His face was grim as he stared at the vehicles parked on either side of the building, the guards patrolling outside. “We planned for this. It’ll be fine.”
I didn’t see how it could be fine, not when two targets had become at least six, and that was only outside. But I had to trust that Remi knew what he was talking about; there was no other choice. “Okay.”
We got out.
The men at the front of the warehouse came to attention, their guns aiming our way as we walked toward them. I scanned the trees nearby, the empty buildings we passed, but caught no sign of Remi’s brothers. Oddly enough, that knowledge sent calm rushing over me. Secure in the Agozi brothers’ expertise, I walked forward with my head held high and no more than the slightest tremor at facing down six gun barrels.
“Gentlemen,” Remi said when we were in earshot, “you’re expecting us.”
One man, as big as Remi and looking just as tough, motioned us forward. “Inside.”
We were stopped at the door and patted down. The big guy took Remi, smirking as he pulled the gun from his ankle holster. The man frisking me took extra pleasure in feeling me up under my vest. I barely held back the need to break his nose with my elbow, reminding myself that these men would get what was coming to them in just a few minutes.
We were finally allowed to proceed.
Inside the warehouse we found a big, empty, gloomy room—or mostly empty. In the center sat Brooke, tied to a chair. Ross stood beside her, his hand on her shoulder, Southerland on the opposite side. And half a dozen armed men behind them.
“Mommy!”
My heart kicked at Brooke’s cry, the way she struggled against the ropes. Ross bent to her ear, saying something that had very little effect on my daughter. Needing her calm, afraid of what Southerland would do if she caused trouble, I hurried forward. “It’s all right, baby. I’m here. It’s okay.”
“That’s close enough,” Southerland said when I was a few yards out. His gun hand came up, the muzzle pointing at Brooke’s head.
I jerked to a stop. “Please. Please don’t do that.” I brought my hands out, showing them empty. “I won’t come any closer.” Brooke’s terrified eyes yanked at me, urging me to help her, but I forced myself to stay still. “It’s okay, baby. I promise.”
God, if something happened and her last moments on this earth were filled with fear—
No! No. I wouldn’t think that way. We were getting her out. Nothing else was acceptable.
“I didn’t know they’d be here, Leah,” Ross said. “It was supposed to be you and me, that’s all.”
Southerland lifted his gun without looking away from me and pulled the trigger. Brooke’s scream mingled with mine.
Ross dropped to his knees, leaning heavily against Brooke’s chair, a hand clutching his side. Red washed through his fingers. “Leah—” he wheezed.
“He’s no longer of use to me,” Southerland said, lowering his gun to Brooke’s head again. “If she’s not either, you know what happens next.”
“No! Don’t hurt her.” I took a step forward.
Remi grabbed my arm, stopping me. “We told Ross and we’ll tell you,” he said. “Leah doesn’t have the recordings. She never did. The fact that your men were too incompetent to find them in Angelo’s things is your problem, not ours.”
Southerland cocked his head, his stare boring into Remi. “I’ve heard of you. You took out Jonathan Axe’s team a while back.”
“The whole team,” Remi said. I could hear the satisfaction filling his voice, and shivered. “But you got one thing wrong.”
Southerland smirked. “What’s that?”
“I didn’t take out Axe’s team. My brother did.” Remi grinned, the sight sadistic in its amusement. “One man, one team. But there are three of us now.”
The men behind Southerland shifted uneasily, more than one glancing up at the few windows giving meager light to the room.
Not Southerland. “Three what?”
“Three brothers, motherfucker,” Remi said. And grinned. Outside, the distinct sound of gunshots filled the air. Six shots, so loud I ducked.
Southerland swung toward the nearest window, eyes going wide. Remi charged.
“Brooke!”
I was halfway across the room when she slipped from her chair, Ross still pulling at the ropes. “Mommy!”
Trusting Remi to deal with Southerland, I rushed forward. Shouts came from the back of the room. Shots echoed, deafeningly loud in the empty space. I ignored it all to complete the one mission I had come here for: to get my daughter. Scooping her tiny body up in my arms, I turned to run for the door, terror racing through me with every step, every heartbeat.
But Remi had promised, and he delivered. I burst through the door into the sunlight, my baby clutched in my arms. Brooke was sobbing, her fingers digging into my neck, her arms practically strangling me. I didn’t stop. Get to the truck. Get to the truck. Only when I had Brooke safely inside the SUV with the doors locked did I even breathe.
And that’s when I lost it.
I have no idea how long we sat there, Brooke and me, hugging and crying and rocking. How many times I whispered “I love you” and “Mommy is here” and “you’re safe now.” I only knew that when knuckles rapped on the window near my head, I actually screamed.
Eli stood outside, his stare intent as he waited for me to open the door.
I pushed at the latch. “Yes?”
He gripped the door, swinging it wide. “You need to come back inside,” he said. “I can keep her for you.”
“No, Eli, she stays with me.”
He shook his head. “You don’t want her to see what’s in there, Leah. Trust me.” He glanced from Brooke, still clutching my neck, her head turned away as if she couldn’t bear to look at anyone right now. “It’s Ross. You need to come.”
Ross had been shot. I squeezed Brooke closer. “I am— Okay.”
But Brooke was having none of her letting me go.
“Can you cover...whatever she’d see?” I asked.
“We can’t. Too much evidence left behind,” he explained. Over a dozen bodies? Yeah, I bet that was too much evidence already. I doubted the guys carried sheets or whatever to cover dead bodies. And carting them all out of here would be impossible.
I couldn’t believe I was thinking through the problem of hiding dead bodies.
“We’ve taken care of anything pointing to Brooke’s presence, but, Leah”—he glanced over his shoulder again—“you need to hurry.”
I thought about the shot Ross had taken, the angle, the blood— My heart clenched tight. “Right.”
Sliding out of the SUV, I whispered in Brooke’s ear, “You’re with me, babe, okay? Just keep your eyes closed. Mommy’s got you.” As we walked I said to Eli, “Give me your shirt.”
Like Remi, he wore a button-down over his vest. He stripped it off, and before walking through the door, I threw the shirt over Brooke’s head, murmuring reassurances to her the entire time.
The warehouse was a bloodbath. I tried hard to ignore that as I rushed across to where Remi knelt beside Ross, now laid out on the floor. “Leah.” Ross reached for me as I slid to my knees, taking Remi’s place. Eyes hazy with pain and something I prayed was regret, he reached for Brooke’s leg where it rested at my hip. “I’m sorry.”
You should be. The words were right there on the tip of my tongue, but I held them back. Ross had done something I’d probably never forgive him for, but he wouldn’t be around to live with that knowledge. I couldn’t bear to have him die with it. “I know.”
Ross coughed, spattering blood across his face. “They won’t stop,” he croaked. “Never.”
“I know,” I said again.
He reached for my hand, and I grabbed his, gripped it tight. “I took care...” he said. “Didn’t hurt her. Promise.”
He had. He’d hurt Brooke and me. Tears welled in my eyes. Angry tears. Devastated tears. “Ross—”
“I am...so sorry...Leah.
” His head tilted back, and a groan escaped his lips. “So...sorry.”
I watched as he took a final breath, as his grip went slack in mine. I watched and I cried. For what had been. For what would never be.
And then I stood up and took my daughter out of there.
Chapter Eighteen
Remi —
We were fast, and we were fucking lethal. But as much as I had wanted to wipe every last man in this place off the face of the earth, Leah’s brother had not been marked for death.
He was dead anyway.
I’d seen the look in Leah’s eyes, the blank look survivors have when everything has just been too much and you can’t really register any more. She’d clung to Brooke as hard as Brooke was clinging to her, the only sure thing in a tsunami of events she couldn’t control. It would hit her later, but for now her focus was on the only thing that mattered: her daughter.
I shouldn’t wish I was included, that I was the one holding them both in my arms, keeping the outside world at bay. This wasn’t about me, for fuck’s sake.
I stood from where I knelt beside Ross’s cooling body. I’d retrieved his phone, making sure that nothing else on him or in his pockets pointed to Brooke or her kidnapping. The police would eventually figure out who he and his dead associates were, though probably not why they were all here, in this abandoned warehouse, with bullets in their bodies. The people who were important knew, and that was all that mattered. For now at least.
The back door to the warehouse banged open, and Eli stepped through, dragging the last body in from outside. Levi followed with a five-gallon container of gasoline. Cleanup duty. I walked toward them.
“Leah’s in the SUV,” Eli said, his voice strained as he pulled two hundred pounds of deadweight to the middle of the room.
I stripped off my gloves and added them to the center pile. “I’m taking them home.”
“Home?” Levi set the container on the concrete. Straightening, he pierced me with a look. “Do we need to talk about this, brother?”
About my woman? About what would happen next? “No.” I turned away. “Nothing to talk about.” We all knew this was temporary. Even after what I’d said to Leah this morning, even after calling her lev sheli—a name that told my brothers everything they needed to know about my feelings for her—this had never been anything more than a temporary situation. Leah had her daughter back. She’d watched us cold-bloodedly kill a dozen men. There was no room for a morally questionable assassin in that family unit.
Levi let me go. Outside, I hurried toward the SUV, frustration boiling inside at my inability to see through the darkly tinted glass to the woman I loved. Though it had been no more than twenty minutes since she had walked out of the warehouse, when I opened the driver’s side door, it was to the sight of Leah dozing in the front seat. Adrenaline drop. Brooke lay in her lap, her little girl features grubby from fear and crying, sound asleep.
Leah stirred when I closed my door.
“It’s all right,” I told her, reaching to turn the key in the ignition. “Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you when we get back to the house.”
She reached for the seat belt and pulled it across her and Brooke’s bodies. “She won’t let me go,” she said quietly. “She should be in the back, in her own belt—really in her booster seat—but when I tried to put her back there, she refused to let me go.”
I took the belt from her and buckled it securely. “I’ll get you both back safe; don’t worry.”
Leah stroked Brooke’s hair back from her forehead, worry lining her face. I’d seen Brooke hundreds of times, but I don’t think I’d realized just how closely she resembled Leah until now, seeing them side by side. The same hair, the same arch to their eyebrows, the same full mouth. What part of Angelo had lived on in his daughter?
“I don’t think she’s really slept this whole time,” Leah said, her voice wobbling.
Likely not. I remembered what that was like. When my brothers and I had been on the street, we always had to be alert to the faintest hint of trouble, always aware that any security you thought you had, could and did disappear in an instant. The difference between my brothers and Brooke was that she’d gotten her security back. She’d sleep like the dead for a while now that she was in her mother’s arms.
I turned the SUV around and headed out.
“What about...” Leah reached up to rub at her eyes. “What about all that back there?”
What we had left behind. “We took care of it.” She didn’t need to know how.
“And...Ross?”
She might find our solution hard to deal with, but Ross was beyond caring. “He’ll be with the others. They’ll find him...eventually.”
Leah took a shaky breath, then let it out. “I should contact my father.”
The man who didn’t know she was alive. He would gain one child back while losing the other. “Not yet. We need time to plan before any of this gets out.”
“Okay.”
It wasn’t a Leah answer, but it was one she’d given me too often today. She sounded tired. Not just tired—weary down to her bones. It made my heart ache in a way I’d never experienced before.
It also made me wish I could kill Southerland with my bare hands all over again.
I parked in the front drive almost an hour later. “Wait there,” I told Leah as she stirred. “I’ll come around and help you out.”
Brooke was still asleep. I opened Leah’s door, took her arm to steady her as she stepped onto the running board, then down to the drive. “Need me to take her?” I asked. I knew exactly zero about caring for children, but Brooke wasn’t a baby; I knew she would be heavy to carry all the way up the stairs.
Leah paused, and her eyes met mine. “No”—she cleared her throat—“but thank you, Remi.” She walked toward the door. “For everything.”
It sounded too much like goodbye. I trailed Leah as she walked inside, past Abby holding the door, to the elevator. When she stepped in, I stayed back, uncertain for what might be the first time in my life. “Tell me if you need anything.”
Leah gave me a vague smile as the doors closed, already a million miles away.
That ache in my heart got stronger.
Unsure what to do with myself—and hating that uncertainty—I wandered into the kitchen. Abby was standing at the stove, the rich scent of tomato soup rising from the pot she stirred. She glanced up as I settled on a stool at the center island. “She took Brooke upstairs?”
I nodded. Should I go up there? Stay here and let Leah and Brooke have their time together? Would she turn me away if I showed up? She didn’t need me now that Brooke was safe, did she?
Doubt clawed at me, which just pissed me the hell off. I wasn’t this guy. I didn’t hesitate. Hell, I’d decided to steal Leah from her home in seconds. My life or death had often depended on making split-second decisions under tense conditions. But now?
“Why aren’t you up there with her?” Abby asked.
I glared at my brother’s lover. “Because...” An ache shot through my fisted hands. “Why would she want me with her?” My usefulness was at an end, just like Ross’s. He’d bled out on the cold concrete floor; right now my bleeding out was too damn metaphorical for my taste.
“Remi—”
I shook my head. “It’s over, Abby.”
Her snort jerked my gaze up to hers.
“And men say we’re the dramatic half of the species.” Turning the soup down to simmer, she moved to the fridge and began gathering the ingredients for grilled cheese sandwiches. “Remi, no one could see the two of you together and think this was over. Even if you were separated, it wouldn’t be over. Besides, this thing with the Fioris—”
“I got her brother killed.”
Abby paused in spreading butter over a slice of bread, using her knife to point my way. I almost smiled.
“If Ross is dead, it’s his own damn fault. Not yours and certainly not Leah’s or Brooke’s.” She went back to spreading. “And if h
e’s dead, she needs you right now more than ever. Don’t stop reaching for her, Remi. Don’t give up.”
Giving up had never been in my nature; hell, I’d stalked the woman for almost two years. But there’d been something in Leah’s voice... “Maybe she wants me to let her go,” I said, the words somewhere between a statement and a question.
Abby turned on the burner beneath a pan and set the first sandwich inside. “I see the way she looks at you. That’s not the look of a woman who could walk away and never look back.”
“She’s got a child to think about.” I watched Abby press the sandwich with a spatula, urging the cheese to melt. “No woman wants a killer near her child.”
Abby turned on me. “I do,” she said fiercely. “And I certainly don’t see you as a killer.”
I closed my eyes, feeling that tight band around my chest loosen the slightest bit. God, Abby. What did we do to deserve you? I smiled her way. “We’ve already established that you’re delusional. You chose Levi, after all.”
“And I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” she said softly, honesty shining from those hazel eyes, making my heart ache all over again. What would that be like, for a woman to choose you, just as you were? Could Leah ever choose me?
“Not if you don’t give her the chance to.”
I hadn’t even realized I’d spoken aloud.
“All I’m saying is”—Abby lifted the grilled cheese out of the skillet, added a second—“I’m very familiar with the feelings I see in Leah’s eyes. Don’t give up, Remi. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. And so will she.”
I cleared away the damn lump in my throat. “Have I ever told you thank you?”
She glanced at me, eyes wide with surprise. “For what?”
I watched her add a third sandwich to the pan. “For loving my brother. For showing us how to be a family.” Without our parents, we’d been lost, the three of us wandering around in the dark.
“Oh, Remi.” One side of Abby’s mouth lifted in a sad smile. “I didn’t know how to be a family any more than you three did. I just reached for what I wanted.”
I glanced up at the ceiling, wishing I could see all the way up to the two people I wanted more than anything in my life. Was it really that easy?
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