Run This Town 03 - (Watch Me) Unmask You (12 page)

“What’s—” Lucky cleared his throat with a wince. “What’s wrong?”

“I— A nightmare.” Elias got to his feet and grabbed a pillow. “I’m— I’m sleeping downstairs.”

“No. Elias.” Lucky reached out to him, but Elias didn’t look back, walking away from that bed and Lucky, taking the nightmares with him.

“I don’t work for your father.” Elias didn’t look, but he felt Stavros’s stare as they sat side by side on the park bench.

“You work for me, and I’m telling you to get this done,” Stavros said in that gratingly bored tone of his.

“I don’t work for your father,” Elias said again. “And I don’t kill federal agents. I’m not about to bring down that kind of heat on myself.” Something was off, though. That FBI agent, Elias knew him. Knew him too fucking well, and he wondered if the Konstantinous knew that. If Stavros knew. “Since when do you go after Feds, anyway?” Stavros never liked bringing attention to himself and the business.

So why now?

Maddie made a sound and he held out a finger to her, smiling when she grabbed on, those tiny chubby fingers holding him so tight.

“I don’t question my orders,” Stavros murmured. “Not when they come straight from the top.” He jerked his chin in Maddie’s direction. “You’re gonna have to cut your daddy-daughter time short.”

Stavros wanted him to kill a federal agent. Not just any fucking federal agent either. Maybe if it had been any other person, Elias wouldn’t be so Goddamn tight and torn. But this was a man he’d rescued. He’d seen him weak, emaciated, lying in his own filth. He’d gone to execute Seraphina Cook, the wife of a drug lord, who’d taken to running the empire in secret when her husband died suddenly from a heart attack.

Who and what she was to the Konstantinous Elias never found out, but he’d gone after her and found a man shackled in a hole in the ground, barely four feet deep.

Elias was a lot of things, but he couldn’t let the guy die there. So he’d fished him out, cleaned him up and when he’d been able to tell Elias his name and who to call, he’d handed him over to his agency. In the process Elias had made a choice, giving the target he’d been sent to eliminate the chance to get away. Now, Elias had to kill him? How had Haimon found out? What did Stavros know? He’d told Stavros about letting Seraphina Cook get away, making up a bullshit excuse about the woman and her men getting the drop on him. He’d made sure to keep the agent he’d rescued out of it, though.

Now, he was supposed to believe coincidence was the reason he’d been tasked with killing the same federal agent?

Elias tightened his jaw. “I don’t kill FBI agents, Stav. Never have, never will.”

“I suggest you start.” Stavros got to his feet and tugged on his dark tailored suit. He still looked the same, black wavy hair touching his collar, skin tanned, body well-muscled. His eyes were still that ghostly gray, giving away nothing, but seeing everything. He attempted a tight smile at Maddie where she sat in her stroller, short legs kicking up. “This isn’t ten years ago, Elias. Back then you had a lot to lose, but now?” He shook his head with a small sigh. “The fallout on your side—should you choose to ignore this—” He nodded to the folder in Elias’s lap— “Would be immense.”

Elias cocked his head as he stared up at the fool. “Threatening my family is a mistake—one I’d have thought you’d be smart enough to avoid making.”

Stavros grinned. “Get it done, Elias. You have one week,” he checked his watch, “starting now.” He strode away.

Elias bit off a curse. Goddamn it. He sat on the bench, staring at his daughter as he brought himself back under control. He’d known when he’d made this bargain with Stavros all those years ago that he’d come to regret this. Hell, even as he was in the midst of it, he was fucking wishing he could take it back.

“Hey, girl.” He smiled down at Maddie and she smiled back, cheeks all pink and plump, drool wetting her lips. He chuckled and fished a rag from the bag he’d slung across the stroller handle. “Look at you. That guy makes you foam at the mouth, too, huh?”

Her arms and legs flailed as she made those sounds, music to his ears.

Madeline Cody Mousasi, her middle name a play on Elias’s last name. Their daughter. His and Lucky’s.

“What say we go home, huh?” He wiped her mouth then stood. “Let’s go, little girl.”

It was only after he’d strapped Maddie into her car seat, dumped the stroller in the trunk and began driving back to New Jersey that the guilt set in. A heavy fucking weight on his chest as he looked at his daughter in the rearview mirror.

Every word he spoke to his husband was a lie. He touched Lucky, touched Maddie with hands swimming in blood. It ate at him, slowly, steadily. All his sins, fucking with his peace of mind over the past ten years. He couldn’t confide in Lucky. Couldn’t tell the man he loved the reason he couldn’t sleep, the true reasons he’d drop everything and rush out on a job. He couldn’t tell Lucky that he’d sold himself to protect him.

He’d given him a short bullshit excuse about a bad dream to explain away Elias grabbing Lucky by the throat. The weight of his guilt, the lies, beat at his shoulders. He’d seen the looks Lucky threw his way when he thought Elias wasn’t looking. Lucky knew something was wrong.

Elias gripped the steering wheel tight as he entered the Tunnel.

Lucky had no idea what was going on. Elias didn’t want him to, which was why he was in the predicament he was now in. He hated it, lying to Lucky, pretending to be someone he wasn’t, but the alternative? Hell no. Despite it all, he’d do it all again. Go through with it again.

It brought him here, didn’t it? Gave him Lucky and Maddie. He would never give them up. The only good things in his life. The only true things. He didn’t want to imagine how Lucky would react, what he would do should he ever find out what Elias had done.

He used the security firm to cover his other activities as well, but he did good. Business was good. Lucky’s too and he only pulled out his tattoo gun to ink Elias every now and again.

He’d finished spelling that word he’d started ten years prior with the L on Elias’s chest. His name, spelled out with a different letter placed in different areas over Elias’s body.

The U on his left hip, C tucked away inside his right elbow. The K Lucky had put at Elias’s nape, hidden by his hair, and the Y was on his right ring finger, but the underside. The letters would look random should anyone else notice them, but Elias and Lucky knew better.

Elias had always liked that, loved that Lucky inked him once a year. One letter a year, since he’d hadn’t been sure Elias would stay. But once Elias had made the deal he’d made with Stavros there was nowhere else he’d ever be.

They wanted for nothing after having Maddie via surrogacy almost a year ago. Lucky was beginning to drop hints about doing it again, another child, a boy maybe. And all Elias wanted to do was drop to his knees and confess. Spill his guts.

So many times he’d tried to. But what he’d done… unforgiveable. He knew it. Unforgiveable, and he couldn’t watch Lucky leave him. So what? They’d go another ten years like this. Elias with the insomnia, fatigued by his lies and haunted by his demons, up to his neck in blood, and Lucky, oblivious.

“Fuck.” He muttered the curse under his breath just as his phone rang.

He answered via the car’s system when he saw it was Lucky calling. 
“Mijn schat.”

“Please tell me you didn’t forget our plans for tonight.” Lucky’s voice echoed in the car, and as she did when that happened, Maddie froze, eyes flitting all over the place in search of her dad.

“I didn’t forget. Maddie and I were out having some fun, but I’m on my way home.” They had a date tonight to celebrate a lot of things.

“I’ll be home at seven,” Lucky said. “The babysitter should be there by then. Our reservation is at eight.”

“Got it.”

“Where did you guys go anyway?”

Just like that the happiness went away, replaced with the guilt. “That’s between me and the lovely Maddie.”

Lucky snorted, but he didn’t push. “I gotta go. Love you. Love you, Mad Girl.”

Maddie grew louder, more animated, fists and legs pumping.

Lucky chuckled. “Later.”

“Bye. Love you, too.”

The call ended and he slumped. “I’m so sorry, Maddie.” He watched her in the rearview. “I hate it, lying to him.” But he would, again and again. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

****

Lucky picked at his salmon as he tried to find the words to express just what exactly he needed from his husband. Any other time he wouldn’t be this hesitant, wouldn’t be struggling to say it. Ten years had given them that comfort and security in each other.

But something was off. He felt it, sensed it. The other night, like most nights nowadays, Elias woke him up in the middle of the night with his hoarse cries and mumbled words that Lucky could make neither head nor tail of. When the nightmares started Lucky had chalked that up to whatever Elias had been doing oversees during the time they’d been apart. The work he never talked about, that was so 
hush-hush
. Now, he wasn’t so sure. The hand around his throat was new. It had been terrifying, though not as scary as Elias abandoning their bed.

Ten years and he felt as though something was off.

What, he didn’t know.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” Elias asked from across the table.

Lucky lifted his gaze to stare at his husband. Still so sexy, his scarlet. The red hair and full tattoo sleeves, hiding some of Lucky’s best work. The letters he’d scattered all over Elias’s body. He had a hell of a good time hunting them down, searching them out, kissing on them. He’d changed physically. A little softer around the middle, the graying hair at his temple, small lines around his eyes. He wore the earrings Lucky had bought for Maddie, diamond studs, both of them in his left ear. Nowadays he’d taken to shaving the bottom half of his head, almost down to the scalp, while keeping the hair on the top and middle of his head intact, still long and flowing.

Lucky loved his redheaded ass.

They fought hard. Loved hard. And Lucky loved him now as much as he did back then. Lucky didn’t question Elias’s love for them, their family. He’d had ten years to prove to Lucky.

Lucky hadn’t worried about Elias leaving in a long time.

Today, he worried. There was something new in Elias’s eyes, something fatalistic that Lucky needed to understand. To deal with it before he couldn’t.

They were different men. Changed men, not fundamentally, Lucky didn’t think. But ten years brought inevitable changes, not the most indelible of which was their daughter.

He put his fork down and licked his lips. “Do you want another child?”

Elias’s expression didn’t change, but Lucky knew his husband so he noticed when the fingers wrapped around Elias’s wine glass tightened then quickly relaxed.

“Is that what you want?” Elias leaned toward him, eyes softening, tone low. “Another baby?”

Lucky shrugged. “I’d like to give Maddie a sibling and—”

“Forget Maddie.” Elias dismissed Lucky’s words with a wave. “You. I’d like to hear what my husband wants.”

Lucky glanced at Elias’s wine glass. He’d opted for water, but right now he needed something way stronger, something to light his throat on fire. This was their anniversary dinner. The last thing he wanted was to bring up what was bothering him, what was on his mind, which was nothing really. Except a niggling that— “Something’s off,” he blurted out. “With you, with us.” He shook his head when Elias opened his mouth. “Just this thing I feel in my chest. Something’s off.” He heaved a heavy sigh and let his gaze leave Elias’s face to dart around the restaurant.

“How long have you felt like this?” Elias touched Lucky’s hand, stole his attention back. “Lucky. Talk to me.”

Funny thing was, they talked. Like, they talked a lot. About every damn thing. They talked shit to death must times, but still…

“It’s been ten years, Elias.”

Elias’s eyes sparked, a dangerous flame. “Ten years? What’s that, an expiration date?” His Scottish accent was coming through thicker, more pronounced which only happened when he was getting upset. “We have an expiration date, Lucky?”

“You’ve been off lately. Barely sleeping. The nightmares,” Lucky told him. “I just think maybe you’re not used to this, being stationary this long. Being… tied down. Maybe you’re chaffing under the pressure of commitment.” The monotony of everyday life must be so different to what Elias was used to. Their lives were routine now, based around their daughter.

He watched Elias as the shock on his husband’s face turned to something different, something dark and fierce and intense.

“You and I are fine. Will always be fine,” Elias said. “I’ve been—” He shrugged. “Memories from my past have been resurfacing in my dreams and they’re not the most fun. I don’t want you to worry about me.”

“I’m sorry.” He knew about Elias being homeless and selling his body to feed himself. Lucky couldn’t even begin to understand how messed up those memories could be.

“These past ten years…” Elias broke off and shook his head as a smile curved his lips. “
Mijn schat
, they’ve been the best. The absolute, fucking best. Because I’ve had you with me all the way.” He stopped and swallowed, both elbows on the table as he leaned forward. “I adore our family. Our daughter, Lucky. You and Maddie, you’re mine.” His nostrils flared, eyes wide, when he promised, “I’m yours, forever. It’s a promise I didn’t make lightly, one I have every intention of seeing through. And let me tell you,” he cupped Lucky’s jaw, “it’s really no hardship, because I get to see you naked, and I get to touch you and most importantly, I get you to reciprocate.” He winked and Lucky laughed.