Blacklisted: Blacklist Operations Book #1 (22 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Italy

“I know where Oliver is, but you’re asking for too much.”

Tensions were high after hours of roaming the streets, looking for some indication that the end of the city was near. But it wasn’t so easy to find one madman in a large city. Hearing that Oliver had been located sent a wave of relief through him.

“You have to stop using me for this shit,” William said to Aidan. “First you ask me to confirm that Oliver is in Rome and to keep it quiet. Now you want me to pinpoint him?”

“Can you?”

“This is fucked up man.” Aidan knew that meant yes.

“William, everything is fucked up right now.” He knew that being harsh wasn’t the best way to get the tech genius to help him, but he was blacklisted in Second Division and William owed him favors.

“How bad?”

“Not end of the world, but damn if a lot of it won’t be going dark.”

“Got you.” He heard typing, then a deep sigh. “It looks like he’s at
Biblioteca Casanatense. Maybe the top floor or on the roof, even. What’s going on?”

“You in Italy?”

“I’m in New York.”

“Stay there. Don’t worry about it.” He cut the call on the man’s irritated sigh and turned to Sophie. “Radio Caleb and Adele. Have them fly over
Biblioteca Casanatense to see if he’s on the roof.”

She did. They adjusted their course to look for the man while Aidan and Sophie ran through the street. In the plane, he’d treated her wounds and stroked her face while she rested. Once they touched down, Adele and Caleb had taken the sky and Aidan and Sophie had taken the streets. He knew she had to be running on pure adrenaline. He wanted to wrap her in quilts and have her sleep for a week, but they needed all hands at the ready.

He promised himself that when it was over, he’d take her on a real vacation.

They reached the library and pushed through the doors. “Check the top floors. I’ll get the roof. Radio me if you see him. Don’t engage alone.” She nodded and they separated. Watching her walk away from him burned a pit in his gut.

He broke through the door to the roof, immediately spotting Oliver at its center, kneeling over a bomb.

“Oliver, don’t,” Aidan said, slowly approaching his boss. “Too many people are going to die.”

“I know.”

“You don’t even need the money.”

“It was never about money, Aidan.” Oliver’s face was haggard in the bright light. It was too beautiful a day for so many people to be in danger. “It’s about power. If we control this, we have all the power in the world. All the terrible things you’ve seen? That ends when we control this and the world knows they have no choice but to fall in line.”

“It doesn’t work like that. Someone will make a bigger bomb. A worse disease.”

“No,” Oliver said, shaking his head. “This one terrible thing will clear the way for good to follow. And Aidan, we’ll be at the top.”

“Not if we die when you set it off.”

“We won’t. I’m going to change the clock to two hours. You’ll come with me.”

“I wouldn’t,” Aidan said. “Not ever. Not after what you did to Sophie.”

“She almost killed me.”

“I saw the video.” Oliver blanched when Aidan spoke, his bright eyes fading just a little.

“She killed Izzy. I know what I did was extreme, but she killed my little girl.”

“You shot at Veronica and
Iz stepped in front of her. I always thought Veronica had used her as a shield, but I was wrong. You’d already killed her with Synthesis. She was just finishing the job and protecting someone who was actually trying to help.”

“Aidan…”

“No more lies, Oliver. Let’s just go.”

“If I leave without setting this off, they’ll kill me.”

“If you move to press the button, I’ll shoot you in your fucking face.” Aidan hoped Oliver couldn’t see the indecision in his eyes. He wanted to taste the bastard’s blood for what he’d done for Sophie, but with Oliver went his last shot at Bartek. Only Oliver and Second Division had the kind of access necessary to get him near that fucker without returning to the ring. Now that he’d walked out on a fight, it wasn’t an option.

“You can’t kill me,” Oliver said, lips curving in a smile. “I can see it in your face.”

“It’s not you,” Aidan said. “You’re a fucking blight on the world. It’s Bartek.”

“Let this go and I’ll help you find him.”

“What kind of man do you think I am? I’m not trading millions of lives for my vendetta.”

“Then let me go and I won’t set off the bomb. I’ll go into hiding. I’ll help you bring down the rest of Second Division. Bartek too.”

“No.” Both men turned to see Sophie standing in the doorway of the rooftop. Her beautiful face was pale around her bruises, but determination shone through her movements. Her gun was pointed directly at Oliver’s head. “You don’t get to walk away.”

“Bitch,” Oliver snapped, a vein in his head throbbing.

“Move away from the bomb.” Aidan turned back to Oliver to see that he’d moved back close to the bomb.

“Fuck you.” Oliver saw death in her eyes. With a last quirk of his lips, he reached his hand out and pressed the button, starting the countdown on the bomb. There were five minutes on the timer.

Sophie pulled the trigger, sending a single bullet into his head. A thin stream of blood ran down his face and Aidan blanched.

“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “I couldn’t let him leave.”

“I know.”

“He wouldn’t have helped you, Aidan. He’d have killed both of us.”

“I know.” He reached for her and placed a soft kiss on her forehead. “You need to leave.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if I can stop this bomb. Call for Caleb and Adele right now and tell them to come back and grab you. I’m going to stay until this is detonated or it’s all over.”

Sophie nodded and moved to the other side of the roof, trying to get reception on the mobile phone. Aidan watched her slender form move and felt his heart warm. Just looking at her was enough to break through the ice in which he’d buried himself so many years ago. Dying on this rooftop was a small price to pay if it meant that he could save her. He’d pay any price for her, because she was his life.

He knelt before the bomb and took out his pocket knife, using the thin blade to open the seal that protected its internal workings. Once it was open, he saw the complex jumble of wires and, at its heart, Synthesis suspended in saline.

Three minutes. He had three minutes left to stop it from killing him and so many others. At least, he thought, Sophie, Adele and Caleb would fly out of the city quickly enough to escape the initial blast.

He started pulling apart the guts, hoping that he wouldn’t release a failsafe that would eject Synthesis into him, creating a hot zone of the disease. He was so focused on his labor that he jerked when he felt a presence behind him.

“I told you to go.”

“I’m not leaving you.” Sophie dropped a hand to his shoulder, then he felt the cool press of her lips on his head. “I told Caleb and Adele to get out of town. You and me, though? We’re in this together. Even if I could get far enough away, I’d hate myself for not staying.”

“Why?” His fingers twisted the wires apart, examined each one as he tried to decide how to stop it from detonating.

“I’m in love with you,” she said. There were two minutes left, and she loved him. Both truths collided in his head and all he wanted was years with her, years to spend loving her as much as she deserved. Aidan wanted to take her to bed and make love to her until the horror of her past was dampened and then to take her into the world and show her things to make her eyes smile like they had in the family photographs he’d gone through when she left for the market in Paris.

He looked back at her, lips curving up. “I’m in love with you, too. In my whole life, there’s never been anyone else but you. No one that meant everything.”

She fingers tightened on his shoulder and he turned back to the bomb. They were silent as he finally picked out a green wire and slid his knife along it. One minute left on the clock.

“You could run,” he said.

“I’ll never run away from you again.” Sophie sunk to her knees next to him and wrapped an arm around his back. “It’s you and me. No matter what.”

“No matter what.” He slipped the sharp edge of the knife down and sliced through the wire.

For a beat, it felt like the world had ended. His gut went cold and his hand slipped down to entwine with hers. But nothing happened. They just sat on the rooftop together in front of the defunct bomb. Then she wrapped her arms around him and burst into sobs.

He held her under the dome of the sky and stroked her hair. It was all going to be okay now. It would all be okay.

Epilogue

America

“Help me with these boxes.” Aidan rushed through the entry to the office and grabbed the large cardboard box from Sophie’s hands.

“I told you not to lift anything heavy,” he said.

“I’m completely healed.” She smiled at him, glad to see the humor returning to his face. After they’d contained the bomb and left Rome, he’d sunk into gloom for a few days and she’d worried the smile that charmed her wouldn’t be back any time soon. But it had slowly come back as he’d come to terms with Oliver’s death and the loyalty of much of Second Division. He and Caleb were both blacklisted now, but it didn’t matter anymore.

After things had wrapped up and they’d reported in to Lyle—who Aidan still seemed to hate—he’d whisked her away to the Maldives for what he’d called a rain check on her vacation.

She stretched and watched him add the box to the others. Two weeks of sun, sand and sex with the gorgeous man in front of her had definitely helped her get things straight in her head.

That’s why she’d put in her notice to Lyle.

He hadn’t been happy about it, but he’d accepted it—even when she made it clear that he was getting neither Synthesis nor the weaponization notes they’d recovered.

One night in the Maldives, after Aidan thrust deep into her and made her come screaming while her nails dug furrows in his back, she started to question all the choices she’d made since her twin had died. More than that, she started to question why Lyle hadn’t cared enough to send someone to help her retake Veronica. In the end, she decided, it was a question of assets and allocation. But that wasn’t good enough.

All the family money she’d refused to touch since Veronica died would finally do some good in the world, she’d decided. Caleb and Aidan were both tired of working for people with shadowed motives. Adele and Sophie had agreed with them, and they’d all spent the weeks after Sophie and Aidan’s vacation deep in discussion about how to do what they were trained to do without answering to those with unclear motivations.

So they started Blacklist.

With the additional help Caleb and Aidan had scraped together, they had a total of ten operatives. It wasn’t much, but they had purpose and funding. They had a way to make the world better without losing themselves to the darkness.

When her man walked through the door again with a leather chair in his hands, she licked her lips. “Want to test out the new chairs with me?”

“I thought Adele was coming back with lunch?”

“She is—but not until one. What do you say?”

He grinned and sat in the chair, motioning for Sophie to climb into his lap. She dropped on him and turned her face to his, kissing him with all the desire that burned through her at his slightest touch. Her tongue tentatively stroked the seam of his lips, then delved deeper. He groaned when she shifted to straddle him.

“I love you,” he said, catching her hair in his hand and pulling her head back. The slight tug turned the ember of arousal into a blaze.

“I love you more,” she replied, moving her hips so that her panty-covered mound stroked his thick erection through his pants.

“I love that skirt,” he gritted out, taking her hips in his hands. Sophie smiled a secret smile. She’d worn it in the hopes that she’d be able to tease him this way.

He unbuttoned the first few buttons on her shirt, baring her breasts to his seeking mouth. When he sucked hard on a nipple, desire flared hard in her.

“Faster,” she said, undulating on his lap. “Lunch could come early.”

He laughed and reached down to unzip his pants. His erection popped out, hot against her panties, and she moaned.

“Bend over the desk.”

Sophie stood and did as he said, looking back over her shoulder at him. His big body rippled with muscle as he crossed the room, landing a hard slap on her ass before pushing up her skirt and yanking down her panties.

“I can’t wait to bury myself in your tight pussy,” he said, then thrust deep into her wetness with a single stroke. Sophie moaned and grasped the edge of the desk tight, bending forward to give him more access.

He took her hard, filling her and demanding that she push back onto his cock. He gave her no room to wiggle away, no cease, and she loved it. Every push of his body into hers made her insides clench hard until finally—finally—he let her come, one large hand squeezing her breast while she milked him.

While she was still wet and
spasming around him, Aidan came too, pulling her body back on his and seating himself deep. His mouth found the back of her neck and he planted soft kisses there and down her shoulders.

“I love you, Sophie,” he said, turning her and pulling her back into his lap on the chair.

“I love you.” She knew her eyes glowed with happiness when she looked at him, but she didn’t try to dim it. She wanted Aidan to see all the love and passion that lived in her for him.

“So what’s next?” He asked. She knew he meant in setting up the office and starting to send people out to take care of Second Division. But Sophie thought of their time together and the years stretching out ahead of them and smiled.

“Everything,” she said, kissing him softly. “Everything.”