Hostage to Love

Chapter 8

The office door closed with metallic finality. Addison pressed against the wall as Ghost turned the lock with deliberate precision.

"Don't be afraid," he said, his voice softer than she'd ever heard it. "I would never hurt you."

"Then why am I here?" she demanded, both hands protecting her stomach where terror was poisoning her unborn child with stress hormones.

Ghost moved slowly, each step calculated to avoid triggering her flight instincts.

"You need the truth about Jaxon," he said with quiet intensity. "About what he's done."

"I don't want to hear terrorist propaganda!"

"Not propaganda," Ghost replied, stepping closer. "Evidence."

That sweet mint scent grew stronger, wrapping around her. The fragrance struck something deep in her memory—recognition that made her pulse stutter with impossible familiarity.

"Why do you smell like—" she began, then stopped.

"Like what?" Ghost asked, his voice carrying dangerous gentleness.

"Nothing," she said quickly, but her defensive posture was cracking under the weight of triggered memories she couldn't name.

"Dove," Ghost whispered, and the endearment hit her like lightning splitting stone.

Addison's knees buckled. Her back slammed against the wall as breath exploded from her lungs.

"No," she gasped, shaking her head with violent denial. "That's impossible. You can't know that name."

"Can't I?"

His hands moved toward his mask, fingers trembling against painted scars.

"Don't," she begged, terror blazing through her voice. "Don't you dare—"

"I'm sorry," he said, his voice cracking with suppressed emotion. "For everything. For every day I let you think I was dead."

"You're not him!" she screamed, pressing harder against stone as if walls could shield her from impossible revelations. "He's dead! I mourned him!"

Ghost's mask came away in his trembling hands, revealing features that stopped her heart completely.

Dark eyes that used to look at her like she was his entire world. Strong jaw marked by five years of pain and hardship. The distinctive scar cutting through his left eyebrow—the same scar he'd earned protecting her from a drunk driver outside their favorite restaurant.

"Hello, Dove," Wyatt said with devastating gentleness.

The name shattered her completely. Five years of grief, rage, and buried love crashed over her like a tsunami destroying everything in its path. Her legs gave out, sending her sliding down marble until she hit the floor.

"You're alive," she whispered, staring at the impossible man before her.

Wyatt dropped to his knees, close enough to catch her but respecting the space her terror demanded.

"I'm alive," he confirmed, his voice breaking on the admission.

"How could you?" Addison's whisper turned into a scream that echoed off office walls. "How could you let me think you were dead?"

"I had no choice—"

"There's always a choice!" Her voice exploded with five years of buried fury. "You chose to leave me! You chose to destroy me!"

"My unit was betrayed," Wyatt said desperately, words pouring out like dam burst. "We discovered financial crimes, corruption, money laundering that reached the highest levels."

"What does that have to do with abandoning me?"

"They murdered everyone," Wyatt replied, his voice hollow with old pain. "My teammates, their families, anyone who might expose what we found."

Addison's blood turned arctic.

"Seven families. Parents, brothers and sisters, wives and girlfriends, even children—all dead within a week," Wyatt continued with brutal precision. "Execution-style murders made to look like accidents."

"Oh God," she breathed, maternal terror spiking for the child she carried.

"I couldn't let that happen to you," Wyatt said, tears cutting tracks through tactical paint still clinging to his features. "I couldn't let them find you."

"So you disappeared," she said with bitter understanding. "Let me think you were dead."

"It was the only way to protect you."

"For five years?" Her voice cracked like breaking glass. "You let me grieve for five years?"

"My parents lost everything because of the Meridian Trust," Wyatt said quietly. "Foreclosure, destroyed credit, financial ruin over clerical errors the bank refused to fix."

"What happened to them?" Addison's anger wavered with shock.

"Heart attack killed my father. Stress from losing everything we'd built." His voice turned deadly. "My mother died six months later when we couldn't afford her medical treatment."

"Jesus, Wyatt," she whispered, her heart breaking despite her fury.

"I've spent five years gathering evidence to clear my name," Wyatt continued with desperate intensity. "Living in shadows, building cases, trying to find a way back to you."

"But you never tried to contact me!"

"I've been protecting you," he said, voice barely audible. "Every promotion at work was earned, but every threat that disappeared, every obstacle removed from your path—that was me."

The admission hit like physical assault. All those strange coincidences, the feeling of being watched, problems solving themselves.

"You've been stalking me," she accused.

"I've been loving you from a distance," Wyatt corrected with fierce conviction. "Keeping you safe the only way I could."

"By lying to me!"

"By keeping you alive!"

Wyatt backed Addison against the filing cabinet, trapping her between steel and desperate love. One breath forward and their lips would collide.

"I never stopped loving you, Cassidy," he whispered against her face. "Every breath has been for you."

Her hands pressed against cold metal behind her, body betraying her—pulse racing from devastating recognition of everything she'd lost.

"When this is over, come with me," Wyatt demanded. "We'll disappear together. Mexico, Canada, anywhere."

"Are you insane?" she whispered, but her voice lacked conviction.

"Say yes, Cassidy. Say you'll come with me."

Five years of missing him crashed against present reality like destroying waves.

"That fantasy died—"

"That fantasy is keeping me alive!"

Jaxon's voice exploded from the lobby, shattering their electric moment.

"Addison! Where is she? What have you done with her?"

Wyatt's expression hardened as he reached for his discarded mask with steady hands.

"Your loving fiancé sounds panicked," he said with bitter satisfaction. "Worried about losing his prize."

"He's worried about me because he loves me," Addison declared, lifting her chin despite the tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Love?" Wyatt's voice turned arctic as the mask settled over his features. "Ask me about his version of love."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Addison! Answer me! I need to know you're safe!"

"Time to face reality," Ghost said, unlocking the office door with mechanical precision. "Time to choose between the man who saved your life and the one who's been planning to destroy it."

The door swung open, revealing the lobby where Jaxon stood surrounded by armed robbers, his executive composure cracked with panic and something that might have been guilt.

"Choose carefully," Ghost whispered against her ear as they emerged from the shadows. "Your future depends on it."