This footage didn’t make sense. Rose was entering her and her husband’s new private practice in Lower Manhattan. Murdock always only included new developments, emergencies or anything else that was out of the ordinary.
So watching Rose was his only source of enjoyment. But when he’d told Murdock to provide samples of Rose’s normal activities, he’d stared emptily at him then continued to provide him only with what he considered worth seeing.
Had Murdock now decided to heed him and start giving him snippets of Rose walking down the street or shopping or picking her children up from school?
He snorted. That Vulcan would never do anything he didn’t consider logical or pertinent. Even if he obeyed him blindly otherwise, Murdock wouldn’t fulfill a demand he considered to be fueled by pointless sentiment and a waste of both their time.
This meant there was more to what he was watching than Rose entering her workplace.
What was he missing here?
Suddenly his heart seemed to hit Pause itself. Everything inside him followed suit, coming to a juddering standstill.
The person who entered the frame, the one Rose turned to talk to in such delight... Though the image was still from the back with only a hint of a profile apparent, he’d know that shape, that...being...blindfolded in a crowd of a million.
Her.
Sitting up, exercising the same caution he’d approached armed bombs with, he reached to the side table, vaguely noting how the glass rattled as he set it down. It wasn’t his hand that shook. It was his heart. The heart that never crossed sixty beats per minute even under extreme duress. It now exploded from its momentary cessation in thunderclaps, sending recoil jolting through every artery and nerve.
The once waist-length, golden hair was now a dark, shoulder-length curtain. The body once rife with dangerous curves was svelte and athletic in a prim skirt suit. But there wasn’t the slightest doubt in his mind. That was her.
Isabella.
The woman he’d once craved with a force that had threatened the fulfillment of his lifelong obsession.
He’d long resolved it according to his meticulous plan. It was her issue that hadn’t been concluded satisfactorily. Or at all. She’d been his one feebleness, remained his only failure. The only one who’d made him swerve from his course and at times forget all about it. She remained the only woman he’d been unable—unwilling to use. But he’d let her use him. After their incendiary fling, when a choice had had to be made, she’d told him he’d never been an option.
Not that the memory of his one lapse was what had set off this detonation of aggression.
It was who she was. What she was.
The wife of the man who’d been responsible for the deaths of his family and for orphaning Rose.
He’d gone after her almost nine years ago as her husband’s only Achilles’ heel. But nothing had gone according to plan.
Her impact had been unprecedented. And it had had nothing to do with her rare beauty. Beauty never turned a hair on his head. Desire was his weapon, never his weakness. He’d been the one The Organization sent when women were involved, to seduce, use, then discard with utmost coldness.
But she’d been an enigma. At once clearly reveling in being the wife of a brute forty years her senior, who doted on her and submerged her in luxuries, while studying to be a doctor and involving herself in many humanitarian activities.
Going in, he’d been convinced her benevolent facade had been designed to launder her husband’s image, in which she’d been succeeding, spectacularly.
But after he’d been exposed to her, this twenty-four-year-old who seemed much older than her years, he’d no longer been sure of anything. Seducing her had also proved much harder than he’d anticipated.
Though he’d been certain she’d reciprocated his unstoppable desire, she wouldn’t let him near. Thinking she’d been only whetting his appetite until he was ready to do anything for a taste of her, as her husband had been, he’d intensified his pursuit. But it had only been after he’d followed her on a relief mission in Colombia—saving her and her companions during a guerilla attack—that her resistance had finally crumbled. The following four months had been the most delirious experience of his life.
He’d had to force himself to remember who she was to continue his mission. But it had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. When he’d had her in his arms, when he’d been inside her, he’d forgotten who he was.
But he’d finally extracted secrets only she’d known about her husband without her realizing it. Then he’d been ready to make his move. Not that it had been that easy.
Putting his plan into action had meant the end of his mission. The end of them. And he’d been unable to stomach walking away from her. He’d wanted more of her. Limitlessly more.
So he’d done what he’d never thought he’d do. He’d asked her to leave with him.
Though she’d claimed she couldn’t think of life without him, her rejection had been instantaneous. And final. She’d never considered leaving her husband for him.
In his fever for a continuation of the affair, he’d convinced himself she’d refused because she feared her husband. So he’d pledged carte blanche of his protection.
But playing the distraught lover seamlessly, she’d still refused, adamant that there was no other way.
It had been only then that the red heat of coveting had hardened into the cold steel of cynicism. And he’d faced the truth.
She’d preferred her protection and luxury from the less-demanding man she’d married when she’d been twenty and had wrapped around her finger. Him, she’d only replace in her bed. There’d never been any reason she’d choose him over her decades-older ogre.
But he was certain she’d long regretted her choice when he’d shortly afterward destroyed her sugar daddy, protractedly, agonizingly, pulverizing her own life of excess with him.
Not that he’d cared what had happened to her. She’d made her bed of thorns thinking it was the lap of eternal luxury. It was only fitting she’d be torn apart lying in it.
But this searing vision from his past looked patently whole. Even in the video’s inferior quality, he could sense her sangfroid. None of the hardships she must have suffered had come close to touching her.
Then it was over. The two women entered the building, and the video came to an abrupt end.
He stared at the black screen, questions an erupting geyser.
What was she doing at Rose’s practice? This didn’t seem to be a first-time meeting. So how had he missed the earlier ones leading to this level of familiarity? How had she come in touch with Rose at all?
This couldn’t be a coincidence.
But what else could it be? There was no way she could know of his connection to Rose. His Richard Graves persona—the one he’d adopted after he’d left his Cobra days behind—had been meticulously manufactured. Not even The Organization with its limitless intelligence resources had found a shred of evidence tying him to their vanished agent.
Even if she’d somehow discovered the relationship between him and Rose, their affair had ended in unequivocal finality. No thanks to his own resolve. While he’d sworn he’d never check on her, he’d weakened on another front. He’d left the door ajar for a year afterward, in case she’d wanted to reestablish contact. Which she hadn’t. If she’d wanted to do so now, she would have found a way to bring herself to his attention. It didn’t make sense she’d target Rose to get to him. Or did it?
He exploded to his feet, snatched his phone out and punched Murdock’s speed-dial number.
The