"Right. The real Diego had been working this job for almost a year. He's the one who found the treasures and then got the divers to start bringing them to the surface. He had a reputation for being ruthless and dangerous."
"Your kind of guy?" Katie asked gently.
"I figured I was done with bad boys," Mia told her honestly. "After the disaster with Ian, I'd pretty much sworn off relationships period."
No one said anything, which Mia appreciated. She'd had six years to deal with the guilt of inadvertently bringing a domestic terrorist in close contact with the daughter of the president of the United States. She'd told herself there was no way she could guess that boring Ian, who had gone to grad school with her at Georgetown, was also secretly working to overthrow the government. Even the Secret Service had vetted him and come up with nothing. But she kept thinking she should have known her summer boyfriend was not a nice man.
"I spent a couple of days learning my way around town and sort of checking out Diego's people. He was too well known to come into town, so I didn't meet him at first. I did make contact with a couple of the women. As planned, a local policeman recognized one of them and began to arrest her. I started a fire in a trash can, which distracted him, and ran off with the women."
Brenna's eyes widened. "You were really a spy."
"Not a very good one. I lasted all of one assignment and fell in love with the bad guy. No one offered me a promotion."
"Don't be so hard on yourself," Katie said. "You weren't ready for what they asked you to do."
Mia agreed with that assessment. She should have been given a desk job for a while or at least a few low-level courier assignments. Instead, she'd been thrown into the middle of a gang of thieves, and their leader had mesmerized her from the start.
"They took me back to their hideout," Mia said. "Apparently that was considered a bad idea, because there was a lot of screaming. They discussed killing me as a way to keep me silent, which terrified me."
Her sisters stared at her. "They almost killed you? You never said anything."
"I wasn't supposed to. I probably shouldn't be telling you this now. But before anyone could shoot me or stab me, Diego came in and told them to let me go."
She still remembered everything about that moment. They'd been speaking in Italian, assuming she wouldn't understand them. Of course she had. Italian, Spanish, French. To her they were practically the same language.
Diego had asked how Mia had met the others, and when he heard about the fire, he crossed to her.
"Why did you help them?" he asked.
His voice had given her goose bumps. Her fear had faded in the heat generated by his nearness. To this day she couldn't say why she'd fallen for him in that second, but she had. She was sure there was some chemical explanation involving pheromones and the position of the moon or something, but it had happened. Hard, hot need had swept through her until all she could think about was giving herself to him. She would have been anything to him— lover, slave, sycophant. Anything, as long as he let her exist within the sphere of his world.
"They were nice to me," she'd said instead, proud that she'd been able to form words at all. "I'm loyal to my friends."
"What do you want with us?" he'd asked.
"Nothing. I don't even know who you are."
She'd lied, of course. She knew all about him from her briefing reports. Even more important, in that moment, staring into his dark eyes and willing him to take her right there, she understood the man.
He was darkness and she should be afraid of him, but she couldn't ignore the power of her need. If necessary, she would be in the darkness with him.
"I am Diego," he said, then watched sharply as if waiting for a reaction.
"Mia," she said with a shrug. "I'd offer to shake hands, but I'm kind of tied up."
He glanced at the handcuffs and smiled. "Do you travel alone?"
"I'm pretty independent. But don't get too comfy with the idea. If I don't check in with my dad every couple of days, he goes completely insane. We're talking about notifying four-star generals. Did I mention my father went to West Point?"
Diego had smiled then. "Release her," he told the others, speaking Italian. "She amuses me. She may stay. But make sure she doesn't go out by herself. And monitor her phone calls."
"I understood him, of course," Mia said to her sisters. "I thought he was the bad guy. I thought he was the one I was supposed to watch."
"Isn't the fact that he wasn't a good thing?" Katie asked. "Doesn't that make you feel better?"
"It should," Mia admitted. "It's just…" She drew in a breath. "I agonized over what was happening. I knew I was falling for him and that it would affect my judgment. I got in touch with my contact and begged him to get me out of there. I said I was at risk of compromising the assignment. But they left me in play. Every day he was there and every day I tried to resist. One day I couldn't."
"Okay, that's the part I want to hear about," Brenna said with a sigh. "In detail. Speak slowly."
Mia grinned. "It was another dark and stormy night. I remember sitting outside on a porch. Nearly everyone had gone into town. It was late and there were so many shadows. Suddenly, he was there."
He hadn't said anything— he hadn't had to. They'd looked at each other and then they were kissing and touching. He'd taken her without saying a word.
"The next morning I wondered if I'd dreamed the whole thing, but when I went to breakfast, he had me sit next to him. We were together from then on."
There were so many memories. So many times when she'd tried to walk away.
"I didn't want to do the wrong thing," she admitted. "If you knew how I tried to stay strong, to remember why I was there. I knew I was breaking every rule, I knew I was going to get fired. I told myself it wasn't so bad because no one's life was on the line. But I was wrong."
Two weeks after she and Diego became lovers, a rival gang attacked.
"I knew about it in advance from my handler. I was supposed to use the confusion to bring Diego in. If he resisted, I was supposed to shoot him. I wanted to warn him. For two days I nearly told him the truth." She laughed harshly. "For all I know, he arranged the whole damn thing."
"You think it was part of the plan to get him out of there?" Francesca asked.
"Maybe. I'm not sure. I do know that when the moment came, when I tried to take him with me, he wouldn't go. When I pulled a gun on him, he told me I wouldn't be able to shoot him. He was right."
"Did you try?" Katie asked.
"I knew it was the right thing to do, but I couldn't pull the trigger."
Mia had agonized over that. During her debriefing, she'd been grilled again and again about why she hadn't shot him when she'd had the chance. Now, knowing who he really was, she wondered if he'd replaced her bullets with blanks. It sure wouldn't surprise her.
"The fighting got closer," she continued, remembering the noise of that night. The sharp sound of gunfire, the cries of those who had been injured, then the roar of her helicopter.
"I didn't want to leave him, but I had to get out. I knew that. I begged him to come with me."
He'd smiled at her then, had kissed her hard and told her to remember him. Because he'd known she was about to "see" him die?
"He literally tossed me onto the helicopter," she said. "I don't think I would have gone otherwise. As we lifted up, two men rushed him. I screamed, but it was too late. They fired and he fell and there was so much blood."
She would remember that for the rest of her life. The sound of the helicopter, her own screams, and the bright light that showed the rapidly widening pool of blood as Diego died.
Except he hadn't died. It had all been an elaborately staged event. Like a Broadway show.
Mia shook away the past and glanced at her sisters. "I thought he was gone. I went through my debriefing, then I quit and came here."
"And someone in the government told him you were dead?" Katie asked.
"That's what he said. I know they're not likely to give out information on operatives, even lousy ones."
"Mia, you were put in an impossible situation," Francesca told her. "Give yourself a break."
"I understand that in my head," Mia admitted. "But in my heart, I think about everything I did wrong. That's what's so hard for me. That I fell for the wrong guy again. You'd think Ian would have cured me of that."
"Is he the wrong guy?" Katie asked. "He's not the enemy anymore. He's a nice guy."
Brenna raised her eyebrows. "Nice? I don't think he's normal enough to be nice. He's royal, Katie. Does the man even know how to put toothpaste on his toothbrush?"
"He's doing it now," Mia said. "Unless Grammy M is sneaking into his bathroom every night to take care of that. When he was Diego, he had to act like everyone else. I know he's a prince and all, but he knows how to exist in the real world. At least he did."
"So now what?" Francesca asked.
"That would be my question," Mia said. "I'm trying to reconcile who he is with who he was and figure out where Danny fits in all this."
Brenna raised her glass. "I'll give you this— none of the Marcelli women are boring."
"Something we can cling to," Katie said. "I'm not sure that helps Mia, though."
Mia drank more wine. "I might be beyond help. Right now I'm dealing with crazy situations. Rafael is Danny's father. I can't change that, even if I wanted to, and I'm not sure I do. He's interested in his son, which is a plus, but what do I know about him?"
"You were once in love with him," Katie said. "Does that count for anything?"
Mia tried to laugh, but instead made a sound suspiciously close to a sob. "Not when you consider that the man I fell in love with was supposedly a notorious thief with a reputation for killing the competition."
"Maybe you sensed his goodness," Francesca said.
"I'm not that intuitive," Mia muttered.
"Are you attracted to him now?" Katie asked.
Brenna rolled her eyes. "Well, duh. Of course she is. Did you see the man? Did you think about him being naked?"
"Of course not! I'm a happily married woman." Katie sipped her wine. "I would never do that."
Mia looked at her, as did Brenna and Francesca. Katie sighed.
"Okay. Maybe. For a second. Yes, he's pretty amazing in the studly department, but that's no excuse to give in a second time."
"Ah, isn't knowing how good the sex was and could be again going to work against her?" Brenna asked.
Katie looked at Mia, who sighed. "It doesn't help," she admitted.
"Trouble," Francesca said. "All this is trouble. But you'll get through it."
"I don't see a way not to. I'm just glad Joe is around."
"Did you call Mom and Dad?" Katie asked.
"Yesterday. They're understandably shocked, but happy. I begged them to stay in China. Rafael will still be around when they get back."
"He's staying that long?" Brenna asked.
"I don't have exact dates, but I got the impression he would be parked here for a while. Even if he heads back to Calandria, there are going to be visits back and forth."
"So you have time," Katie said. "You can consider your options. Think with both your head and your heart."
"Don't make the same mistake twice," Mia said, and meant it.