Zulu, p.2
Zulu, page 2
Her.
Jesus Christ. Client or not, fuck this asshole. I made a command decision.
“Mr. Taralas.” Throwing the prick a warning look, I tipped my chin at Alpha, and took Parisa’s arm. “This way, sweetheart.” Not giving Kostas a second glance, I aimed for the side of the villa and turned my comm back on. “Victor, you copy?”
“Audio and visual,” Victor replied. “You making a run for it with the widow?”
“Told you,” Echo chimed in. “Knew it was only a matter of time.”
“Parisa,” Kostas barked, once he realized I wasn’t taking the widow inside the villa.
“Mr. Taralas, Miss Bahar has requested a reprieve,” Alpha placated, his even tone coming through comms. “I’ll walk with you to the dining room so you can address the waiting guests.”
“No, you won’t,” Kostas snapped. “Control your man.” The asshole raised his voice. “Parisa, stop right there!”
Upping our pace, I led a silent Parisa away from the dining room’s open patio doors. “Victor, Echo, I need wheels. We got any options up here?”
“I’m at the valet, staring at a line of options,” Echo replied. “What brand of ‘I’m a rich fuck’ do you want?”
Christ. “Preferably something borrowed and not outright stolen.”
Victor chuckled. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“Parisa!” Kostas yelled.
“Please,” the widow quietly pleaded. “I do not wish to speak to him.”
“Understood, sweetheart.” Glancing over my shoulder as Kostas aimed for us, I issued orders through comms. “Alpha, run interference. Victor, Echo, twenty seconds. Coming in hot. I need a vehicle ready.” Putting a protective arm around the woman, I pulled her in close, and her exotic scent hit me.
“Zulu,” Alpha clipped through the comms as Kostas yelled for Parisa again. “Stand down. This is drawing too much attention. We’ll supervise a meet.”
“Negative. The lady has spoken.”
“Not our assignment,” Alpha warned.
Victor chuckled. “He just made it his assignment.”
“I’m with Zulu,” Echo interjected. “Screw that prick, Kostas. He’s been a dick all night, and I’m out of fucks to give. Nothing good’s gonna come from letting him speak to her. Dead daddy or not, that motherfucker’s worked up, and I can guarantee it’s not from grief. He’s got a hard-on for stepmommy dearest. Zulu, I got you wheels. Southeast side of the carport.” The sound of an engine firing up came through the comms. “She’s running and waiting.”
Rounding the south side of the villa, I led the woman to the carport, where Echo was nonchalantly standing next to an idling Maserati.
Stepping in front of a protesting valet, who was yelling shit in Greek at him, Echo opened the passenger door.
I helped the woman inside as Kostas came around the side of the villa. Glancing back, I warned Echo, “Party coming up on your six.”
Echo smirked. “I’ll bounce that motherfucking party. Enjoy the wheels. Grind the fuck outta the gears.”
“Christ.” I was going to regret this. “Should I ask whose car this is?”
Echo grinned. “Don’t kick a gift horse in the mouth.”
“It’s look, not kick,” I corrected, aiming for the driver’s door.
“I’m a goddamn SEAL. We’re door kickers, not door lookers. Get the fuck outta here. I’ve got some ass to kick.”
“Echo,” Alpha retorted as he rounded the side of the villa. “Kostas is the client.”
“Yes, don’t beat the client,” Victor added sarcastically.
“I do what I do.” Echo turned as an enraged Kostas shoved the valet out of his path.
Getting behind the wheel, I threw the MC20 into gear.
Kostas’s angry yell carried through both the comms and the closed car doors. “That’s my car!” Reaching around Echo, he got in one fist pound against her window. “Parisa!”
The woman flinched, Echo put Kostas in a chokehold, and I gunned it.
Parisa
“Parisa!” Kostas banged hard on my window.
Startled, I flinched.
“You’re okay, sweetheart. I got you.” His huge hand casually landed on my leg, and the man from the security team Kostas had hired gently squeezed my thigh in reassurance, as if we were intimate friends. Stepping on the gas, he nonchalantly sped away from the villa as if we hadn’t just caused a scene, Kostas wasn’t yelling, and we weren’t stealing his car.
I glanced at his forwardness as heat flamed up my thigh, but his hand was already gone. “He’s going to be very angry,” I warned the too-handsome man.
A frown creased his expression before he quickly masked it. “Any particular reason I need to know about?”
I went with the most obvious. “We stole his car.”
His smile was brief, but I couldn’t tell if it was real or practiced. “We’ll return the Maserati, but I was looking for intel beyond that. I have a feeling your stepson’s pissed off about a hell of a lot more than his car.”
He was. But I wasn’t going to tell this man about it. “I was never a stepmother to Konstantinos’s sons.”
“Understood. What’s Kostas’s issue with you?”
“I do not have any issue with him,” I evaded.
“I said Kostas, not you, sweetheart. But impressive diversion tactic.” He winked at me before taking a sharp turn. Then his voice lowered just enough to let me know he was serious but not issuing a demand. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I can’t help.”
He may have thought my diversion tactic was impressive, but his subtle nuances in tone inflection and expression had me beat. Any other lifetime, I would have been enamored with this man.
But I wasn’t living a different life.
I was living mine, whether I wanted to or not.
“I was not diverting.” That was exactly what I had been doing. Years of practice, I’d become an expert at it. “I don’t know why Kostas is angry.” It wasn’t a complete lie. The father he hated was gone, and there was nothing either of us could do about the past, but this was Kostas’s perpetual state, or it had been since I’d said I do. “He just usually is,” I added, realizing my mistake as soon as I said it.
“Usually?” the muscular Alpha Elite Security man asked, instantly picking up on my slip. “Do you spend a lot of time around him?”
“I do not.” I avoided him at all costs. I avoided every male with the last name Taralas. Konstantinos was no exception. Yes, we had an agreement. He paraded me out when he needed to use me, and I played the role of dutiful wife. But for the past two months, Konstantinos had inexplicably been tightening the leash he’d kept me on.
“Sounds like there’s a story there, sweetheart.”
“No story. I just seem to bring out the best in Kostas.” The lie, quickly followed by an admission of truth, albeit wrapped in cynicism, spilled out easily as if I could safely confide in this man, and that should have been a red flag. I couldn’t afford to let my guard down, not around anyone. Yet for some inexplicable reason, I’d gravitated toward this stoic man since the moment I saw him, telling myself that he had kind eyes, but that was also a lie.
He had striking, almost translucent, hazel eyes that were as unusual as they were stark, but I recognized the same look in them that all his colleagues carried like a warning.
They were soldiers first, men second.
Spending the last two years married to Konstantinos, I had seen too many males of the same breed not to recognize it, but for some reason, this man did not scare me. Not completely. It was why I’d enlisted his help over all the others. Which was an immense risk, but I’d had no choice after Kostas moved the wake.
His expression impassive, the AES security specialist glanced at me, but he didn’t comment on my cynical retort about Kostas. He took two more switchbacks on the twisting cliffside road, then he deftly pried. “Not a fan of the villa?”
Growing up, I’d never imagined a villa would mean a prison with no escape, uninviting furnishings, and unpleasant memories of a two-year sentence disguised as a marriage. Foolishly allowing a moment of self-pity, I once again said too much. “It was never my home.” Konstantinos only brought me there when he’d go out of town or wanted to keep me from working on the Solace.
“But a boat is?”
I wasn’t even sure what a home was supposed to feel like anymore. Sadly, the concept was even more foreign than feeling safe. I hadn’t felt a sense of belonging, let alone security, in so long that I’d stopped wishing for a place to feel protected and instead, started planning. As long as I didn’t tell this AES security contractor any more personal information, my plans were about to become my new reality.
Doing what I’d been practicing for years, I steered the conversation away from myself. “The yacht is comfortable. Zulu is not a common name.”
“Don’t think I didn’t catch that diversion tactic as well, sweetheart, but no, Zulu isn’t common in the civilian world.” He took a harrowing turn with ease as if he’d driven this car on this road a hundred times before, then he tossed my diversion tactic right back in my lap. “What about Parisa? Is it Greek?”
First intel, and now civilian, I took note of his military references. “My mother was Persian. She named me after one of her relatives.”
“Was?”
The still-new but all too familiar lance of pain and anger struck like a double-edged sword. “My parents are deceased.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” His tone reflected a true shade of solemn I had not heard when he had given me his condolences for Konstantinos. “Now you’ve lost your husband.” He glanced at me. “No easy day.”
More than his voice or the way he’d rescued me from Kostas tonight, more than the meaning behind the words he’d offered, something about him suddenly struck me. Momentarily taken aback, I unreservedly stared at him. It wasn’t until he glanced at me again that I saw it.
It was in his eyes.
It was the way he looked at me.
Something deep inside me stirred, and the realization was instant. This soldier named after the phonetic alphabet for the letter Z was being sincere. The way someone who had suffered loss themselves could be sincere.
I knew the consequences of trusting someone. It was a price I couldn’t afford, but in that moment, I not only wanted to trust this man, but I foolishly felt closer to him than I ever had my own mother.
The thought alone should’ve had me putting my guard back up. I recognized that the shock and stress of the past week were finally catching up to me. I definitely should’ve realized I was reaching for something that wasn’t there.
But for one second, I didn’t want to be practical or poised.
For a single, impossible moment, I wanted hope.
I wanted to believe I wasn’t imagining this connection, this tenuous pull that was as fragile as the impotent emotions surrounding circumstances. I wanted to not feel so alone, and I desperately wanted this complete stranger I’d met on a cliffside villa on one of the Cyclades Islands to be connected to my very soul.
I wanted it all to be tangible.
But reality was heavier than hope, and wishing was courting danger.
I could not change what was.
And staring at a strikingly handsome, dominant man would not change my past. Nor would it alter the path I was already barreling toward in a stolen sports car.
All I had now were facts.
Konstantinos was gone.
My father was gone.
This was my chance.
A chance I had been secretly planning for almost two years, but one that Konstantinos’s premature death had accelerated. Diligently and discreetly putting everything into motion while Kostas and his brothers had planned their father’s funeral, I was as ready as I could be.
Or I thought I’d been.
Picking the unwitting AES security consultant the moment I saw him. Carefully waiting for the risky but precise moment to approach—I knew none of it was fail-safe. It wasn’t even ideal, but I could not wait until after the wake when Kostas said we were going to talk. This was my only opening to get to the Solace with protection from Kostas and his brothers, Kairos and Giorgios. The latter I was the least concerned about, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. All of Konstantinos’s sons were dangerous. He’d made certain of that.
Konstantinos’s anger and cruelty knowing no bounds, his death hadn’t exactly been a surprise, but the timing had taken me off guard. Dying at his desk from a heart attack, Konstantinos had lived exactly as the man he’d been—too much aggression, too much drink, and too much ruthless irreverence for any one soul to contain. Konstantinos may be gone, but he’d spread his self-righteous immorality to his sons.
I had to leave. Quickly.
For seven days, that thought had been my mantra. As far as I was concerned, I no longer owed anyone anything. All I had to do was avoid Kostas until I escaped.
But then he’d moved the wake. I’d had to quickly pivot, and everything in the last few minutes proved I’d only been lying to myself.
Thinking I could simply walk down to the dock at the Taralas main estate in Piraeus and quietly get on the Solace while everyone was occupied with dinner at the wake was one thing. But orchestrating a ride halfway across Santorini to the marina without Kostas or his brothers or anyone else noticing was ignorant.
As much as I’d been a prisoner a mere eight days ago when Konstantinos was alive, I was still one now. Which brought me back to what the soldier next to me had said. Maybe he was not wrong.
“No easy day,” I repeated, wondering what exactly had made this man adopt such a dire saying into his vernacular.
“Wish I could offer you something more, sweetheart.”
He was already giving me more than anyone else had in my entire life. He was providing me a chance to escape. That alone felt like it deserved a truth from me. “You do not need to waste your sentiments. I did not love Konstantinos.”
He merely nodded. “Four letters never made for a trickier word.”
I glanced out the window as my past seemingly sped into my present and gave away another piece of myself. “What a taciturn yet astounding truth.”
I felt more than saw him glance at me. “Ever been in love?”
Hurt, anger, shame—it all blended into a sea of self-blame that I knew intimately. “Not as you asked, but I loved my mother once.” Long ago. When I was too little to know better, and when she’d allowed herself to be my mother instead of my father’s pawn. Those early memories, they were the ones that crept up unsuspectingly when I was alone. Despite everything, including myself, I missed her in those quiet moments.
Unaware of my past, the stark-eyed soldier strung together three seemingly innocuous words in his steady voice. “And your father?”
The wounds as deep as my memories, my heart began to pound harder than when Kostas had banged on the car window.
There were not enough twisted roads on this rugged Cyclades Island to unravel the threads of intertwined hate I had for my father and my familial duty. Too many emotions to unpack in a lifetime, let alone a single drive, I didn’t want to discuss or even think about the man who had married me off. But I’d foolishly already opened the door, and this conversation was my fault. Dangerous vulnerability was the price I would always pay for honesty. I knew this.
But tonight, I had slipped.
I was tired.
Tired of the charade, tired of holding in so many unjust and broken pieces, and tired of never being in control of my life, I blamed my father. I blamed a monster of a man who ran a shipping empire. I blamed my mother. I even blamed Kostas. But I’d had a hand in charting this particularly disastrous course.
Had I made a choice and listened to my instincts, had I once said no, then maybe I would not be here tonight, attempting to escape with a stranger as he sped too fast down a dangerous road.
Familiar disquiet rupturing my already thin veil of composure, I gave the security specialist much more than I should. “I have never confused love with any of the emotions I felt for my father.”
Zulu
Every word the woman spoke drew me in deeper.
I didn’t get involved with clients.
I didn’t get involved with shit outside work, period. The Teams had been my three-foot world, now the cockpits in the AES Gulfstreams were my focus. The military, the sense of duty you couldn’t explain to a civilian, it was bred into me. My father had served his country, first as a pilot, then as an instructor. He’d given the Navy twenty-five years until a test flight gone FUBAR took him out.
By then, I was already a SEAL. I’d never known a different life than the military. At every duty station my father’s career had taken us to, my mother made it comfortable for me and my sister, but home wasn’t a concept I dwelled on. Enlisting at eighteen was a given, but I’d set my sights higher than just being a pilot. By sixteen, I’d already had my private pilot’s license. Flying with my father in his old Cessna for as long as I could remember, the seed of adrenaline rushes had been planted. BUD/S fueled it, earning my Trident honed it, then a war in a sand trap fed it.
I’d lived to be a SEAL.
I loved the Teams—until Alpha and I lost our closest brother, Bravo, then buried two more Team members before Alpha took a career-ending hit to his shoulder. Getting out instead of taking a desk job, Alpha started Alpha Elite Security. Before the ink was dry on his business license, he had more clients than he could handle. One call from him and I was in. I’d been flying for AES ever since, keeping to my new three-foot world.
Until I’d laid eyes on the brunette tonight, it’d been enough.
Now I was listening to this exotic beauty and wondering how the hell she’d fallen into Taralas’s orbit. From a father she didn’t love to a husband who was a fucking bastard.
I gave her an empty sentiment. “Apologies you weren’t close with your father.” Whoever the prick was, he should’ve protected her from Taralas.
