The Art of You

Focus up. I sent the message to myself, hoping it’d download and compute as a directive. But the order didn’t seem to be registering as Bella and I made our way down the stairs to meet up with everyone.

Because did I really just tell Bella I wouldn’t mind her carrying my child? The words had fallen so fast from my mouth, it appeared her lack of filter was rubbing off on me. She’d probably thought I’d meant my last comment to her as a joke, but I had a feeling she’d be wrong.

Christ, we hadn’t even had sex yet, and I was already mentally building us a house and constructing a crib for our child.

No. Children. Plural. And whenever my ticket was punched, Bella would have our kids in her life to love and protect her.

She reached for my hand, locking our palms together, and I went dead still on the bottom step. Had she overheard my thoughts somehow? Did she know I was imagining our dream house together? Me, the guy who didn’t do relationships, who fucked just to fuck. Well, at least until this woman kissed me in Rome.

“You okay?” Her soft tone implored me to look her in the eyes and hide the fact I was un-fucking-raveling. I’d vaulted right over a few relationship steps up in my office. Went straight for what I really wanted deep down and didn’t truly understand. Not until recently. Not until I’d almost lost her. Not until I’d almost lost everything.

A family. With her.

“I’m sorry for . . .” What I said? I left those last three words in my head, because wouldn’t they be a lie? I wasn’t sorry for my words. Maybe for the timing, but that was about it.

“Ready?” Enzo’s simple question was a backhand over a bruise, stealing my attention back to reality.

Maybe that was for the better. I didn’t trust myself not to go ahead and skip another step. Drop to my knee right there and ask her to marry me. Make it as official in real life as it was in my head.

Yeah, consider me awake now. Eyes wide open. All I saw was her and our future. Fuck everyone and anything that tried to get in our way. Especially my own damn what-if fears.

“Yeah, we’re ready,” I finally spat out, taking that last step down, which felt entirely too symbolic of something much bigger.

Bella let go of my hand only once we were in the former living room we’d converted to a war room a few months back.

Alessandro and Callie joined us a minute later. He was in the process of tucking his shirt into his pants, not giving a damn everyone knew what he’d just been up to in his office.

The second Alessandro’s foot passed the threshold, Adelina cut right to it. “Seth Maverick delivered the classified files to Agent Clarke because he was threatened.”

“Start from the beginning of what you told me,” Constantine prompted, arms folded with his back to the wall opposite me.

Adelina had my undivided attention as she brought us up to speed. “Sydney spoke with her ex-husband for us, and when he wasn’t cooperative, she took a less traditional approach to get him to share the information we needed.”

“Moves fast. I like it,” Alessandro remarked, looping his arm around his wife.

“She waterboard him?” Enzo asked. “I would’ve loved to have done that and then some to Maria’s ex.”

The fact he’d shown mercy to Maria’s ex-husband still went down in my book as one of the greatest shocks of my lifetime. It was also proof people could evolve.

“No, but she got fairly agitated with him and may have lost her temper at one point. I can’t say I blame her.” Adelina opened her phone and motioned to Constantine to turn on the TV, and she screenshared the video to it. “She filmed a message for you.”

In the video, Seth was seated in a dark room with his hands behind his back, ankles taped to the chair. A blonde version of Lara Croft, with a bow at her back, stalked behind him, grabbed his hair, then forced his head up so he was staring at the camera.

“I like her,” Callie commented, and Alessandro kissed the top of his wife’s head.

I focused back on the screen as Sydney said, “Say word for word what you told me. Don’t leave out anything.”

Seth hissed a curse or two before speaking. “Three weeks ago I received a zip file from an unknown address. Just a string of numbers and letters. I sent it to trash, assuming it was spam. Next day, the same email. This time the subject line read: Urgent, and the subject line included my son’s name, so I opened it.” He paused to catch his breath, but Sydney kept hold of his hair, ensuring his eyes remained on the camera. “I was ordered to download the files and wait for instructions. I would’ve reported the email to the Pentagon, but there was a photo inside the email that didn’t require downloading. It was of my son outside his school. I opened the image and checked the location and time. It’d been taken a minute before the email was sent.”

“Our son,” Sydney rasped.

Now I understood why she was pissed. Seth had kept her in the dark on something involving their child. I’d have gone ahead and tortured him. Forget waterboarding. I’d use a scalpel to get the answers from him.

“Go on,” Sydney prompted, and Seth gritted out something about his pain level, which she ignored.

“Another email came a second later. They must’ve tracked the email and knew it’d been opened. They informed me our son had eyes on him, and a sniper could easily take a head shot. If I were to report the email or tell anyone, especially my lovely ex-wife here,” he said while forcibly twisting his head to try and look up at her, “they’d take the shot.”

Sydney peered at the screen. “There were twenty classified documents in the folder. I had a look at them an hour ago. Only one file pertained to the 2010 SEAL op. The rest were all other examples of how bad intel or the CIA’s lack of action led to military deaths.”

“What?” Caught up in my fury over the information, I forgot I was watching a recording, so she couldn’t answer me back.

“The embassy attack last October was in there as well,” Sydney added before ordering her ex-husband to continue talking.

This was getting worse by the second.

Bella reached for my hand, not caring we were in front of anyone. The feel of her palm with mine steadied my pulse.

“The next day, the sender demanded I personally share the files with a Special Agent Clarke at New York’s FBI field office. They wanted Clarke’s girlfriend to publish an exposé story about what I gave him when the time came. The sender said any deviation from the plan would result in our son being killed. If I tried to pull Levi from school, or do anything different than normal . . .” He let his words trail off as he tried to turn his head toward his ex-wife. “I should’ve told you, I regret that now. I was trying to protect our son, and I made a mistake. The man was forcing me to be a whistleblower, and I knew the blowback would wind up on me, but I was willing to go to jail and risk my job to keep Levi safe.”

“I could’ve protected him. You know that.” Sydney shoved his head forward, letting go of his hair. Eyes on the screen now, she walked around Seth’s chair, coming closer to the camera to talk to us herself. “As you’re well aware, Clarke’s girlfriend jumped the gun and published a story she wasn’t supposed to, using the intel in a way the blackmailer more than likely wouldn’t approve of, which is why Seth panicked and called the emergency meeting in Arlington. Clarke apologized to him, letting him know he only gave Kit the one report so far, and he’d wait for further instructions when to release all the documents to her.”

“I picked up Levi right after that meeting,” Seth continued for his ex-wife, “worried we were screwed, and he might suffer the consequences of Kit’s story. I was planning to make a run for it, leaving Virginia with my son, but Sydney stopped me.”

“You’re damn lucky I was contacted to have a word with you,” Sydney seethed. “And it was me who found you and Levi first.”

Adelina paused the video and went in front of the TV, facing us. “So far, Seth hasn’t heard from the blackmailer, and no attempts have been made against him or his son, but Sydney will keep them both safe. If contact is made, I’ll be the first to know.”

I wasn’t sure what this still meant regarding Alfie, but we were right about something. “This is personal for someone. Someone died from bad intel, and our mystery emailer blames our government for it and wants the world to know it. My guess is it’s someone tied to my operation in Afghanistan, which means they also blame me.” I pulled free from Bella’s touch and dragged my hands through my hair. “They’ve done their homework. Using people with ties to me in one way or another to execute their plan.”

“You think they know we have a connection to Seth Maverick through Falcon, or . . .?” Enzo left his question hanging.

“I don’t know, since my father’s friends with him, it may just be about that, not Falcon.” I shook my head, agitated my father was actually kind of right since Seth wasn’t supposed to have access to those files. “Given the shit Kit’s already written about my family, it’s also possible she was selected because of that. Not to mention the fact she used to date my father. This person has been studying me, and he knew Clarke was now dating her. That has to be why Seth was tasked to approach Clarke with the files.” I cradled the back of my neck, ignoring the lingering pain in my forearm as I stared down at the floor trying to put this together.

“He may also be aware of Clarke’s beef with us over our extracurricular activities, and how it would play into Clarke’s friendship with the AG running for governor, too,” Enzo pointed out. “Depends on how long he’s been tracking you. Probably all of us.”

“It’s possible our mystery person sent the photo as a way to throw us off.” Something told me we were still missing something, but one thing was damn clear to me now. “Someone’s been playing me, and for God knows how long. This is about that op, though. How can it not be?”

“Does that narrow our suspect list to your old teammates and their families?” Enzo asked, not beating around the bush with an option I didn’t want to consider. “Everything points to Alfie being connected, though, and now he wants you in Spain.”

Before I could respond to that, a thought hit me. “What’s the email address the files came from? I’m guessing both Seth and Sydney tried tracing the origin without any luck.”

Adelina unlocked her phone, swiped to something, then handed her cell to me.

I stared at the email name, which was a familiar string of numbers and phrases. “It’s a match to the Instagram and X account that posted the video from the party,” I said to Alessandro before tossing him the phone. “We need to get access to that account somehow.” My hands fisted at my sides as I tried to calm the hell down, angry at myself for missing all of the signs that were right in front of me.

“You’re not still planning to go to Spain after all of this, right?” Callie asked softly, tugging Alessandro’s arm so he’d face her.

My shoulders slumped as I answered for him. “I have to go and see what Alfie has to say.”

“And if Alfie’s setting a trap?” Callie asked.

“We have no choice,” Bella said, having my six on this. “We’ll keep Alessandro safe, I promise.”

“Since I’m staying behind, I’ll get my hands on every name I can that’s connected to that 2010 operation,” Enzo offered. “And I’ll add their faces to the list I’ll show our delivery man once I get him clean.”

“Falcon is looking into things on the cyber end as well. Let’s just say this person poked the wrong mama bear by going after Sydney’s son.” Adelina nodded. “Sydney’s not going to rest until she finds who’s behind this. Between the cyber experts on Falcon, and the contacts they trust at the CIA, they’ll have our backs on this.”

“We may want to make another call to Falcon. They have a direct line to the President,” Constantine suggested. “We need to find out what the Agency’s really planning to do about these terrorists. Make sure Alfie’s not drawing us into a trap.”

“There’s one other reason Alfie may have been on the road that night, and why he’s asking me to meet him in Spain.” That idea only just poked its way into my awareness. “And you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

I didn’t need to spell out that reason for him, Constantine would catch my drift.

“You willing to stake your life on that theory?” Constantine asked, catching on as quickly as I’d hoped he would.

Smoothing my hand along my jawline, eyes on the floor, I finally conceded, “Yeah, I am.”

Before Constantine could say more, Enzo shared, “My replacement is here. I’ll let him in.”

My mind was racing faster than my heart as the reality of what we were up against slammed into me. “You shouldn’t come,” I told Bella.

“That sounded like a statement, not a question.” She reached for my hand. “I’m going to pretend you were asking me, though, and my answer hasn’t changed. If you’re going to Spain, so am I.”

I closed my eyes, feeling like I was being pulled in two different directions. And for the first time, my gut wasn’t talking to me. I didn’t know what to do.

“We didn’t formally meet last time.” A deep voice pulled my attention to the man in the doorway. He walked farther into the room and offered his hand to Alessandro first since he was the closest. “Roman Riviera.” He looked to me next, as if sensing I was a fellow Teamguy. “How can I help?”