She threw an anxious look toward the bedroom door, her gaze trailing over the three men standing at various points around the room before moving back to me.
“She’s going to be fine,” I assured her again. I’d say it a million times if that’s what it took to make her believe it.
“I know that in my head.” Leah stepped back from my arms, leaving me feeling empty. “I guess a little separation anxiety is normal after what we’ve been through.”
For both of us. I crossed my arms over my chest, pulling myself together. Pulling my emotions back behind the armor that protected me when I was on a job. Levi was the emotionless one; Eli the laid-back one. I’d thought throughout my teen years that something was wrong with me, that I felt too deeply, needed too much. It had taken me years to learn to manage my emotions, build the barriers that protected me from feeling so fiercely, but Leah... She blew those walls apart with a look, a touch.
I needed the walls back for now.
“It is normal,” I said. “Go with Levi.”
Dain moved toward me when I turned his way. “We have security set up, alarms and cameras. Eli has the codes for when you return. Saint and I will patrol regularly, Elliot will stay in the room with Brooke, and King will monitor everything from here.”
I hadn’t expected to like King’s team, though I respected them. Dain had the kind of solid presence that very few men had, a quiet power that told you he knew what he was doing, knew his own strengths and weaknesses. I wouldn’t trust anyone else with Leah’s daughter. I also wouldn’t tell him what we were doing. Dain and King—and, I assumed, the rest of his team—were straight-and-narrow men and women, and though they might agree with taking out the enemy, I doubted they’d approve of our methods. “We’ll be back in a few hours. Fiori’s men shouldn’t be aware of our location, but don’t get caught with your guard down.”
“We won’t.” He stuck out a hand to shake. “Good hunting.”
I certainly hoped it was.
Downstairs I made my way to the garage and the black SUV we’d rented. Eli drove, Levi in the front seat. After changing into the driver’s uniform Eli had found from somewhere, I sat quietly in the back with Leah, waiting as Eli circled and backtracked, making sure we didn’t have a tail. Finally, half an hour later, he headed for the location to pick up the car we’d arranged for me to drive.
“I don’t understand why I can’t go with you to pick him up,” Leah finally said, voice hushed in the dark.
Studying all the possibilities, we’d decided Windon’s house could be under surveillance, especially since the Fioris had to know Ross and their team were dead by now. I wouldn’t risk Leah being seen there, so the plan changed to picking Windon up and bringing him to us. Luckily Eli had discovered a ball was being held tonight, some annual fundraiser Windon usually attended. He ordered a car service for formal events, Leah had told us. I would be the one driving Windon’s town car tonight.
“You do understand,” I said, knowing how smart Leah was. She got it; she was just struggling to accept it. “I’ll bring him to you safe and sound.”
“No stopping for a little side torture?” she asked. It might be dark, but I could tell from her voice she was only half kidding.
“We don’t torture family,” Eli cut in from the front as he pulled to a stop next to a black town car under a bridge in the middle of nowhere.
Leah shook her head. “I’m not family.”
Levi glanced at her over his shoulder. “Right.” He jerked his chin toward me. “In that case, just make sure he’s still breathing when you show up.”
“What?”
My brother winced at Leah’s shriek.
“He’s kidding,” I assured her.
“Then he should learn to fucking smile every once in a while,” she snarled.
Levi laughed. “I can when I want to, you know.” He sobered. “And you are family, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. But even family isn’t safe if they threaten the people we love.”
And my brothers knew I loved Leah; there’d been no hiding it once she was with me.
“Get out, bro,” Levi barked at me.
I took Leah’s chin in my hand and brushed her mouth with mine. There was nothing I could say that would reassure her; best to just show up with her father intact—that would convince her far better than any words I could utter. “Later, lev sheli.”
I forced myself out of the truck before my walls cracked too much.
Downtown DC traffic was a bitch at any time, but on a weekend night... I found a place to hole up and waited for the call I knew was coming. Eli had managed to hack Windon’s cell, rerouting any calls to the car service to his phone. When my brother’s text came in, I made my way through traffic to the location, got out, and waited for my prey to arrive.
Ross Windon, Sr walked through the revolving door of the upscale hotel where the ball had taken place with a steady step, still fit after years behind a desk. I could see the resemblance to Leah immediately—the eyes, the mouth—but it was his son that he most resembled. Hair a bit grayer, more wrinkles around the eyes, but he was Ross Jr to a T. I opened the back door of the town car. “Sir.”
A vee appeared between the man’s brows. “Russell is off tonight.”
Windon’s regular driver. “Family emergency, sir. He sends his apologies.”
“Hmm.”
The man had good instincts. Something seemed off to him, I could tell. But he settled himself in the back seat nonetheless. Maybe desk duty had softened him a bit more than I’d realized.
I circled the car and got behind the wheel again. Windon was already pulling off his tuxedo jacket, seeming as anxious to get out of his monkey suit as I was to get out of this driver’s uniform. Both of us would be disappointed for a few more hours.
Following the route the driver would typically take, I watched for a tail. If we were right and the Fioris were watching Windon, they’d put a serious damper on any interrogation—and cause a lot more cleanup than we had planned. Only when I was certain no one was following us did I deviate from the route and head toward the outskirts of town.
“Where are we going?” Windon asked. Not anxious, not yet. This was a man used to tense situations, used to threats.
“We’re going to meet someone who needs to talk to you.”
“Someone? That doesn’t tell me anything. Who do you work for?”
A glance in my rearview showed the man’s brows screwed together, his eyes narrowed as he stared back at me. “I work for myself, Commissioner Windon. The question is, who do you work for?”
“What the hell are you talking about? I work for this city!”
“So did your son,” I pointed out. “That didn’t stop him from finding another boss.”
Windon went still, something like fear flickering in his expression. Not for him, I didn’t think; he didn’t appear to be that kind of man. For his son.
“Did? Didn’t?” Tension radiated from him now, and I was thankful for the security at the ball, ensuring he wasn’t armed at the moment. At least, we didn’t think so. “Where is my son? Who the hell are you?”
“That, I can’t tell you, not yet. But rest assured, it’s a story you want to hear.” I saw his mouth open, knew he was about to argue, and cut him off. “Sir, I’m not planning to hurt you. I’m not kidnapping you.”
He snorted.
“Okay”—I gave him a smile that more resembled a shark than a friendly overture—“I am a little.”
“Can you kidnap someone only a little?”
“Depends on how you look at it.” I turned down a nondescript street leading into a quiet warehouse district. “You want to go to this meeting. And when it’s over, I’ll take you right back to your empty mansion in your wealthy neighborhood where you can sit in the silence and think about what you’ve learned. Don’t make me force you. Just sit back and listen.” I glanced at the nearest road sign. “We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?” He squinted
out the window. “Meeting with whom?”
“You’ll see.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Leah—
I’d grown up in the DC area, and I still had no clue where we were. Some abandoned office building in a run-down part of town. I guess when you needed space for illicit meetings, it paid to know what was off the beaten path, so to speak.
Standing here in the dark did nothing to stop the shivers rippling through me. In just a few minutes my father would arrive, see me, putting part of his world back together—right before I ripped it apart again. I still couldn’t truly comprehend that my brother was gone. When I’d first run away, I’d find myself turning ten times a day to tell him or my dad something, share something that had happened, only to find they weren’t there. Ross would never be there again.
The little bit of light from a partially uncovered window showed me Remi’s brothers leaning casually against broken furniture, seeming completely content. Eli watched the window. Levi’s focus was on his phone, the tracking program there giving him Remi’s location in real time. I wanted to beg to see it. I wanted the shaking to stop. I wanted to stomp my foot and pace around to relieve the tension making it hard to draw a lungful of air, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was about to reveal myself to my father, who thought I’d run away, maybe even that I was dead, for seven years. Seven years. Longer than Brooke had been alive.
Having her snatched from me, I could now imagine all too well what my father had felt. My stomach bundled up in knots of agony just thinking about it.
“Relax, Leah,” Levi growled, not taking his eyes from the screen. “Just relax.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” I snapped. Then sighed. This wasn’t Levi’s fault. It was mine. “I’m sorry.”
He looked up then, the strange silver of his eyes glistening with the reflection from his phone. “For what? Being human. We are too. We get it.”
A growl of my own rose in my throat. “Then why tell me to relax?”
Eli chuckled over by the window. “To make you feel inadequate. It’s what he does.” He waved a hand at his brother. “He needs to find some way of keeping us all below his level. He might say he’s human, but he’s more of an emotionless robot who expects nothing less from the rest of us.”
The gleam of Eli’s teeth told me he was smiling, but not too long ago I’d have been totally serious in agreeing with him. The first time I’d met Levi... A different kind of shiver shook me just thinking about it.
Levi shot his brother the bird. “Whatever, dickhead.” Turning to me, he seemed to sober despite his lack of expression. “Just remember, not many people get a chance to do what you’re about to do. Some people would kill for it.”
Like him? Would Levi kill to be able to bring his parents back to life?
I imagined all the brothers would. I couldn’t blame them.
“Besides”—Eli shifted so his back was to the wall—“if Windon isn’t ecstatic to have his daughter back from the dead, we can always shoot him and put him out of his misery.”
“What?”
Eli responded to my shout with a low snicker. “Hey, we do come in handy occasionally.”
I just bet. I opened my mouth, ready to blast the sarcastic pain in the ass for scaring me, but choked back the words as the lights of a car flashed through the window. Both brothers went immediately on alert.
“Levi?”
He pocketed his phone. “It’s him. Don’t worry.”
Less than half a minute passed before the door near Eli’s now-covered window opened. It was only then that I realized the brothers had faded into the darkness, out of my line of sight. I held my breath and waited for the two men outside to enter the room.
The door clicked shut. The overhead lights switched on.
I blinked through the blinding brightness, my sight slowly adjusting until I could make out the man standing just a few feet inside the door. Tall, just like I remembered, though older and grayer. My father had always been what some would call distinguished, and time had only added to that, though the more I looked, the more I could see the edges of grief and pain in his face. I waited, shaking so hard now that my teeth chattered, until his eyes focused and found me across the room.
“Leah?”
“Dad,” I whispered, unable to put more strength behind the word. I straightened, reached out for him. “How are you?”
My father crumpled to his knees.
The sound of sobs froze me in place. Shaking it off, I rushed forward, only to be stopped by Remi’s forearm blocking my path. Keeping me from my father. I kept going.
“It might not be safe, Leah,” Remi warned.
Fuck that. “He’s my father.” I struggled in Remi’s hold. “You can kill him later, but let me go.”
The hard arm across my middle slowly withdrew, and then I was on my knees beside my dad, gathering him into my arms. The next few minutes were a blur; I rocked him, reassured him, wept alongside him as the pain of the past seven years leached out of me. Maybe out of him. I’d only ever seen him cry at my mother’s funeral, so long ago it was a vague memory, but now he wept as if releasing his soul, and I held him through it, feeling my own knit back together.
“Leah, my God.” He finally raised his head, dark eyes staring, bewildered, into mine. “I can’t believe it. I searched everywhere...God, how I searched for you.” He glanced around the room, at Eli and Levi and Remi, and his muscles tensed beneath my hands. “Is this...did they take you?” Shaking hands pulled me closer to his body. “Did they keep you away from us?”
Before Remi could lose his shit—and I knew he would—I cupped my father’s face and turned his attention back to me. “No, Dad. It wasn’t them.”
“Then who was it? Who took you? Where have you been?”
I did look to Remi then, unsure how to explain something so fraught with pitfalls. Eyes narrowed on us, Remi jerked his chin toward a couple of chairs we’d found intact. They were conveniently placed in the middle of the room, allowing the brothers easy access should any threat present itself.
“Leah?”
I turned back to my dad. “Come sit down.”
He stood slowly, showing his age, or maybe that was the weight of the past few years. I was twenty-four; he was only in his late fifties. Nowhere near retirement. And yet he’d been through the loss of his beloved wife and teenage daughter. And now I would take his son from him as well. My chest ached so hard I struggled to breathe.
“What happened? Who are these men? Where have you been? Are you all right?”
The barrage of questions almost made me smile. I remembered this, the “interrogations” we’d called “cop mode” growing up, the rapid-fire barking of questions demanding an answer. Sitting in one of the chairs, I pulled him down in the other. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Just sit.”
He scooted his chair closer and turned, one hand coming up to curl along my jaw. From the corner of my eye I saw Remi tense, but he didn’t interfere. “Just tell me you’re okay. That’s the most important thing.”
Was I okay? Physically, yes, but emotionally I felt like I’d been through a war. “I’m okay.”
His shoulders slumped, relief softening his face. And because I wanted that relief to stay, because I didn’t want him on his knees again, I didn’t explain immediately that Ross wasn’t.
“Who are these men?”
Telling him the truth about the Agozis could put them in danger. “They’re friends.” I glanced Remi’s way. “Remi is—”
“She’s mine,” Remi said when I faltered. An automatic denial rose to my lips, but I clamped them shut over it. I was his. What that meant for the future, I had no idea, but it didn’t matter right now.
“Leah—”
My raised hand cut Dad off. “That’s not important right now.”
“Then what is?” He grabbed my hand from the air, gripping it tight. “Leah, what’s going on? What happened to you?”
“I f
ell in love,” I finally said.
“With him?” Dad jerked his chin toward Remi.
“No, not back then.” Remi’s intensity burned into my skin, and I knew he’d noticed how I avoided saying I didn’t love him. “Seven years ago...I fell in love with a man named Angelo di Cosimo.”
My father’s eyes went round, fear making them wild. A curse left his lips.
“You knew him?” I asked.
“No,” he bit out. “I didn’t know him, but I remember the case. A known Fiori associate.” His dark eyes narrowed on me. “How did you get involved with someone like that?”
So I told him the story, dragging up bits of my memories that I’d tried to forget, until I came to the night of Angelo’s death.
“Why didn’t you come to me, Leah? I would’ve taken care of you.” Pain echoed through his voice, and guilt rose, threatening to choke me.
“Because...” I closed my eyes, wishing I could do anything but speak the next words that had to come out of my mouth. “Because I went to Ross first.”
Dad jerked back. “What?” He shook his head. “Then why am I just hearing about this now and not seven years ago?”
“Dad... I...”
“Mr. Windon,” Remi said, coming to my rescue, “your son was working with the Fioris.”
“What? No!”
I squeezed Dad’s hand tight. “Yes.” Tears stung my eyes, and I couldn’t hide them when Dad’s gaze fixed on mine. “Yes, he was.”
“He wanted the evidence,” Remi added, “and Leah didn’t have it, so she ran.”
“Why? Why run?” Dad stood to pace, just like I did when I was frustrated. “I was right there at home waiting for you. You could’ve come to me at any time. Even if Ross—” He shook his head. “Even if he was working for the Fioris, I wouldn’t have let them hurt you.”
“Dad, I couldn’t.” How did I make him understand? “I wouldn’t pit you against your own son.” He would’ve had to choose, because one of us would be hurt—either me or Ross. The Fioris wouldn’t have accepted failure.
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