How could she have missed the truth?
Rose shook her head. She’d have years to obsess over how things had gone so wrong. Right now, she had to focus. She had to see this through.
Jackson shut the door and pulled her into his arms, so quickly, she barely managed not to tense. He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Missed you.”
“Missed you, too,” she murmured. Their normal greeting. No matter how many stolen hours they managed, it was never enough. Rose searched his handsome features, looking for the man beneath. His facade was flawless. No one would fault her for being fooled…no one but herself. Even knowing the truth, it felt far too good to have his arms around her.
She stepped back. “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
“It’s noon.”
“It’s five o’clock somewhere.” She made herself laugh, hated how carefree it sounded. “Come on, bartender. I know you have something up your sleeve.”
“For you? Always.” He released her and headed to the kitchen.
She slipped her hand into her purse the moment his back was turned. He moved easily, grabbing three bottles and a glass. How had she never thought to question that he kept top-shelf liquor? Rose had just considered it a quirk of his trade, that he’d developed good taste from working behind the bar. She should have questioned it. She should have questioned a lot of things.
“You having a rough day?”
She pulled the gun from her purse and thumbed the safety off. She’d already screwed the silencer on before arriving. Not that the people in this neighborhood would think too hard about strange sounds, but she didn’t need someone getting nosy. Enough had already gone wrong. The cherry on top would be some cops deciding to sniff around. “Something like that.”
He picked up the shaker and gave it a good shake. The move had the muscles lining his back standing out. Another thing she hadn’t questioned: how a bartender who worked full time and spent the rest of his free hours with her had a body like that. And then there were the scars, courtesy of an adventurous childhood, he’d claimed.
She was a fool.
“Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?” She didn’t mean to speak, but the words were out before she could call them back. Closure. She just needed some fucking closure. Then she could finish this.
“What are you talking about, babe?”
“I think you know, Jackson.” She sucked in a breath, her finger caressing the trigger. Now was the time to pull it, to end this, but she wanted to see his face, to have him admit what he’d done. “Or should I say Dante?”
She expected him to tense. To deny. Something.
All he did was turn around and lean against the counter, the shaker still in his hands. She stared into his face, so she saw the exact moment the mask fell away. The happy look in his dark eyes bled away, leaving only an empty coldness that had her fighting back a shiver. “So.” Even his voice changed, the easy cadence disappearing, replaced by yet more emptiness. “You figured it out.”
“Dante Verducci.” The name felt strange on her tongue. Wrong. “I don’t know what you were trying to accomplish, but it ends now.”
His gaze flicked to the gun in her hands. “You really think you’re going to shoot me? You were coming around my cock twenty-four hours ago.”
Fury nearly made her black out. Maybe she wouldn’t regret this after all. He was so fucking sure of her, of this situation, as if the gun in her hand didn’t mean a single damn thing. She’d prove him wrong. Rose steadied her stance, reaching for the one thing she could that would hurt him a fraction of as much as he’d hurt her. “I faked it.”
She pulled the trigger.
Dante moved at last moment, and the bullet took him in the shoulder instead of the middle of the chest. She cursed and spun, following his movement, and pulling the trigger again. Another circle of red blossomed on his gray T-shirt, but then he crashed through the front door and disappeared into the fall.
“Fuck!”
Rose kept her gun up in case he came back, and she fished her phone out of her purse. “Vasily! He’s on the run!”
They didn’t give her shit for fucking this up, too. They just cursed. “I’m on it.”
“I’m following—”
“Nyet. Put the gun away, collect anything from the apartment that would incriminate you, and leave the same way you came in. Take the subway a few stops and call a pickup. We’ll handle this.”
She wanted to argue, but they were right. She couldn’t chase down a bleeding man with a gun in her hands. It would do more than raise eyebrows, and they had enough trouble already. “Okay.”
“Watch your back, Rose.” They hung up.
She cursed and took a second to smooth back her hair and get her game face on. Two minutes later, she had a small bag full of any evidence of her existence at his place. Rose calmly stepped over the blood trail and through the door, pausing to shut it behind her. The blood led to the right, heading toward the emergency exit, but she made herself go left and leave the way she’d come.
Damn it, she’d fucked this up, and badly. What was it about this man that had her missing a step for the first time in her life? She should have shot him in the back, instead she let him get under her skin, and then she missed twice. Oh, not a full miss, but if he could run, she hadn’t done her job properly.
She barely registered her phone buzzing in her hand and answered without looking. “Da?”
“This isn’t over.”
She stopped short. Dante. The gall of him to call her while on the run for his life. She might be impressed if she could breathe through her fury. If the sound of his voice didn’t make her ache with the loss of a relationship that was never real to begin with. “You’re right. It’s not over until you’re dead. Come down to the street, and we’ll talk about it.”
His laugh was raspy and strange. “Rain check. I’ve got a pair of Russians on my tail.”
“I don’t know what you’re running for. They just want to talk, baby. You love to talk.” She should hang up. Nothing good came from this phone call, and Vasily was too good to let Dante get away. This would be over shortly.
I’m just distracting him.
“It’s not over,” he repeated.
Frustration bloomed and she picked up her pace. “Wrong. This was fun while it lasted, but in a few months, you’re going to be rotting in some unmarked grave, and I’ll be walking down the aisle to say ‘I do’ to Romeo Capparelli. It’s over.”
Dante was silent except for his rasping breathing. She’d hurt him, and badly. Nearly as badly as he’d hurt her. “You’ll marry him over my dead fucking body.”
“That’s the plan.”
“We’re not done, Rose Romanov. I’ll be seeing you. Soon.” He hung up before she recovered from her shock.
She still hadn’t recovered after taking the subway and calling for a pickup. The audacity of that motherfucker to say they weren’t done. She shot him. Any normal person would take that as a clear sign that things were over. If he—
She shook her head hard. No. She would not do this to herself. Everything from the last few months between them was a lie, and she would not allow him to worm around inside her head just because her heart was too foolish to know better.