He shook his head. “No. Vinnie Rossano’s killed…” He gave a humourless laugh. “Fuck! He’s a fucking dead man.”
“You have to go?” I said more to try and get him focussed.
He nodded. “Aye. That fucker’s begging for a shallow grave.”
“Just be careful,” I whispered.
He looked at me and I saw his eyes soften. His hand reached for me, and I went to him. “I’ll come back,” he promised.
“You’d better.”
“I’ve got a reason.”
The ‘now’ at the end of that sentence was heavily implied, and I counselled myself against feeling too much about it. So, I just nodded.
Valen pressed a kiss to my lips, then slid wordlessly out my door and off into the night.
I went to look out my window to watch as he peeled out of the garage a few minutes later. The speed at which he left kicked gravel up behind his precious Viper. As I watched him go, a part of me wished he didn’t have to. Wished our world didn’t expect him to go and deal with assassinations and cleaning up other people’s kills.
Whoever Vinnie Rossano had killed, it sounded important, and I couldn’t help but feel a flare of hope that it might have been Kane.
I stayed on my window seat for a while longer as though me just sitting there could bring Valen back safely. Then, I realised, it wasn’t up to me. It couldn’t be up to me. It shouldn’t be up to me.
Did Ireallywish things were different? The tiny part of me who wanted Valen and wondered about that other life was awfully quiet on the matter. It was enough to make me think that, maybe, it was safer to not wish things could be different. If things could be different, then this thing with Valen had the power to be real and, if it was real, it had the power to destroy me when it ended. When he rejected me.
A Kincaid never marries.
It was so ingrained in our world that it may as well have been a foundation block upon which the rest was built. It was like a mantra. A Vanguard always rules. A Callahan does not lose. A Branch eeks vengeance. An O’Malley will always fight. A Fife will never waver. A Walton counts the coffers. A Kincaid never marries.
If Valen and I never had any hope because I had to marry Apollo, then it couldn’t be my fault when it ended. Even if the idea of Valen was wrapped up in the idea of the freedom that small part of me still craved, Apollo was my destiny – my fate, my future, my security, the security of other people’s lives.
Valen.
Apollo.
Freedom.
Destiny.
I wanted both of them for very different reasons. One was little more than a wish that warmed my dreams, the other was the path I had no choice but to tread yet I would do so willingly. And both of them were so very entwined into who I was now that I couldn’t see a way of untangling either of them.
Chapter Eleven
Valen did come back safely, but not for a few days and even Apollo could be found pacing in agitation. Gone was the man who was enamoured with our new relationship and in his place was only the man who worried for his friend and servant.
It was enough to have the anxiety eating away at me even when I wasn’t watching Apollo’s endless pacing and handwringing.
I didn’t know much about Vinnie Rossano except people’s reactions to his name and the fact he seemed to have it out for Archer. Not that I blamed him. I suspected a lot of people had it out for Archer. Vinnie was unlikely to be special in that regard. What was special was the way even Florence has reacted to his name.
And that had me terrified for the state Valen would return in.
But a couple of days after he’d left, a knock came at my door and I went to open it to see Valen standing there looking exhausted and bruised, but no worse than I’d seen him after his fight with Peskov.
“You’re alive,” was the first thing I decided to say to him.
He nodded. “I have to go and speak to Archer, but I wanted ye to know I kept my promise,” he said.
I smiled at him. “Thank you.”