The Iron Admiral: Deception Read Online Free PDF Page B

said aloud. “He was still responsible for my father’s death.”At least, I think so. I’m so confused. I don’t know what to think anymore .I just want to go home. Running a hand through her hair, she went to her bedroom.

ChapterFive
    By the time Saahren returned to the thirtieth level, the Lysanda was gone. In its place, the leader of his security escort waited with his vehicle. Saahren slid into the passenger seat for the short trip to the central
    Fleet tower, wrapped in his military demeanor while his heart ached.
    His apartment occupied half of the eighty-seventh floor. From the outside, the walls were blank durasteel but external sensors projected live images to internal screens fashioned to look like windows. It was impossible to tell the difference from the real thing.
    He stood at the window and gazed across the park to the block Allysha lived in. So close, so tantalizingly close. He was sure she would have let him kiss her goodnight. And once she was in his arms… He shook his head. Damn those misbegotten louts. They could have taken the vehicle and he wouldn’t have cared. They wouldn’t have been able to get far, anyway. But that greasy, pimply little piece of filth had to grope her, had to remind him of his sister. He smashed his right fist into his left palm.
    He’d enjoyed that. Blood stained his knuckles and his hand hurt but all hells he’d enjoyed that. He would happily have killed the shartong. Truth be told, he very nearly had killed him. If she hadn’t intervened, he would have. It wasn’t his proudest moment. It had been a long time since that dark spirit lurking in the corner of his soul had had the upper hand. The very thought of Allysha being raped as those animals had done to Kira all those years ago—
     
    “Admiral Leonov is here to see you, Admiral,”said his IS.
    Leonov? Now? “Let him in.”
    “How are you?” Leonov, dressed in casual clothes, had obviously come straight from home.
    “What do you think? Those no-account, miserable, filthy little pieces of shit were going to rape her and I was supposed to watch. I beat him up the one who groped her, gave him something to remember. ” He put out his hands, the fingers tense. “I wanted to kill him. I very nearly did.” He gazed again at the dried blood on his knuckles and turned to the bar. “Drink?”
    “Why not?”
    He splashed Lochandor into two heavy-based glasses, handed one to Leonov.“Was I the rescuing hero? Not for a moment. She shied away from me, said I was brutal.”
    Leonov’s lips jerked in a sympathetic smile. “Violence is military.” He spread his hands. “That’s how she’ll see it. Grand Admiral Saahren imposing his will. Don’t glower at me like that. I’m just telling you how it is. Remember what Irina told you. Allysha has to unlearn all the things she’s ever learned about you. You can’t force it on her, she has to do it herself, to really believe it.” He scratched his cheek.
    “Masquerading as someone else took you several steps backwards.”
    “I wasn’t ‘masquerading’ as you so nicely put it, I was undercover. Besides, if I hadn’t masqueraded as someone else she wouldn’t even have spoken to me.” Let alone kiss him, make love to him.
    Leonov raised a placatory hand. “Understood, Chaka. For what it’s worth I told Irina over breakfast this morning what you intended for the day. She approved. Said it was just what she needed to see the man underneath the uniform.”
    He tossed down a swallow of his drink, relished its warmth sliding down his throat. “It didn’t work, did it? I’ll never understand women.”
    “What man does? You’ll just have to be patient.”
    Patience. That was what Irina had said. He wasn’t good at patience; never had been. “I have no real quarrel with the security service people. I ordered them to stay away and overrode their objections.”
    Perhaps if he hadn’t she’d be here now, finding out about the man beneath the uniform. Or he’d