Page 46 of Power's Fall
“We cannot simply kill people,” Dahlia said.
Vadisk and Montana both looked at her, and, oddly, Montana winced.
“Killing him might stop the blackmail,” Montana finally said, “but it doesn’t tell us how or where he’s getting his information.”
“But you two would be safe.” The words were out before Vadisk could think better of them.
Montana shook his head. “I don’t need you to protect me.”
“Yes, you do. You both do.”
“No. I don’t. We don’t. We were planning to come here without you and handle this ourselves,” Montana insisted.
“That would have been fucking stupidly dangerous.”
“Enough,” Dahlia started.
Montana pushed to his feet. “Your options are either do nothing, or murder?”
Vadisk shrugged, fighting like the devil to appear casual. “Better than going in person to try to question a government official who could easily disappear all three of us.”
Montana threw his hands up. “That won’t happen. We won’t ask any direct questions, but a meeting with him will give us opportunities to?—”
“To do what?” Vadisk cut in. He felt almost frantic that he couldn’t make them see how dangerous this was or how at risk they were.
He couldn’t lose them.
His fear for them, the frantic feeling that he was watching them walk into danger and helpless to stop them, made him lash out.
“What were you going to do, Montana? You don’t speak the language, you’re former military, but you aren’t an intelligence agent. What the fuck were you going to do? Why are you here?”
Montana clenched his fists,fighting to control his temper. Typically he was mild-mannered, his fuse burning long and slow. Vadisk, king of fucking control freaks, brought out the worst in him.
Unfortunately, he knew the cause of this argument was his fault. He had only shown Dahlia and Vadisk bits and pieces of who he was, hoping that would be enough…because he’d been desperate to hide the blacker parts of his soul from them. In his mind, he’d never intended to tell his spouses this part of his past. But it was becoming clear he needed to come clean.
Either that, or engage in a nice long round of hate fucking.
God, that was more tempting than it should be, but in the end, he dismissed it. They’d already taken a huge risk last night with their joint masturbation game, and he didn’t want to touch either of them in anger.
So that only left…
Him.
Telling the truth.
Fuck. The truth was bad. Really bad.
It was easy to think he could keep the past hidden away when his future spouses were nameless, faceless people he didn’t know. Now that he’d met Vadisk and Dahlia, now that he’d spent time with them and was starting to genuinely care for them, keeping this secret felt as bad as the secret itself.
He drew in a slow breath, then unclenched his hands, rubbing his palms against his thighs nervously because this wasn’t something he liked to relive, not even in the darkest corners of his own mind, so to admit what he’d done aloud…
“Vadisk, that’s enough.” Dahlia rose to her feet too. “Montana’s relative is the one who paid ransom for forty-five?—”
“That’s not why I’m here,” Montana said quietly. “That’s why I care about this, but it’s not why the Grand Master sent me.”
Dahlia froze. Montana was squared off with Vadisk, but he could see Dahlia out of the corner of his eye.
He gritted his teeth, aware he had no choice but to forge on. Unfortunately, it became obvious that he had the skills they were going to need if they had a snowball’s chance in hell of completing this mission. Part of him—a large part—had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. “Ask me what I did on the submarine.”