Zy frowned. Months ago when he’d stayed here with her and Hallie, when she had been at her most frayed and exhausted, she’d picked up the house meticulously every night. Now it looked as if she hadn’t bothered in a while, as if she no longer gave a shit. Why?It was also unlike her not to be in her bedroom, door closed, at three a.m. But Tessa reclined on the sofa, curled into a ball, head lolling onto the back as she slept under one of Hallie’s baby blankets. What the hell? She must be uncomfortable, not to mention freezing. Why was she here instead of on her cozy, queen-size marshmallow of a mattress? And why, even in the shadows, did her eyes look puffy and red?Was something bothering her? Guilt maybe?He shouldn’t worry about her housecleaning habits any more than he should worry about her feelings now. But even as he told himself that, he lifted the quilt lying on the back of an armchair and spread it open, softly draping it over her body. For a moment, she stiffened. Stifling a

“No! Don’t. Stop, Zy! Please…”At the bottom, he set her on her bare feet and nudged her toward an empty metal chair under a single light bulb. “Pleading won’t work with me anymore. I’m going to interrogate you, Tessa. I’m going to let you sit here alone for fifteen minutes. When I come back, I’m going to have a metric shit ton of questions for you about who you betrayed, when, and why. And I better get answers that jibe with the evidence we’ve got or I swear to god being in this hole will seem like paradise when you’re done dealing with me. The worst part? I convinced myself I was so fucking in love with you. And all you did was stab me in the back and rip my heart out through the hole you left. I won’t give you that chance again.”She gaped in incredulity—or was that horror?—before she curled up in the chair and gathered the blanket around her protectively. Zy steeled himself against the fear in her eyes and the tears falling down her face. He tried not to be moved by the fact she w

“Fuck, baby…”His growl tightened the need between her legs. But that was nothing compared to the jolt of sensation that coiled inside her when his palms crushed her hips and his fingers dug into her fleshy ass and he began plowing into her, one long, urgent stroke after another.Tessa felt invaded and adored at once.Zy sucked her nipple between his teeth and suctioned it against the roof of his mouth. She tugged on his hair and pressed his face against her chest, chanting his name, as arousal soared, churning between her legs.“More. Zy… Please.” Tessa closed her eyes and pulled him into her, straining to get as close as possible as she gave herself over to his fevered rhythm.“Can’t stop. Want you. So. Fucking. Bad.”“I want you, too. I never stopped.”He scoffed. “I never mattered to you.”The fact he thought that horrified Tessa. She grabbed his face. “You were everything to me.”She ached to tell him that she loved him and had for months, that she hadn’t said the words before ou

“You tried to make sure my baby would be looked after?” Tessa blinked up at him in shock.“Of course. I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.” But he had. And he’d been so fucking absorbed in his own pain and betrayal that he hadn’t even stopped to think her daughter might be in danger. Then he’d heaped blame, shame, and fury on top because why not win asshole-of-the-year honors?Suddenly, so many things made sense. Why Tessa had refused to let him in the house when he’d come by Wednesday night. Why she’d lied Friday about her dinner with Cash’s dad. Why she’d seemed suddenly lukewarm about moving in with him. Why she’d betrayed him.“Tessa, I’m so fucking sorry.” He lifted her face to his, crushed to see her red-rimmed eyes haunted with fear and grief. “Why didn’t you tell me?”“Because they threatened to kill Hallie if Tessa said a word to anyone,” Trees supplied. “As soon as I talked Madison off a ledge, I started reading Tessa’s Gmail account.”When he whipped Tessa’s phone from hi

“And the September mission to Mexico went off perfectly because—”“I left my computer locked up at the office. When I got the call about my dad from Kathleen, I ran out too quickly to even think of bringing it home, so it sat on my desk.”“I remember. Fast-forward over a month later, to the end of October. Cash was still with you. He could have forwarded the plans to Valeria’s St. Louis house to the cartel via your Gmail. That was done in the middle of the night, too.”Tessa nodded. “He was on my sofa, playing video games, until you helped me kick him to the curb in mid-November.”“I remember. Prick.”She wasn’t going to argue with Zy’s assessment, but that didn’t make him any better in her book. “What happened next?”He paused, seeming to sort through his mental timeline. “The location of Valeria’s Orlando safe house was discovered and ransacked five days ago.”“That was before…” Tessa forced herself to finish that sentence. Getting to the bottom of this would only help her baby. “Be