If he wasn’t torn himself, he at least understood that I was. So he admitted nothing, and hinted everything. “I fit right into the life, Emily,” he said. “It fit me like my skin. As though it were written in my genetic code, which, I suppose, it was.”
It did fit him like his skin. He wore it well. He looked good in it, too.
But I had to stop thinking about how he looked. It wasn’t helping me any.
I rubbed my hand over my face, getting myself back on track. “What happened next?”
“A few things, actually.” He uncrossed his leg and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his lap. “Michelis took an interest in me. He was my mother’s oldest brother and he’d been close to her growing up. He made it his mission to groom me as thoroughly as he’d one day groom his own son, Petros. He gave me scare jobs to handle on my own. Then, when I turned eighteen, he told me he had a present for me.”
The plane bumped as it hit a patch of turbulence, but I was pretty sure it was only part of the cause for my sudden queasiness. I’d spent all of twenty minutes with Reeve’s uncle, and it was enough to realize he was a terrible man. I didn’t want to know what kind of present he would give to a favored apprentice. But considering how vivid my imagination was, it was just as bad not knowing.
Reeve noticed my discomfort. “Are you okay? The bed’s in the back cabin if you’d like to lie down.” There was only the slightest hint of mischief in his tone.
Now my stomach was twisting in new ways, deeper ways, that shot memory sensations down my upper thighs. The last time we’d been on this plane, he’d taken me in that cabin and used me to distract him from Michelis. Oh, how I would love that distraction now.
But no. “I’ll be fine, thank you. Go on. This present.”
“Let me know if you change your mind,” he said suggestively. Then he returned to the seriousness of earlier. “We’d had suspected the Laskos as the cause of my parents’ accident, but no one could confirm it. Michelis kept digging, though, until he not only confirmed their involvement, but he also found out exactly which Laskos had set up the hit. On my birthday, he gave me a name – Broos Laskos.”
My breath caught. “He wanted you to kill him?”
Reeve pointed a finger at me, a silent “bingo” gesture. “He said I could do what I wanted with the information, but it was time to prove my place in the family.”
Time to prove his place.
So it was the first time that such an act had been required of him. Whatever awful things he’d done before that, it hadn’t involved taking a life.
I tried to imagine it – a young Reeve, only two years after his beloved parents had been killed, asked to undertake such an awful, important task. With the support of his family, it had to feel less like a burden and more like an opportunity.
Yet, it was still murder. It would taint him. It would be a line that, once crossed, was crossed forever.
I met his eyes now and, despite the weight of them, I forced myself to hold his gaze. If I looked hard enough, could I see the scars on his soul? Because killing someone – that had to leave a mark that was visible somewhere, somewhere deep and hidden maybe.
Or, maybe not hidden at all. Maybe all his scars were in plain sight and sitting right in front of me.
“See anything interesting?” he smirked.
I’d studied him so long that he’d become amused by it. “I’m not sure. Do I?”
“I wish I knew the answer to that.” His tone was wistful and solemn, and it struck a chord that reverberated so hauntingly through me, I was near throwing myself at his feet and confessing in detail every interesting way he affected me all the time.
But I hesitated, and the moment passed.
“I did what was expected of me,” he went on, his voice absent of whatever melancholy I’d heard there before. “I made the arrangements. I knew where Broos would be alone and when. I had it all planned.
“Meanwhile, my parents’ will had specified a few things to become available to me on my eighteenth birthday. Some stocks and a few personal items, including a letter from my mother that had been written to me when I was only eight. She’d saved it for those ten years, intending to give it to me when I turned eighteen, not knowing she’d be dead by then. It arrived at my grandmother’s house a week or so after my birthday, a few days before I’d planned to take care of Broos. I read it and everything changed.”
He didn’t have to say more for me to understand what he meant, but he did anyway. “I didn’t go through with my plans.”
The relief that swept through me so was great and so unexpected that I had to bite back a laugh. Here I’d been searching for signs of the murder that I was so sure he’d committed, and he hadn’t. I was smart enough to realize that didn’t mean he’d never killed anyone after that, but I was grateful that this one story, at least, ended differently.
“Does that surprise you?”
I shrugged. I was more surprised at my reaction but wasn’t about to admit that.
“Let me rephrase then – does it disappoint you?” He seemed more than just curious about my answer. He seemed desperate.
No. I’m not disappointed. I’m still very much interested.
But I couldn’t tell him that either.
I redirected, instead. “What did the letter say? It had to reveal something significant.”
“Yes. And no. She told me everything. Her life story, how she’d fallen for my father, why she’d left Athens. Everything. I already knew all of it now, but not from her point of view. Before that, I hadn’t gotten a clear picture of why she’d left. It was biased information, pieced together from her family, and I didn’t have any understanding of all the trouble my father had gone to in order to change her life. Or why. Until I read that letter.”