Killer Secrets (35 page)

when she was crying in his ear, her orgasm unraveling
around him, flexing on his dick and tearing his

control from him.

He continued to thrust, feeling his cum spurt from his cock
in hard, pulsing streams as he locked his teeth

against his own cry.

Shudders of pleasure exploded through nerve endings and
muscles, racking his body with an ecstasy that

still amazed him. An ecstasy found only with Kira. A
pleasure that went beyond the flesh and filled the

soul.

If he lost her, it would kill him.

Twenty

WHAT HE WAS AND WHOhe had become once he entered Diego
Fuentes's world had begun to

merge before Kira's arrival. Ian had recognized the signs,
the lines that had been blurring between what

was just and right, and what was expedient. He had been
slowly becoming the same sort of monster he

was tracking, and he hadn't realized it until Kira had
given him her heart.

What part of him did she hold though?

A week later, he locked himself in his office, pulled up
the reports Deke and Trevor had managed to

collect, and tried to hide from that question.

Unfortunately, hiding from it changed nothing. She owned
him. Heart and soul. The good man, and the

man that had become dark, honed by the blood and the evil
he had witnessed since accepting the name

Fuentes.

He stared at the report and the pictures gained by the
interrogation of the two men who had sent the

missile exploding into the front of the limo the week
before. Tourists, they had at first claimed to be.

Nothing more than tourists. They had come in on the yacht
Cantrella
, rumored to be Sorrell's favorite

seagoing vessel. Just tourists.

Timothy Vangressi and Adrian Hughes were anything but
tourists. Once Ian's lieutenant, Antoli

Kovalyov, began questioning them, they had broken easily
enough.

He pulled up the video of the interrogation. He didn't
wince at the pain Antoli had dealt out to the two

men. The fact that they had held out for over an hour was
proof of their training. But Antoli had trained

under some of the masterminds of torture. He knew tricks
Ian hadn't witnessed, even within the

interrogations he had seen as a SEAL.

"Sorrell will kill us," Vangressi had finally sobbed,
his face bloodied and swollen, although it was

nowhere near as sad a shape as his testicles were in. The
drugs Antoli had pumped into the other man,

and the pain, were too much. "We were to kill him and
the girl. If the McClane girl backs him, he'll have

too much power. Too much backing. The girl can't be allowed
to influence him until Sorrell has the

operation." He was slurring his words, gasping for
breath as Antoli slowly eased the pressure of the

clamps on his testicles and turned down the power to the
electrical lead attached to them.

"Who is Sorrell?" Antoli asked, his voice calm,
cold.

Vangressi shook his head. "I haven't seen him. He's
here, on the island, but he only calls. The cell phone

is just for his calls."

"The cell phone you carried?" Antoli could have
been discussing the weather.

Vangressi was sobbing. "The cells we carry. Just for
contact and orders. That's all. I swear. We met the

Cantrella
in Paris and loaded on. We disembarked after it anchored
here and slipped ashore under

nightfall with the missile launcher and the paperwork to
rent the boats. He knew about the meeting that

day. Knew the route Fuentes was taking after we arrived. We
waited."

"Who on the
Cantrella
was your
contact?"

"Please," Vangressi sobbed, pain and fear
contorting his handsome features. "Please. He'll kill me. He'll

kill—" His scream was high-pitched, horrible to hear,
as Antoli applied power to the electrical leads,

straight to the other man's balls.

He would have come out of his seat if he hadn't been
strapped to it.

He slumped back a second later, dry heaves racking his body
as the power was once again lowered.

"Who was your contact?" Antoli asked again.

"Ascarti," Vangressi whispered. "Gregor
Ascarti. He knows Sorrell. He can identify him."

A gunshot followed the information. Then another. Both men
slumped in their restraints, their gazes

dimmed, death instantaneous from the single bullet buried
in each brain.

Antoli was highly effective.

As he watched the video, it hadn't been Vangressi that had
filled his mind though, it had been Nathan.

The proof of the horrendous torture he had endured during
his stay with Fuentes would always scar his

mind and his body. There had been no relief, as Vangressi
had found. No peace.

Ian pushed his fingers through his hair before rising from
his chair and pacing to the bar across the room.

Splashing the smooth, expensive whisky he kept on hand into
a glass, he turned as a soft knock sounded

on the door.

"Yeah?"

The door opened to reveal Diego. As impeccably dressed as
ever. White slacks and a white cotton shirt

tucked neatly into the waistband. Leather shoes and a gold
watch. His black and silver hair was combed

back and his patrician features were inquisitive.

"Have you learned much from the interrogation?"
he asked as he stepped into the office and closed the

door behind him.

"Not enough." Ian shrugged.

He moved ahead of Diego and casually closed the video
before the other man could reach his side.

"If you were not my son, I would have killed you by
now." Diego stared back at him ruthlessly.

"You didn't let brotherhood stop you, why let
fatherhood?" Ian asked as he closed the folders on his

desk before looking up once again.

The pain that flashed in Diego's eyes surprised him. It
surprised him even more that he acknowledged it.

"You are amazingly adept at going for the jugular,
Ian," he said quietly, his voice bitter as he sat down in

one of the leather chairs placed in front of the desk.
"Perhaps in that, you are more like me than I would

have wished."

"Perhaps," Ian acknowledged, and it didn't sit
well with him, seeing parts of Diego in himself, recognizing

that heredity played more of a role in what shaped him than
he liked.

His gaze locked with Diego's as the other man stared back
at him intently. Black eyes, bottomless, deep,

merciless. Diego Fuentes wasn't known for his softness or
his mercy.

"You do not find pride in being my son, do you,
Ian?" he finally asked soberly. "It is a source of disgrace

rather than pride. All I have built." He lifted his
hands to encompass the study. "It is as nothing to you, is

this not true?"

Ian leaned back in the chair slowly and regarded the cartel
lord.

"I'm here," he finally answered, his voice firm,
cool. "As I promised, doing the job I promised."

"For the lives of your friends who have turned their
backs on you and revile you. For women who would

spit on you should they have the chance. For this, you are
a part of all you have fought against, all your

life. With the man whose responsibility it was to protect
you and your mother as a child and failed. For

this, you reward me by being my son?"

There was sadness in his voice and for a moment, just for a
moment, regret flashed through Ian as well.

As a child he had dreamed of his father rescuing him and
his mother from the hell their lives had become.

Always running, always fighting to live, to survive.

Once he had realized who and what his father was, the
betrayal he had felt had nearly crushed him.

Diego frowned as he watched him.

"As a young man, I thought I knew all I needed to know
of human nature." He broke the stare they had

maintained, blinking at a suspicious moisture in his eyes
before glancing down at his still hands as they lay

on his lap. "I thought I knew the shades of betrayal
and a man's honor, and how to categorize each." His

gaze lifted then. "I learned I was not nearly so
intelligent as I believed. And by the time I learned this

lesson, it was too late. Those who could have comforted me,
who could have been the family I so long

for now, are no more."

Ian crossed his arms over his chest and flattened his lips
at the hidden message there. Had Diego figured

out the reason he was there? There wasn't a chance. He
would have been dead had he figured that out.

"There's a point to all this?" Ian asked him.

Diego shook his head, his eyes drifting closed for a
second. "There is a message in all things, Ian. Just

remember, the mistakes you make at this moment in time will
follow you always. Not just into your

nightmares, but into your future, and into your soul. There
is no greater pain than the realization that you

have destroyed the ties that would maintain you as you age.
Those ties are important."

"Diego, you're making about as much sense now as
Sorrell's terrorist rhetoric does." It also struck at the

heart of this mission. Diego's and Sorrell's heads. He
would deliver them personally to Nathan. Payback.

Atonement. Monsters didn't deserve to live, did they?

Diego sighed wearily before a bitter smile pulled at his
lips. "You handle the business as though I have

retired and have no say in it. You ask for no advice, you
prefer I know nothing of the plans you

implement. You are aware, are you not, that this is not
working?"

They had no choice but to make it work. When the mission
was over, the cartel would come down. Ian

had made that vow to himself and, silently, to the friends
who had always backed him. It would come

down, no matter the price.

"I know your fingers are still in there." Ian
glowered back at him. He didn't need Diego's fingers there.

"You cannot reform an old lion from striking out at
those who threaten his territory," Diego pointed out.

"Those who have died by my hand, those who have
suffered, were there to destroy me. I protect only

that which is mine."

An old lion. As though the drugs he sold had no effects, no
liabilities. Hell no, he was the candy man

selling sweets, that was all, and the big bad SEALs and
terrorists just wanted to smack him down.

Son of a bitch, was this how monsters justified their evil?
Was this how he had justified the blood he had

spilled while he had been here? Defending territory? He
could feel the blood staining his hands, hear the

wails of the dead in his ears, and fought to remember that
they hadn't been innocents. They had been

drug dealers, murderers, rapists, and animals. No more than
Diego himself was. No more than his father

was. His chest clenched at the involuntary thought.

Ian leaned forward, laying his forearms on the desk, and
replied coldly, "Good men die to protect the

innocent. You deal in death, Diego. Just as I deal in it
now. Don't try to spray perfume on shit here to

make it more presentable. You're a drug lord. We sell death
to children. We prostitute them, we dope

them up, and we make a profit from it. Period. We aren't
lions protecting our home. We're snakes

devouring the eggs of humanity."

Diego blinked back at him as though in surprise. "You
have given this much thought, I see. Why then are

you here?"

Because he had no choice. Because it was his life or the
lives of those who had become his friends, his

family. He was one man, alone. They were men with families,
with lovers, with something to lose.

"That was the deal, remember?" he reminded Diego
mockingly, hiding the fury now. Because now, he

did have something to lose. "I save your cartel from
Sorrell and you give me what I need to save my