“So you’d rather I lose my daughter?”
“No,” I said quietly. “I’d rather I didn’t lose mine.”
Dad jerked to a stop, a stunned look spreading over his face. “You...you have a daughter?”
I nodded. “I was pregnant when I ran. Brooke was born six months later.”
“Brooke.” Dad wobbled his way back to his chair. I didn’t blame him for being unsteady; at this point I was surprised I hadn’t passed out. But I couldn’t; the worst was yet to come.
And I couldn’t be the one to reveal it to him. I just... I loved Ross; I couldn’t bear to say the words I knew would make his death a reality not just for me, but for my father. My gaze sought Remi out, my lifeline, my partner.
He nodded, his beautiful amber eyes gleaming, telling me without words that he got the message.
“Ross...” Remi cleared his throat, the sound softening something buried beneath all the pain in my heart. Remi didn’t want to say the words any more than I did; if he had, he’d have blurted it out for hardest effect. Instead he stumbled much like I had. “Sir, Ross was killed two days ago.”
“No!”
The word hissed out of my father like a balloon losing air. I leaned into his side, laying my head on his shoulder like I had so many times as a child. His familiar lime and musk scent enveloped me as the tears began again. “It’s true,” I croaked. “It’s true. He’s gone.”
Dad’s arm came around me, gathering me close, comforting me when I should be the one comforting him. I could literally feel him gathering himself, feel his emotions slide away, leaving behind the cop he’d been all my life. The warrior. And I envied him in that moment.
“Who was it?” he asked.
Remi answered. “It was Fiori’s men. And if you don’t help us, they’re going to keep trying to kill your daughter and granddaughter until they succeed.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Leah—
“I’m still not happy about this.”
I glanced at Remi in the dark of the SUV’s back seat. Levi had volunteered to drive my father to our hotel, separate from us. Maybe to have a little talk with him. Levi could scare the piss out of any man—and was probably attempting to do that with Dad at this very moment—but I’d been through the ringer tonight and couldn’t bring myself to worry about it. If it made the brothers feel more secure, my dad could take it.
Remi didn’t seem to be as accepting. Or maybe it was that he couldn’t do it himself. But he’d already been away from me once tonight, and when the time had come to split up again, he’d kept me hard against him. Eli’s teasing once we’d settled into the SUV had been met with a “fuck you” as Remi buckled me into the middle seat, right up against him, then curled my body close.
The protectiveness should be driving me nuts, but instead it was just another safety line holding me up. Or nail in my coffin, maybe. A rope tying me tighter to this man I’d never have dreamed I could love. The metaphors could go on, but they didn’t really matter. What did was the fact that Remi didn’t trust our safety to anyone easily. He cared for me. And for my child.
I breathed his scent deep into my lungs. Feeling hated tears pricking at the backs of my eyes again, I cuddled closer, seeking the comfort I knew he’d give without question. He picked up my legs, pulling them over his, and wrapped both arms around me, a wall between me and the world.
At the hotel we waited in the parking garage until the town car Levi was driving arrived. My dad got out of the back, and my chest ached at seeing the fatigue in his face, the slump of his shoulders and dragging of his feet. He had no one to comfort him but me. When the two men drew close, I reached for him. “Dad.”
His big hand cupped my cheek as he leaned in, planting a kiss on my forehead just like he had so many times before. God, how I’d missed that simple gesture. The security of it, back when things had been simple and a father’s kiss could cure anything. I sniffled.
Damn tears.
The elevator doors opened. Remi ushered us inside, but it wasn’t until the doors closed that Dad spoke. “Where is Ross now?”
I closed my eyes. Keep it together, Leah. So much had happened that I wished my dad didn’t have to know, but there was really no choice.
“He...” I opened my eyes, cleared my throat. “He and one of Fiori’s henchman kidnapped Brooke. They wanted the recordings, but at the time we didn’t know we had them.”
Dad rubbed a hand over his face, leaving it over his mouth as he stared up at the display showing the floor numbers. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. He was shaking his head by nineteen, and I had to look away from the devastation so clear on his face.
Remi took over. “During our meet up to retrieve Brooke, Ross was shot by Joe Southerland—you may be familiar with him. Your son bled out before we could get him help.”
“And is his body still there?” Dad asked, the words scratchy.
“He is,” Levi said matter-of-factly, “along with Southerland and the associates he brought with him. Unfortunately the warehouse burned down, so it may be some weeks before you can claim the body.”
The elevator stopped; the doors slid open. Dad exited blindly, holding up a hand when Remi directed him down the hall. “Just a moment.”
He turned in the opposite direction, toward a window at the end of the hall. Remi and his brothers stayed with me, giving him space.
“We’ll take him to the second suite,” Remi said, his voice low. Levi and Eli both nodded.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Leah—”
“Remi, no.” Stepping close, I put my hand on his broad chest, willing him to understand what I was about to say. “He needs to see Brooke. After that, we can go wherever you want, but he needs to see her.”
The muscles under my hand went rock-hard. “She’s asleep; he won’t get to meet her, just see her face. I don’t like him knowing where we are.”
I understood that, but... “He needs this. And more importantly, I need it. After he leaves, we can move her if you think it’s safer, but he’s going to see her tonight.”
We stood for a long moment, and I knew his brothers were simply waiting on Remi’s word. Whatever it was, they would carry it out, whether I agreed or not. Finally, reluctantly, Remi nodded. I pulled his head down for a kiss.
“Thank you,” I said, just for him.
“Thank him later,” Eli butted in. “We’ve got work to do.”
I stuck my tongue out at the youngest Agozi brother just as my father rejoined us.
Taking Dad’s hand, I led him down the hall to our suite. After knocking on the door—two soft, two hard, then two soft—Remi opened it and allowed us inside. Dain and King looked up from different points of the room, and I could see from the widening of their eyes the moment our guest’s identity registered. No one made introductions. The brothers piled in as I led my father to the bedroom door and turned the knob.
We tiptoed inside.
Light filtered in from the cracked bathroom door, illuminating Abby where she sat in a chair at Brooke’s bedside. Seeing us, she stood, moving silently back to allow us close. My dad’s fingers tightened on mine, the realization of what we were doing hitting him, I guess. It was hitting me too, but I couldn’t tell if it was excitement or terror stirring up trouble in my stomach. I tugged him toward the head of the bed, where Brooke’s face peeked out from a cocoon of blankets and pillows.
A choked sound, quickly smothered, left Dad’s lips. He went to his knees for the second time tonight.
I knelt beside him. “She’s been through a lot,” I said, hoping he’d understand why I didn’t wake her.
A shaky hand reached out, faltered, then fell to the blanket, careful not to wake Brooke. “She looks just like you,” he whispered hoarsely. “Just like your mother.” His breath hitched in his throat. “So grown-up. I’ve missed so much.”
Because of me, my decisions. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if you can ever forgive me—”
“Stop t
hat.” Fierce eyes that matched my own turned to me. “This wasn’t your fault.”
“It is. Ross...” I struggled to hold back tears. “Ross is dead because of me.”
“No, he isn’t.” He reached for me then, hand wrapped around my neck, thumb stroking my jaw. “If what your friend said was true, Ross made his choices.”
His disappointment stabbed at me. “I’m not so sure he did, Dad. The initial one, maybe. But I don’t think he would ever have taken Brooke of his own accord.”
Glancing over his shoulder, my dad asked, “Are you sure they”—he jerked his head toward the door, where Remi waited on the other side—“can be trusted? Really trusted, Leah? What if they made up the story about Ross?”
I hated to tear apart his hope, but... “It’s the truth, Dad. I was there; I saw what happened.”
As if his very soul deflated, my dad slumped against the bed. He glanced at Brooke again. “Did they hurt her?”
“No.” Finally something positive I could share. “Ross protected her as much as possible.”
He nodded, his thumb still absently stroking my face, his gaze centered on Brooke. “That man out there, the one who’s claimed you—”
“Remi.” Not his full name, hopefully not enough to identify him if anything went wrong, but I wanted my father to have some sort of human connection to the man I loved.
“Remi.” His tone wasn’t any warmer than before he’d known Remi’s name. “He’s a killer, Leah. You can see it in his eyes.”
When he looked at anyone but me, yes. “You can’t tell the full extent of a man’s character just from his eyes.”
“I’ve seen plenty of killers; trust me, it’s there.” He sighed, staring back at Brooke. “Of course, I never saw betrayal in my own son’s eyes.”
Neither did I. “I know Remi, Dad. I—” Love him. But I couldn’t say it, not yet. Remi should be the first to hear those words from me.
Dad turned to me, his gaze full of fire. “Would you bet your life on him? Brooke’s life?”
“I would.” No hesitation. “I already have.”
He stared down at me for the longest moment. Finally, he pushed to his feet. “All right. Let’s see if he’s got a good enough plan to get this mess untangled, then. Come on.”
In the living room, only Remi and his brothers remained. Gesturing to the couch, Remi urged us to sit. “Need anything, lev sheli?”
My dad quirked a brow at the phrase but didn’t ask questions. Remi scrounged up a soda I hoped would settle my stomach, then brought Dad a coffee before settling on the arm of the chair across from us. Levi took one end of the seating area, Eli the other.
Dad eyed the arrangement as he took a sip of his coffee. “Leah said earlier you didn’t know you had the recordings when you went to meet Ross and Southerland. I take it you have them now.”
“We found them in a necklace Angelo gave Leah,” Remi confirmed.
“And what do you plan to do with them?”
Remi cocked his head, the predator rising in his eyes. “That depends on you.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Remi—
Ross Windon Sr agreed to stay with us. Saved me the hassle of forcing him to. That would’ve put a serious damper on any future relationship we might have, and I didn’t need him interfering with Leah for the rest of our lives. Seeing me follow Leah into the bedroom to sleep near Brooke already had a sour look crossing his face. I’d let Levi do any further antagonizing that became necessary.
Leah stood at the foot of the bed, staring at the tiny bump of Brooke’s body beneath a mound of covers. The rigid set to her spine and the tense grip she had on her elbows shouted her anger more clearly than any words. Not at me, I didn’t think, or anyone else here. At the circumstances. The situation she found herself and her daughter in. The absolute, complete and utter unfairness of it all.
And we’d just added insult to injury.
“Leah...”
She glanced my way without meeting my eyes, but I could see the glistening of tears in hers. “Santo Fiori should be punished.”
I moved behind her, circled her body with my arms, wishing they were strong enough to hold every bad thing at bay.
“For the things he’s done to others,” she continued, “but not just that. I want him dead, Remi. I want it so much I feel like I’ll choke on it. For the things he’s done to my daughter, to me. I want him tortured and scarred; I want him to lose everything he’s ever cherished, and then I want him dead.”
I tucked my head down until my nose met her hair, breathed in that scent that was uniquely Leah’s. “I know.”
Her hands came up to grip my arms. “This won’t really be a punishment, will it?”
No, because the head of the Fiori mob family would live. The Fioris would continue with crime as usual, and the people Leah loved would be no more than a small glitch in their day. Life wasn’t fair. Leah knew that better than anyone—she’d lost so much of her life because of this man, this family. I wanted justice for the things that had been done to her too, but we couldn’t risk a war with the mob, not if we wanted to guarantee Leah’s and Brooke’s freedom. This plan would protect her, but the cost of that protection was tearing her apart.
There was only one thing I could give her.
Bending closer to her ear, I spoke softly. “Men like Fiori always get what’s coming to them in the end.”
“Do they?”
She didn’t believe it right now, but eventually she would. When it was safe.
“They do.”
Adjusting my hold, I ducked lower, pushing aside the long strands of blonde hair until soft, sensitive skin was revealed. My lips came to rest right beneath her ear where the scent of her, the heat of her was strongest. “It may not be tomorrow, or the day after, or the next after that.” We were too close; anything that happened to Fiori could be too easily tied to the woman I held safely in my arms. “But eventually justice comes for every one of the bastards like Fiori. It will come for him too.”
Leah’s breath stilled; her heartbeat picked up beneath my lips. “Does justice have a name?”
“Doesn’t need one.” I nipped at her skin, drawing a gasp, forcing her to breathe. “As long as it comes, the name doesn’t matter.”
She tipped her head to the side, giving me greater access. “How do you do that, Remi?”
“Jeremiah,” I growled into her shoulder.
“Jeremiah,” she breathed, and shivered against me. “Don’t get me wrong; if I had the chance, I’d kill Fiori in a heartbeat. But my hatred for the Fioris, that’s personal. How...how do you decide, every day, who lives or dies, and still sleep at night?”
There was no judgment in the question, not even curiosity, really. Just a need to know. I wasn’t sure I could explain. Maybe the piece of me that shied away from killing had been missing from birth. Maybe it had been torn away when my parents were murdered, when I’d walked into their bedroom and stepped on that blood-spattered carpet. Maybe the years of scrambling to survive in a world whose sole aim was to eat us alive had done the damage. I didn’t know, and honestly, at this point in my life, I didn’t care.
“You’re a nurse,” I finally said. “Your job is to treat the sick, no matter who it is. My job, until now, has been to serve justice however it needs to be served. Maybe it doesn’t keep me awake at night because I’m no random killer; every job has a purpose. We have one rule: Don’t harm the innocent. Fiori hasn’t been innocent in a long, long time. If anything happens to him in the future as a result of his own actions”—I shrugged—“I’m good with that.”
I waited, knowing she got my point, knowing she understood that, though the immediate outcome of Brooke’s kidnapping would not be satisfactory, Fiori’s punishment was only being delayed. I’d take care of it.
Long moments later, her body relaxed back against mine. “As long as Brooke is safe,” she said quietly.
I pressed my palm over her stomach, melding her body to mine. “As lon
g as you’re both safe.”
My heart jumped when her hands came back to cup my ass, pull me closer. “You said ‘until now.’ What does that mean?”
Far too much for me to explain at the foot of her sleeping daughter’s bed at one in the morning. “We can work on that when this is all over, lev sheli.”
She hummed, whether in agreement or because of the endearment or because I was tracing biting kisses down her neck, I wasn’t sure. The next moment she stepped out of my arms. “Take a shower with me?”
My dick punched at my zipper. It was the first time Leah had initiated contact of any kind between us, the first time she’d signaled that she wanted me without me approaching her first. I threw a look to where Brooke slept soundly, then took Leah’s hand. “Hell yeah.” Always.
In the bathroom, I moved to the shower and turned the water on to warm. Facing her felt like coming home, and I found myself wanting to slow down time, to savor the moment instead of rushing forward. Maybe she did too, because she didn’t hurry to undress. Instead her eyes held mine as I grasped the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head, tossed it into the corner.
Leah leaned her hip against the counter.
My fingers went to the button of my fatigues. “I thought this was a joint thing.”
A faint smile pulled at her lips despite the fatigue darkening the skin beneath her eyes, slumping over her shoulders. “Just looking. Maybe I don’t get enough chances to just look.”
Considering the frenzy we’d been in each time we came together, she had a point. I flicked my pants open, eased the zipper down. Women had admired my body since I’d begun filling out as a teen, but the heat flaring in Leah’s eyes, the hunger that licked over my skin everywhere her gaze touched—I’d never experienced anything like it. This woman touched my heart as well as my body. She ignited a need inside me that threatened to explode, and all she’d done was stare.
I snagged a condom from a pocket of my pants before sliding them down my legs. Kicked off my shoes, then the fatigues, not caring where they landed. All I cared about was the slide of Leah’s tongue across her lips as her gaze landed on my rock-hard cock.
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