“And your safety,” she murmured.

“That too.” He hadn’t cared about that so much back then. He’d just wanted to be with Bella in any way he could. “She knew my brother Jude first. They worked together in the prosecutor’s office here in Sacramento, and they’d been friends since college.”

“Did he know about you and Bella?”

“Not while we were together. While she was alive,” he added, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “My partner and I were picking off the minor characters in the cartel. The foot soldiers. Bella was getting them to flip on their superiors, one layer of the cartel at a time. She’d give the information to us, so that we’d know how to function in the organization, who to focus on. Then one of the midlevel dealers double-crossed her. She’d offered him a deal, but he was loyal and directed his attorney to warn the bosses that she was getting too close, that it was just a matter of time before she had enough proof to bring charges against the upper echelon. That’s when my partner and I were supposed to close in and make arrests.”

He felt Mercy stiffen at his bitter tone. “What happened?” she asked. “Were you compromised?”

“No. But they got to Bella.” He rubbed his jaw against the top of Mercy’s head, needing the contact. “They followed her one night when she left the office. And they killed her.”

She slid her hand inside his shirt, over his pounding heart. And left it there. Not stroking, not stimulating. Just . . . connecting.

His eyes burned. “And you thought you didn’t know how to do this,” he whispered.

She pulled away just enough to look up at him. “Do what?”

He looked her straight in the eye. “Be who I need you to be. You’re doing it right now.”

Her expression softened, pleased. “Thank you. For telling me that. For telling me about her.” She kissed his jaw, then settled back against his chest. “I’m sorry you lost her. But glad you loved her.”

It was so simple a statement, yet so very perfect. “I am, too. She was smart and funny. Stubborn as hell. Strong in ways I could never imagine. But she was compassionate, too. She made me a better person, you know?”

“Then we owe her a debt.”

He smiled at that. She’d parroted his words back at him as well. “It was hard keeping our relationship a secret. I wanted her sitting next to me at Sunday dinner. I wanted the world to know that I was hers. But we couldn’t be public. Not until the case was over. We had plans. I’d asked her to marry me and she’d said yes.”

“And after she was gone? Why did you continue to keep her secret?”

It was a valid question, a little harder to answer. “At first it was because I didn’t want to be transferred out of the task force, and I would have been had our relationship been known. I would have been ‘too close’ to the case, and I wanted to bring the fuckers down.”