Taking Hold {ON HOLD}

Chapter Three

It was sitting on the beach in Cannes deep in the South of France sometime last summer that Ana decided that she wasn't going to marry Mario.

The sea lapped gently at her toes as she stood staring out over the Mediterranean. It was five am in the morning, a few more hours before the sun would begin to beat down on her and before these pale sands would be lined with a rainbow of towels and parasols.

She remembered being glad for the peace. A moment alone. A second to think.

Mario didn't like her to think, in fact he far preferred it when she didn't. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe that's why she couldn't go through with it. The marriage wasn't conventional with love being absent in many ways, she had known that all along and yet, even for the sake of the agency, Ana couldn't bring herself to stand in front of the Family and take her vows, especially after the previous night.

His touch.

His breath.

The sight.

It all haunted her, scarring her dreams.

She would find no release from this prison but she could at least not inflict any more traumas upon her tired mind. There had to be another way, a way to bring Mario to justice from the outside. This had been the easiest route but that didn't mean that it was the only path that ARC could have chosen.

She had made her decision on that beach last summer. She didn't run from him for another three months, not until the rain had begun to fall and winter was well on its way. Perhaps it was fear that stopped her, a fear of Mario and what he may do, a fear of her mother and what she would say or even a fear of the countless others waiting to cash in the cheque that would enviably lie on her head.

The spy that was going to marry into the mafia.

That story was never going to end well.

Ana blinked, forcing her smarting eyes to focus onto the picture frame in front of her. If she could manage it she wouldn't look at the picture but only the glass mirror surrounding its form. She didn't trust herself to look at those hypnotising olive eyes and not fall back under his spell.

"Ana?"

"Coming." A traitorous tear slipped down her cheek but she swiped it hastily away. She couldn't stay in the past, she had to keep moving forwards.

"Are you alright?" Adam's voice was closer now, quieter too as he noticed her stance, shoulders curved over the desk.

"Of course." But Ana kept her back to him.

His hand reached out to touch her shoulder. It was only to offer a gentle, simple brush of his calloused fingertip against the line of freckles that lay there. A reassurance. But Adam withdrew his hand before it could make contact with the bare skin. He couldn't allow himself to fall down that rabbit hole again. This was his job; Ana was his assignment, nothing more.

Nevertheless he couldn't bring himself to be cold towards, however much easier that would have been in the long run.

"We don't have to go. I can ring your mother and..."

"It's fine." She assured him, snatching her clutch from the desk in front of her and negotiating the elegant emerald silk of her floor length dress. Why were these types of events always heel occasions? They made her job much more difficult.

Thankfully Adam didn't question her any further, instead offering her his arm so that she could gracefully descend the stairs outside of the room rather than the trip, fall, face plant method she usually adopted in such conditions.