Breaking Point Read Online Free PDF Page A

careful not to let him see. It broke his heart.
    “We talk,” he said.
    “You know, I pick up your mail from your apartment every other day. You don’t think I could tell that the fancy envelope from Alyssa and what’s-his-name was a wedding invitation?”
    Alyssa again. “Sam,” Max said. Alyssa’s fiancé’s name was Sam.
    Gina turned to Rita. “It was really only a few months ago that Max asked Alyssa to marry him. She worked for him, and he fell in love with her, only he had this rule about getting involved with his subordinates, so he made sure they were just friends—at least that’s what Jules told me. Just friends—right up until the day he asked her to marry him.” She laughed, but he suspected she was laughing for reasons similar to his own, pertaining to dental care. “Here’s something I’ve never dared to ask you, Max. Were you
just friends
with Alyssa the way you and I are
just friends
?”
    “No,” Max told her. “Alyssa and I never . . .” He shook his head. “She worked for me . . .”
    “That wouldn’t have stopped some men,” Rita pointed out.
    “It stopped me,” he told her flatly.
    “So acting honorably is important to you.” Rita made a note on her notepad, which pissed him off even more.
    Max turned to Gina. “Look, I’m sorry, but this is too personal. Let’s go somewhere private where we can—”
    “Have sex?” she asked.
    Max briefly closed his eyes. “Talk.”
    “Like the way we talked after you got Alyssa’s wedding invitation?” she asked him.
    God. “What did you want me to say to you? ‘Hey, guess what I got in the mail today’?”
    “Considering we hadn’t so much as spoken her name since before you were shot and nearly died,” she retorted hotly, “it seemed to merit at least a mention, yes. But you said nothing. I came in and I gave you every opportunity to talk to me, and you remember what we did instead?”
    Yes, Max most certainly did remember. Gina, naked and in his bed, was damn hard to forget. He glanced at Rita, who was smart enough not to need it spelled out for her.
    Except, that night, Gina had seduced him. As she so often did. It was usually always Gina who made the first move. Although, to be fair, he never stopped her. Yeah, he tried, but it was never heartfelt. And he never succeeded.
    Because if she was willing to give so freely of herself, who was he to turn her down?
    And wasn’t he the biggest freaking liar in the world? The real truth was that he burned for this girl. Day and night. Their relationship was all kinds of wrong for all kinds of reasons, and he knew he had to stay away from her, but he goddamn couldn’t. So whatever she offered, he took. Greedily. Like an addict who knew that, sooner or later, he’d be cut off cold.
    “Let’s back up a bit,” the counselor said. “This history you mentioned.” She looked at Gina. “May I recap for Max some of what you told me over the phone?”
    “Please.”
    “Correct me if I got it wrong,” Rita said, “but you met four years ago, when Gina was a passenger on a hijacked airliner. This was pre-9/11—the plane was on the ground in . . .” She searched her notes.
    “Kazbekistan,” Max said.
    “You were the . . . FBI negotiator? I thought the United States didn’t negotiate with terrorists.”
    “We don’t,” he explained. “But we do talk to them. Try to convince them to surrender. Worst case, we stall. We listen to their complaints, pretend to negotiate, while rescuers—in this case a SEAL team—prepared to take down—take control of—the plane using force.”
    Rita nodded. “I see.”
    “The actual takedown happens in, like, thirty seconds,” Gina told the therapist. “But it’s intricately choreographed. They have to blow open the doors and kill the hijackers, while trying not to injure any of the passengers. It takes time to prepare for that.”
    Rita focused on Gina. “And you were on that plane for all that time. All those . . .