Fifty-Five

“He’s afraid.”

It was Ben’s tone more than his words that made her look at him. They’d been driving in silence for a while. Ben behind the wheel, her staring out the window. She cast a sidelong glance in his direction and frowned. “He’s an idiot.”

He laughed, the sound at total odds with the pensive expression that etched his usually neutral features. “He’s created quite the cluster fuck, I’ll give you that, but he’s right to worry.” He shot her a quick look. “Reyes’s wife was pregnant when he killed her. Shot her right in front of our boy.”

She felt sick, her fingers closing around the links of the bracelet Michael had given her. “Why? What did he used to do for Reyes?”

“On the surface?” Ben cut her a look. “He was hired to protect Reyes’s daughter, Christina. She was four when he started—a little older than Frankie was when their parents died.”

Sabrina remembered her. Rosy cheeks and dark, bouncing curls. Kerry blue eyes and olive skin. The perfect mixture of her parents, Sophia and Sean. She could imagine Michael looking at another little girl and seeing a way to start over. To get it right. “He loved her.”

Ben shrugged. “I think if not for what happened with Lydia, he’d still be there with her.”

Lydia. Christina’s mother. The wife Reyes killed. What would drive a husband and father to do such a thing? “Was the baby his?”

“Michael’s?” Ben shook his head. “He’s surprising moral for an assassin. Lydia was only twelve when Reyes bought her from her father and married her. She was young—too young for anyone with a conscience. She was like a sister to him. Between Christina and Lydia, Michael had Frankie back—the little sister he walked out on and the young woman she’d become.”

She didn’t ask how he knew all this. She’d learned a long time ago that when Ben was involved there was no such thing as secrets. “I don’t understand. Why would Reyes kill his own child? Everything I’ve heard about this guy tells me he’s a classic narcissist. Killing his child would be like killing himself.”

Ben’s jaw went tight. “Just because the baby wasn’t Michael’s doesn’t mean it belonged to Reyes.”

She stared straight ahead, fingers worrying the links of titanium beneath them. A man like Reyes chose his underlings carefully. He’d find the perfect balance between cruelty and cowardice. No way one of his men would be stupid enough to have an affair with his wife … but someone who saw himself as his equal would.

“His son, Estefan,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

Ben nodded. “Reyes kept the wife and kid on his island and installed Michael there as his personal watchdog, but he didn’t spend much time there. Not enough people to worship him for his tastes,” he said, blowing out a disgusted breath. “When she got pregnant, Estefan knew Reyes would never believe the baby was his, so he very carefully and quietly pointed the finger at Michael.”

She imagined Reyes’s reaction to the news. Rage … but also humiliation. In a man like him, the latter would be a far more dangerous emotion. Bringing a man like Michael into the fold had been a power play. To own Cartero had been the ultimate show of supremacy and it had ended in his own betrayal—something that Reyes’s ego wouldn’t allow him to accept.

Ben spoke. “As luck would have it, the confrontation happened the same night he found out about his sister’s disappearance. He was leaving anyway, but it meant he couldn’t go back for Christina.”

Christina. She could imagine he’d grieved her loss almost as much as he grieved Frankie’s. “Reyes just let him leave?”

Ben gave a snort. “Let him? No, but there isn’t much that can stop Michael when he decides he’s going to do something—another slap in the face for Reyes. By the time he tracked him down, Michael was already under my father’s protection. Untouchable.”

“Until your father asked him to kidnap Leo Maddox.”

Ben smiled, but it looked more like an angry show of teeth. “Bingo.” He parked the car and turned to look at her. “My father can’t be trusted. Sooner or later, he’s going to figure out that Michael lied to him about Leo being dead. If recovering the kid proves too costly or if it suddenly no longer serves him, he’ll abandon him and anyone else he’s sent in to retrieve him.”

“Even you?” she said, surprised to see what looked like pain flit across his face. He looked down at his hand for a moment, the one that was heavily scarred, curling his fingers around the knot of hard flesh in the center of his palm until he clenched it in his fist.

“Especially me.”