grateful for the small comfort.

“Rita called me one night, panicking. I was in Chicago by then, working as an attorney. Roxy had missed their check-in phone call, and apparently she never did that. Rita was worried because Rox had gotten in deep with one of the Incas in the Kings. A real brutal motherfucker by the name of Joaquín Silva.”

Jack’s hands stilled on her shoulders. “I remember him—Dad was always trying to indict him when he was the DA. Nothing ever stuck though. No one would testify to anything.”

“That sounds about right.” She nodded. “Joaquín was smart. Too fucking smart to get caught doing anything. His street name was ‘Teflon.’ Some say that’s how he rose to Inca status so young. Nothing stuck to him,” she said bitterly, recalling how he’d hurt Rox. How he’d laughed over her bloody and beaten body, dangling from a chain like a piece of meat.

“Did Roxanne work for him?” Jack asked after a moment. “Were they involved?”

“Both,” Sam replied. “She married him at eighteen. She was his queen, another leader on the rise, doing his bidding. That’s why Rita was so freaked out when Rox missed their call. She knew it would come to a head one day, so she begged Rox to check in with her once a week. Rita was in the Signal Corps, so she went out of her way to make sure she reached out, no matter where she was in the world.”

Jack waited as she sifted through her recollections of that night, continuing to knead her shoulders gently.

“When Rita called, I knew I had to step in to help. Carey was in Chicago by then, fresh out of the SEALs. He’d started a private security company, and when I called him to get geared up, he insisted on going with me. He had the Chicago PD connections to get enough dirt on where Joaquín might be, his neighborhood strongholds, the other street thugs suspected of being in his crew.”

“You considered going in alone?” Jack asked, sounding strangled as he squeezed her shoulders hard.

Sam winced, looking up at him. “I was just going to do recon—see what I was up against, and to see if Rita really had anything real to worry about.”

Jack breathed in deep through his nose, trying to stay calm. She slipped a hand over his. “This was years ago,” she reminded him. “We didn’t even know each other then.”

“You take incredible risks,
tesoro
,” he answered, his voice all gravel as he relaxed his grip.

She raised her brows. “Do you want me to continue or do you want to give me a lecture on my propensity for peril?”

“
Propensity?”
Jack scoffed, his silver eyes bright with consternation. “You’re like a walking death wish,
tesoro
.”

She raised a brow. “You sure you want to hear about the rest then?”

Jack released a pent-up sigh. “Go on.”

“Well, let’s say I’m glad Carey was with me,” she continued slowly. “He figured out Joaquín was running a stash house in an old sheet metal warehouse in Pilsen. That piece of shit had Roxy chained up in a warehouse like a rack of beef. He was coked out of his mind, beating the shit out of her. He kept accusing her of trying to take over his territory, of screwing other Incas to try to get to the top. She was damn near dead by the time we found her. Unrecognizable, he’d beat her so bad.”

“Because guys like Joaquín don’t get to harm people I care about and live to tell about it,” Samantha interrupted, unrepentant, her dark eyes fierce with the heat of her ire. “I slaughtered that asshole and I’d do it again. No question.”

Jack was silent a long time. She suspected it was because he was at war with himself, just as much as he was at odds with her decisions. Jack lived a charmed life. He’d never been faced with life-or-death decisions. He’d never been threatened or had the people he cared about put in harm’s way—until he’d met her. But Sam knew his heart. Jack had the heart of a lion. He may be perfectly civilized in the board room, but the truth was, he’d dismantle anyone who tried to hurt anyone he loved. She saw it in him, just as much as she knew it within herself. She saw his truth before he’d even managed to wrap his mind around it.

“Was he alone with Roxanne?” Jack finally asked.

“No,” Sam shook her head. “He had his crew with him. Between Carey and me, we managed to finish them off. It helped that we had the element of surprise in our favor and the fact that most of them were high too,” she admitted.

“Why did you fake her death? Why not just get her out?”

Sam sighed. “Joaquín was linked to the Sinaloa Cartel. He was becoming one of the biggest heroin dealers in Chicago, and I knew if Roxanne was suspected in his death, she’d never be safe. So we made it look like a rival gang hit. Carey destroyed all the heroin, and I took off all of Rox’s jewelry and put it on a dead whore who must have OD’d while they were partying. Then I set the place on fire. I razed that warehouse to the ground. We paid off the ME to say it was Roxanne’s body.”

“Holy shit,” Jack breathed, tense behind her.

“I wanted her to have a new life. A fresh chance. That would never happen if the Kings thought she’d somehow survived. And honestly, I wasn’t sure she’d make it,” Sam took in a shaky breath, recalling the mangled mess of blood and flesh she’d found that night. “Rox was so fucked up—she was—” she stopped, her voice caught in her throat. “Joaquín had broken so many bones, she looked like pulp. We took her to the hospital where JR was doing his trauma residency. Signed her in as a Jane Doe.”

“Jay Ross?” Jack recalled. “The same doctor who treated me after the fight?”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “He works for us now, but yes—he helped save her life that night. But even he doesn’t know who she really is. I took her out of the hospital as soon as she was well enough to transfer. I hid her in a villa I keep near São Paulo while she recovered.”

“This is why Alejandro feels like he owes you,” Jack murmured in realization. “I didn’t understand before.”

“He doesn’t owe me, Jack.” Sam shook her head. “I’ve told him that a hundred times. I did it for Rita and for Roxy.”

Jack nodded minutely before he stepped back, moving toward the windows. He stood looking out at the gardens for so long, Sam resigned herself to hearing the words she’d been waiting for him to say since they first met…
I can’t do this
.

“You want out,” she said flatly, preparing for the inevitable. “It’s too much, isn’t it? First Rio, then Nazar, Lightner, now this… it’s too much for any one man to handle. I get it—”

“Stop—just
stop
.” Jack stalked toward her, his silver eyes flashing. “You have a very bad habit of putting words into my mouth,
tesoro
. And trying to make decisions for me, I might add.”

Her chin came up. “I’m just cutting you off at the pass, Jack. You don’t need to come up with any good excuses to walk out.”

Jack’s silver eyes narrowed. “When are you going to admit you’re protecting what’s left of your heart, Samantha? When are you going to stop assuming I’ll leave you, for being unapologetically honest with me, when that’s exactly what I’ve asked for?”

“You will leave.” She looked away, swallowing. “Everyone does, eventually.”

Jack rounded the desk so fast and had her up and in his arms, she was surprised by it. “You’re an irrationally suspicious, short-tempered and jagged goddess of a woman, Samantha,” he told her as he glared down at her with those stunning eyes of his. “You make me feel crazy and jealous and wild half the time, but I
love
you.” He shook her gently, caught somewhere between frustration and desire. “I
fucking love you
. What will it take for you to believe me?”

They stared at each other, the coiled-tight tension so thick between them, she could have sliced it with a knife.

“Do you believe me?”

Did she? God, she
wanted
to. So much. But she’d lost so much faith in her life. Could she stand it if she trusted him and he fell through on her, like the rest?

“I shouldn’t.”

He pulled her closer. “But you do.”

She swallowed hard. “We shouldn’t.”

“But we will,” he promised her, his deep baritone ardent, hypnotizing.

Then he kissed her. Kissed her with all the pent up passion, heat, and need that made her feel like she was being claimed. And for the first time in a long time, Samantha wanted him, wanted
this
more than she wanted to protect herself. She pressed her mouth to his, the room falling into a slow spin around them, her heartbeat pounding—or was it his?

She found herself covered by a hotly aroused, completely adamant male, his weight electrifying. Jack muttered something against her mouth, but Samantha didn’t catch it. She was too absorbed in the sinuous glide of his tongue against hers as all conversations and protests stopped, brushed away with the feeling of his fingertips tracing down the soft, fine skin covering her rib cage, making her shiver. Something huge filled the longing between them, something unafraid. Her arms curled around him, wanting him with an intensity that belied her worries or misgivings.