The Red Ledger Read online

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  His proximity and anger should frighten me, but I’m too fired up. I match his furious stare and yell, “What do you want from me?”

  His nostrils flare. “For starters, I want you to stop trying to jump out of the goddamn car.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because I’m trying to keep you safe.” He yanks the door shut tightly and leans back, putting space between us again. “If I’d known you had a death wish, I would have kept you tied to the bed or—”

  “Or what?”

  “Never mind.”

  My heart thunders in my chest. Something in his voice changes when he talks about keeping me safe. Something that niggles at my instincts. I still love him, even if it’s just the memory of him. But the more time we spend together, the less I trust the man beside me.

  “What. Do. You. Want?”

  He turns off the ignition, letting silence settle around us.

  “Tristan—”

  “My mother. Just…” He closes his eyes and swallows. “Just start there, okay? It’s the most vivid memory I have.”

  A few minutes pass between us. Our breathing slows. Gradually, the fury between us turns into something else.

  “Her name was Grace. She worked as a nurse in Baltimore. She was coming off the night shift at the hospital when it happened.” I hesitate, reliving the sadness. “It was awful. The police had a couple leads but never caught the guy who did it. I often wondered if they had, if things would have been different.”

  He looks up at me, silently asking for more.

  “You changed,” I say quietly.

  “How?”

  I exhale slowly, taking myself back to that time. The tragedy had changed us both.

  “Something went dark inside you. At first, I didn’t think it would change us, because we were closer than ever. Unshakable. But plans we’d made began to shift little by little. When we were together, sometimes it felt like you were somewhere else. I worried that you’d never make peace with it.”

  “And then I left.”

  I nod. “We’d both applied to a few schools. I got acceptances from some Ivy League schools, so my parents were obviously breathing down my neck about that. But we both got into UCLA. It was kind of like our little escape plan. You wanted to get away from your past. I wanted to get out of DC.”

  “Let me guess. The plan changed.”

  “We were ready to send in our acceptance letters when you changed your mind. An army recruiter reached out to you right around then and started filling your head with all the possibilities.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I ended up staying close to home for school. I felt tethered to DC, like if I went too far I’d never see you again. Didn’t end up mattering, I guess. You left for basic training. I remember you kept saying, ‘I’ve got to do this. It’s the right thing to do.’” I close my eyes. “If you want to know the truth, I think you needed to take your revenge out on someone, and it didn’t matter if it was your enemy or someone else’s.”

  My thoughts spiral down into the agony that followed. The long months apart. The calls that came less often. Then the letter that ended everything.

  Why couldn’t I let him go? Why couldn’t I move on and live a normal life? Have friends. Be happy. Be with someone like Kolt, who’s probably wondering where I am now, along with my students and the staff at the school. I’ve been missing for close to twenty-four hours.

  I exhale a rough sigh.

  “I just couldn’t let you go when there was still a sliver of hope that you’d come home. I tried to move on. I came here…”

  “You came to Rio to forget me.”

  “I wasn’t in a good place for a long time. I needed a change. Something big. Something…dangerous.”

  “You came to the right place.”

  “I suppose I did,” I say, gazing out the window.

  The sound of the engine revving back to life brings me back to the present. Tristan is eerily silent as he drives us back the rest of the way. We pass through the gates under the watchful eyes of the guards, climb the white stone steps of Mateus’s home, and I excuse myself to get cleaned up.

  I take my time in the shower, eager to let go of some of the tension and uncertainty that’s taken hold of me. I towel dry my hair and put on a white sundress I packed, my thoughts tripping over our earlier conversation and his odd behavior at the church.

  Maybe it’ll all be worth it in the end, when Tristan can find the truth I’m still not convinced he wants to know. Maybe the people who want me dead will give up, and I can have a normal life again. A normal life. I didn’t come to Rio to have normal. I came to shock myself out of my own malaise, brought on by missing Tristan to the point of inescapable daily pain.

  I gaze up into the mirror and judge my reflection. My eyes are tired, my hair leaves much to be desired, and the dress still holds faint wrinkles from being jammed in my bag. What will Tristan see? I don’t know whether to trust that our kiss was a ploy to get me to leave Rio with him. I can hardly believe that the passion crackling between us when we touch is only mine.

  Venturing beyond the room Tristan and I share, I follow the sound of voices murmuring in the kitchen. I’m hit with the most amazing cooking smells, and then the sight of Karina with Mateus’s arms wrapped around her waist as they whisper and laugh.

  I hesitate in the doorway—hoping I can step away unnoticed—when Mateus turns to me.

  “Isabel.” He smiles warmly.

  “Sorry. I thought Tristan might be in here.”

  “He’s in the den. We were just getting things ready for dinner.”

  “It smells delicious. Can I help with anything?”

  “Actually, if you could help Karina, I need to attend to a few things.”

  “Go. I can finish up,” Karina says, nudging him away with a coy smile.

  He shoots her a heated look before leaving us alone.

  Karina dices what look to be fresh chives from the garden. “Mateus says you went into town today. How was it?”

  I open my mouth to speak and realize there’s nothing I can say about today that doesn’t sound completely crazy. I snap it shut and shrug with a smile.

  She huffs out a little laugh. “I was wondering if Tristan was any different with you. I suppose not.”

  Her familiarity with Tristan sparks my curiosity. Karina is more than the household staff. She’s obviously Mateus’s lover, and she may know the new Tristan better than I do.

  “You know him well?”

  She sprinkles the chives into a large pot and bangs the wooden spoon on the edge a few times. “Not well. He’s Mateus’s friend. He doesn’t pay anyone else much attention.”

  Even though I’ve just witnessed her and Mateus’s embrace, a little prickle of jealousy edges its way into my thoughts. Why would she desire more of Tristan’s attention?

  “He doesn’t seem to want many friends,” I finally say.

  She cocks her head. “That’s probably true.”

  “How did he and Mateus meet?”

  She shoots me a suspicious look but covers it up quickly by turning her attention to the oven.

  “I don’t know all the details. I don’t expect I ever will. All I can say is that Mateus is in his debt. Not that he minds. Tristan is always welcome here.”

  Karina pulls out a tray of nicely browned empadas from the oven and rests it on the granite counter. Only now do I realize how little I’ve eaten since leaving Rio. I’m starving, and for the first time, I feel relaxed enough to eat.

  “Can I help?” I’m willing to do anything to expedite dinner or steal a bite.

  Mateus returns just then. “Isabel. Come. Tristan is waiting for you.”

  I sigh and follow him deeper into the house until we reach the den. Tristan halts mid-pace and looks me over, his expression unreadable. I glance down and tug at the sides of my dress.

  “Sorry. I didn’t pack much.” />
  He comes toward me. “You look fine.”

  I try not to cringe at the word fine. Even though it perfectly describes Tristan. Now that he’s not dragging me from one place to another and I’m not trying to leap out of a moving vehicle, I can actually appreciate the physical man. His corded neck and arms that test the fibers of his black T-shirt. His narrow hips and muscular thighs. His fearless stance before me, close enough to touch.

  I lift my wandering stare, only to get lost in the cool assessing eyes that have seen more than I can possibly know.

  “Is everything okay?”

  I swallow and pretend like I’m not blatantly checking him out, even though a little part of me still feels entitled to.

  “Is black the only color in your wardrobe?”

  He shrugs. “I just try to blend in.”

  My defenses come down a little with his honesty. “You could never blend in, Tristan.”

  “I do a pretty good job of it, actually.”

  A small smile curves my lips. “I’d find you in a crowd anywhere.”

  “Or on a busy street, as it were.”

  Thank God I found you…

  As if he can hear my unspoken words, he averts his gaze. In the corner, a round, mahogany table is set for two. Several candles burn in the center. It feels oddly intimate—between the rich colors of the room, the musk of leather furniture, and the candlelight.

  “Hungry?”

  “Starving is more like it,” I say.

  Karina walks in with two steaming plates right on cue.

  “Then let’s eat,” he says.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TRISTAN

  Mateus arrives on Karina’s heels and places two glasses of wine beside our plates. “Saúde,” he says with a wink.

  Isabel smirks as he leaves. “Why do I get the feeling he wants us to get along?”

  “He likes to meddle. I had no idea how much until I brought you here.”

  “How long have you been friends?”

  I tense at the warmth she attaches to the term. It’s both foreign and uncomfortable, much like the way she makes me feel.

  “Almost as long as I can remember,” I finally say between bites.

  Isabel is quiet for a moment. “So not long, then.”

  “We met a few years ago. Right after I came to Brazil. Things were different then.”

  “How?”

  I internally berate myself for opening the door to her question. But the more we share with one another, the less I seem to worry about the vulnerability the truth creates. Our days may be numbered. If she doesn’t die by my hand, Jay’s people will get to her. What does it matter what she knows?

  “I was figuring out my life here. I accepted his friendship before I realized how inconvenient they could be.”

  “Friends?”

  “Friends. Lovers. Essentially anyone who knows my name becomes a liability.”

  I laugh to myself at the sudden irony that, until a few hours ago, I didn’t even know my own surname. I was reborn as Tristan Red the second my boots hit the ground in Rio for the first time. I have official documents with a dozen aliases, but Red is how most of the people in my world know me.

  My given name is like my past. Good to know but largely irrelevant. I can never be Tristan Stone again. Isabel has to finally believe this now.

  “I go by Tristan Red, by the way. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t introduce me to random strangers though.”

  Her cheeks redden. “Sorry.”

  I point to her full plate. “I thought you were starving.”

  She exhales a deep breath and nods. We spend the next few minutes devouring Karina’s masterpiece. I shouldn’t feel so unguarded, but between the heavy meal and the atmosphere, I’m feeling at ease. Relaxed, even.

  As we finish, she gestures to the couch and offers a hopeful smile. “Do you want to sit?”

  “Sure.”

  Together, we move to the other side of the den where Mateus scolded me only a night ago. I refill our wineglasses, unable to stop from dwelling on the photos he showed me.

  Meanwhile Isabel sits in an adjacent chair. I cross the room as she tucks her legs under her. In her flowy white dress, she’s nothing short of a miracle. An impossibility.

  She sips her wine and holds it on her tongue before swallowing.

  “Do you like it?”

  She smiles. “I do.”

  I sit on the couch and try not to feel like the silence is a physical thing, creeping in, beckoning me to break it and ask Isabel all the questions I should be.

  “So,” she says, “what should we talk about?”

  Her voice is tentative, and I don’t blame her after this afternoon. I should rip the Band-Aid off. Get this over with so we can both move on.

  “You said my mother worked in Baltimore. If your dad works at the Pentagon, we were nowhere close. How did we meet?”

  Her eyes light up. “I was your tutor.”

  I blink. “Excuse me?”

  “I took a bus twice a week to tutor English and Spanish at an inner-city high school in Baltimore. I was trying to rack up community-service hours for my college résumé. That, and I was looking for any excuse to get out of Alexandria.”

  I can’t hold back a laugh. “You were my tutor?”

  “You were failing English before you met me,” she says. “By the end of the year, you were on the honor roll.”

  “I suppose you think you had something to do with it.”

  She bites her lip with a smile. “I motivated you.”

  I try not to get hung up on all the ways she could have inspired my good grades. I’m guessing the eighteen-year-old version of me would have crawled across hot coals for an hour under her tutelage.

  Because Isabel is more than a beautiful woman. She’s fierce and kind, and I’m certain those are only a few of the layers of the person before me. She can’t seem to say much without hitting a nerve, but I’m beginning to appreciate the reward. The truth. Even her dangerous affection for me is something I’ve found myself looking forward to experiencing during our brief time together.

  “So your parents must have loved that. Falling for a boy on the wrong side of the tracks.”

  She traces her fingertip around the rim of her glass. “At some point, I decided to just do what I wanted. Even if it was a little scary. Even if it made my parents furious. It is my life, after all.”

  “It was puppy love, Isabel. Hardly worth upsetting your parents.”

  She narrows her eyes. “It was more than puppy love. A lot more. And it was worth it. Even though it nearly broke me.”

  I clench my jaw. We’re edging into territory I’m not used to. Feelings. Heartache. Love.

  “We were young,” I say.

  I’m not sure if I should end this now. Every exploration into my past seems to trip over the inconvenient truth that Isabel and I were once in love.

  Before I can come up with a better diversion, Isabel rises from her chair and walks to me. I stare up at her as she stands before me. I can’t decide if she’s more angel or goddess at this moment.

  “We still are young, you know.”

  Her knee nudges mine. Playfully, suggestively. I’m drawn to her so completely, I can’t stop myself. I feather the tops of my fingers over her soft skin. The contact reverberates through me, dares me to do more, feel more.

  Before I can, she leans in and sits astride me, sucking the air out of the room as our bodies meet. Her hands on my chest, her warmth covering me… I’ve never known this kind of temptation.

  “Isabel…” I consider pushing her off but stiffen my hands into fists on either side of my thighs instead. If I keep touching her, I’ll never stop.

  “It wasn’t that complicated, Tristan.” Her voice is soothing, echoing through me like an old song. She looks into my eyes like she knows me. Really knows me. In ways I don’t even know myself. “Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Girl decides she’ll break all the rules to be with the boy.” Sadness h
its her eyes. “Boy breaks girl’s heart. Girl never recovers.”

  “Girl was probably better off,” I whisper.

  “Probably. Doesn’t change the fact that I’ll never be able to love another man the way I loved you. Doesn’t change the way you destroyed me, Tristan. Or that I’d do anything to feel it all again. Anything.”

  Her lips are a fraction away from mine. I attempt a sobering breath but get her essence instead. Then her lips, her taste, as our torsos and mouths melt together.

  I inhale as her tongue flickers over mine. God, it’s all too fucking good to resist. And her scent… Something about it hits my senses in a new way. It’s familiar. Cocoa and vanilla and something else. Something I can’t quite reach with my thoughts until a field of deceivingly innocent red flowers projects onto the bright-white screen of my mind.

  Poppies. As far as the eye can see.

  She glides one hand along my neck and into my hair, fisting gently as her body undulates above me.

  I open my eyes abruptly and break the kiss. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m remembering you, Tristan,” she rasps against my lips.

  I swear every solitary sound that comes from the woman decimates my better judgment. Even as my brain screams at me to stop this madness, I answer with a fevered kiss. Because I can’t resist the way she says my name, like a siren song luring me closer to her, deeper into the sensations.

  My fists ball and release a few more times before I can’t fight it anymore. My fingertips meet her ankles and trail up her calves. She lifts the bottom of my T-shirt and slides her other hand up my bare chest, triggering everything else. My blood. My cock. Even my pendulum heart, racing like a fucking fool.

  I close my eyes again, and suddenly we’re in a dark room. Cold, save the scorching press of our bodies. She’s naked, covered in shadows. Her fingernails dig into my flesh as I rock into her.

  “Touch me. Tristan…please.”

  I can’t tell if it is really her or the echo of a memory. I open my eyes and flood the vision with the golden glow of Isabel in the candlelight. Pure carnal lust drives me as I palm her knees apart, forcing her wider over me. She whimpers, and that single sound punches through the wall between reality and my hazy past. I make the final journey up her thighs, cup her ass, and haul her hard against me.