A bushy brow rose over one eye. I didn’t miss the strain it took to respond so nonchalantly. It was evident in the sweat popping up on Fiori’s forehead.
“You can walk away from the Windon family—not for a little while. Permanently. Walk away and it will be like none of this ever happened.”
A grunt from Fiori.
“Or...” I gestured toward Eli with the KA-BAR. “Or these recordings are going public. Not just to the commissioner—that would be far too easy to erase. No, we have copies set to deliver to every reporter in the DC area, every cop, every DA. You name them and they’re on our list. Isn’t the electronic age fun?”
Leah’s father had the original chip, hidden in a secret safe deposit box, but Eli had already set up a mass e-mail list with copies.
I leaned closer. “Of course, you would be facing those charges alone, since every member of your family would be dead before you could blink. Don’t think we could do it?” I shook my head. “Neither did your team in Atlanta. Or your security here. Think about that.”
Fiori’s eyes closed tight. I should’ve been pleased with the frustration on his face, the realization that he was out of options. I wasn’t. I wanted to kill the fucker, but Levi was right—the mob was a hydra; cut off one head and three more popped up. No, the only way to keep Fiori from retaliating against Leah’s family was to hold something over his head.
When this night was a distant memory? That’s when I would get what I truly wanted, when it could no longer be tied to Leah.
“So what do you say, Sonny?” I nodded toward the woman in his bed. “Want to keep up your whoring and drug dealing and money laundering and, I don’t know, living? Or should we take care of this now?” I brought the knife to his fat neck and waited.
Fiori pressed himself back into the headboard, shaking his head vigorously.
“No?” I wagged the knife at him. “Is that no deal, no, you don’t want to keep living?” The tip of the KA-BAR tapped the man’s cheek. “Or no, don’t kill me here and now, before we slit your throat?”
“Don’t forget the castrating,” Levi threw in.
“Who would want to forget that?” I cocked a brow at our captive. “What’s your answer?”
Fiori dipped his eyes down, indicating the gag. Sliding the knife under the cloth where it lay on his cheek, I tugged. The knife cut through the gag like it was butter.
Fiori choked. “Don’t hurt me. Don’t.”
“So we have a deal?”
He nodded jerkily, eyes on the knife. “We have a deal.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Leah—
Dad had turned the scraps of a napkin from the coffee supplies into a match game. Brooke was currently studying the blank squares, tongue peeking from between her lips, trying to determine which scrap to turn over to match the star she’d already found. My father’s gaze was riveted on her. Was he remembering all the times we’d sat around the kitchen table after dinner and played games just like that? Half of our family was gone now, half of the people who’d sat around that table and shared their lives, their joy. Watching my family now, I felt my chest go tight and tears prick the backs of my eyes.
“She’s really taken to him,” Elliot said, coming up beside me. The team didn’t know everything about my past, but they did know my dad had met Brooke for the first time only a couple of days ago.
“She has.” I glanced to the far end of the suite where King, Saint, and Dain were packing up the team’s equipment. “I can’t thank you all enough for keeping her safe for me.”
Elliot grinned. “For me, with Sydney at home, this was a tame assignment. For them”—she gestured to the men—“it was good practice. Dain’s baby will be here in, like, six weeks. He needed some kid exposure. The other two needed practice babysitting.”
I hadn’t realized Dain’s wife was pregnant. As the team lead and the oldest of the four, I’d have figured he was past the baby-making stage, but then again, the man’s dark, sexy eyes had the kind of intensity that could probably impregnate a woman from fifty yards away, so...
Remi was twenty-nine, he’d said. How did he feel about having kids in his thirties or forties? How did I feel?
Was I really thinking about having more kids, with an assassin?
A hand sneaked around my waist, making me jump. Remi. I knew the second his warmth hit me, his scent filled my nose. I’d been too involved in my thoughts to notice his approach. I’d love to blame my lack of sleep last night, but no—I’d been that enthralled with thoughts of babies and Remi whirling in my head.
“Okay?” he asked.
Of course he didn’t look preoccupied. Or tired. He’d slept in the armchair in the corner of the bedroom for the early part of the evening last night, but I had awakened after midnight to the closing of our door. Knowing where he was going, I hadn’t been able to fall back to sleep until hours later when he’d snuck back in. He’d been dozing in the chair when Brooke got up at the crack of dawn. Without blinking he’d urged her into the living area, telling me to close my eyes again, but my efforts to do just that had been fruitless. There was too much I didn’t know, too much uncertainty going forward for me to relax.
Which meant I probably looked like death warmed over right now, unlike Mr. Capable.
“I’m fine.”
Remi opened his mouth, but Dain’s arrival forestalled any response he could make. Probably a good thing.
Dain indicated their equipment. “We’re ready to head out when you are. Saint has confirmed the plane is on the tarmac, prepped and waiting. Just say the word.”
Remi nodded. “We’ll be ready in a few minutes if you’d like to go ahead and start loading up.” He reached out a hand. “If I forget to tell you later, thank you.”
Dain shook. “Of course. If you need us in the future, you know where to find us.”
Dain had to have some idea of what the brothers were, that everything here had not been on the up-and-up. Surely Charlotte knew something, had told King. Maybe it was easy for them to compartmentalize, to focus on their part of the job—keeping Brooke and me safe—and ignore everything else, but meeting Dain’s intense gaze, I knew he knew something. And yet he seemed totally at ease with the idea of working with the Agozis again.
Shouldn’t that tell you something?
Dain and Elliot went to begin loading the equipment. Remi spared a glance for my dad playing with Brooke, then his brothers handling what little luggage we had, before tugging me into the bedroom. I followed willingly, though my throat went dry when he locked the door behind us.
“We need to talk.”
I winced. Somehow I’d thought we’d do this when we got back to the mansion. That I’d have more time. That I wouldn’t be so torn when it came down to the moment when Remi broached a conversation about our future. And that’s what this was; I knew it. The threat of the Fioris was gone. Remi wasn’t the type of man to just go with the flow and let the future take care of itself.
Deep breath, Leah. “Okay.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. When I came close, he grabbed my hips in his big hands and pulled me where he wanted me, right between his legs. Heat flashed through my body.
“We’ll be home soon,” he said, the rough rumble of his voice doing nothing to ease the need inside me. We hadn’t been alone since the night before last, the night he’d blown away any preconceived notions I’d had about how good the sex could be between us. I hadn’t stopped craving him since.
It was his words that put a damper on my libido. I stared down at his chest like a coward. “I know.”
His fingers dug into my flesh. “So...what’s next? Where are you going when we get back?”
I reached for him then, my hands on his biceps anchoring me through the storm beginning to swirl in my head. “Remi—”
“Because I know exactly where I want you to go, lev sheli. I just don’t think you’re ready for that.”
Lev sheli. My heart. My own heart melted every time he sai
d it.
I forced myself to meet his shining amber eyes. “Are you saying you love me?”
Remi’s chest expanded as he took a deep breath, his pecs brushing my nipples. “I don’t love you, Leah.”
My heart dropped to my feet.
“What I feel for you isn’t anything as fragile as love.” Reaching up, he gripped my jaw, his thumbs brushing my lips. “I thought that’s what it was for the longest time, but not now. I’m not even sure there’s a word powerful enough to describe what I feel for you. I can’t breathe without you. I can’t think. I can’t bear to think about you not being with me; I think it might destroy me if we have to go back to living without you as a part of me. I need you, Leah. You’re mine. I—”
Leaning in, I pressed my mouth to his, stealing whatever words he’d been about to say. No doubt they’d been beautiful, but I didn’t need them. He’d shattered my heart already.
Remi was smiling when I drew back. He took in the tears dripping down my cheeks, and the smile vanished. “Hey...”
“No.” I shook my head. “It’s okay.” Now it was my turn to cradle his face in my hands. “I love you,” I choked out. “I’m not poetic and the words might seem inadequate, but I do.” Stroking the stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning, I fought to say what I needed to say. “I love you, but I don’t know how to do this. I have a child. I have to think of Brooke’s safety first.” As much as it was ripping me apart inside.
Remi pulled me down until I was sitting in his lap. “I would never put Brooke at risk.”
“But this, what you do”—I waved a hand at the hotel room—“isn’t that the same thing?”
Remi’s forehead met mine. I watched his eyes slide closed, the frustration creasing his brow. I’d never want to tear him away from his brothers, to make him choose, but I couldn’t deny that my breath had stopped and I was fiercely, frantically hoping that he would choose me. Please please please choose me.
When Remi took my kiss, his tongue tasted of a desperation of his own.
My heart was racing as he broke away. He eased me back, giving us both space, and dread tightened my chest.
“I don’t have all the answers,” he finally said. His eyes, when they met mine, had darkened to copper. “I don’t know what to do. But I know one thing—I’ll do whatever I have to, to keep you.” His fingers dug into my hair and grabbed tight. “Can you accept that for now? Let us make these decisions together?”
Time. He was asking for time. But what if he decided he couldn’t walk away from killing? What if he couldn’t—
What if? What if? The questions were never going to end. Could I let go of having all the answers now? Because that’s what I really needed to ask myself. If Remi decided to choose the life he led over the life we could have, would I regret taking what little time I might have left with him?
No, I wouldn’t regret it. How could I regret taking a chance on the man who meant more to me than anyone in my life besides my daughter?
I gave myself one more moment, then... “I won’t move Brooke right now. She needs the stability of her home, her life.” Of course the state of that home might mean a delay, given the state it had been in when I left, but still... “I’m not going to uproot her, not until things are...definite.” Until the questions were answered and I knew for sure, a hundred percent
Remi’s body relaxed against me, relief softening the tension in his face. “No, of course not. We’ve got time.”
My fingers clenched, scraping against his beard again. “Yes, we do. I love you, Remi.”
“You own me, lev sheli,” he said roughly. Using his grip on my hair, he pulled me down beside him as he lay back on the bed. “You’ve always owned me. You always will.”
I hoped so. As Remi took my mouth again, I stared into his beautiful eyes and knew he owned me as well. The assassin I’d trusted with my heart.
Epilogue
Two months later
Remi—
I finally ran Levi to ground in the basement. There’d been a strain around him lately; since I’d made things official with Leah, actually. He’d always been the one in control, but now our family was changing. It was hard for any of us to accept, but especially for him.
And now it was about to change even more. Fiori was dead—heart attack, or so everyone believed; I couldn’t help feeling a bit smug about that—and it was time for Leah and me to move on. Together.
“Hey, can we talk?” I asked, dropping down on the couch next to him. Levi paused his game without looking at me. Not a good sign.
I waited. He’d acknowledge me when he was ready, though the tension in his shoulders told me he really didn’t want to.
Finally he threw his controller onto the little table in front of us. “When you leaving?”
Not the direction I was going, but... “In a few hours. Got a hot date with a six-year-old.”
Levi turned to me then. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
My confusion got worse. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Are you moving?”
“What? When?”
Levi rubbed a hand down his face. “I assumed soon. Isn’t that what you came to tell me?”
“Hell no.”
Some of the tension in my brother’s body eased. “So where are you going?”
“To Leah’s, tonight. Brooke challenged me to a rematch since I beat her at Apples To Apples.” It wasn’t Cards Against Humanity by any means, but sometimes I could get Leah to play with me after Brooke went to bed, and those games were always dirty. Especially when I made up the matches.
“Oh.” He picked his controller back up, fiddled with it, but I noticed the game stayed paused.
“I’m not moving, Levi, but I did want to talk to you about a move.”
More fiddling. “You don’t need my permission.”
No, I didn’t. But this was our home, not mine. And what I was proposing might mean big changes for all of us.
“I want to ask Leah to move in with me here.”
As soon as the words left me, I lost the ability to breathe. This was only the first hurdle, but a big one. If Levi didn’t want my woman and her daughter—especially her daughter—in our home, then I would be talking about me moving. I didn’t want that. I loved my family, all of it. I wanted every member under one roof, not this constant scattered feeling, the gnawing knowledge that I could only protect Leah and Brooke part of the time.
“Leah moving in means Brooke comes with her. Having a child here...”
“Would be different.”
At least he didn’t say difficult. Or flat-out no.
“There’s something else you should know.”
Levi stood abruptly. An ache started up between my eyes.
“I’ve been discussing things with Branson.” Our head of security at Hacr had been there since our uncle’s death over a decade ago. He was a good man, but getting older. “He’s asked to retire next year. I want to take his place.”
Levi jerked to a stop between one pacing step and the next, spun to face me. “You’re taking yourself out of the field?”
I stood too, needing to be on the same level as he was. My future was at stake here, mine and Leah’s, and yet it felt far too much like I was abandoning the man who’d raised me. “Levi, I will always have your back. Yours and Eli’s. Don’t ever think anything else.” I hesitated. “I need... I want a family with Leah. In a perfect world our lives would’ve been much different and there would be no question that I would marry her, have children, be...normal. But the three of us, we’re not normal. After what she’s been through, I can’t ask her to accept the risk that having an active assassin as her husband would bring.”
I rounded the couch to move closer to him. “I won’t be in the field, but I also won’t deny you if you need me. Which is another reason I want them here, not me somewhere else, where you might not be able to get to me. Our family belongs together.”
Levi resumed his pa
cing, and I waited. In reality it didn’t matter if we agreed or not. This house, like the company, had been divided equally between the three of us. But I wouldn’t bring Leah and Brooke here if they were unwanted; they didn’t deserve that.
“You’re planning to marry her?” Levi asked. With his back to me, his opinion of that wasn’t clear, but my answer was.
“As soon as she’ll have me.”
He reached the end of his path, turned, and stopped. His expression was grim, but the harder I looked, the clearer it became that it was worry riding him, not resentment. I wish I could help him see that the worry for this family wasn’t all on his shoulders. We shared that responsibility, but Levi wouldn’t accept that. He never had.
“Bring them here, then.”
I snorted. “I’d fucking love to make that happen. Just got to get Leah to agree.”
Levi glanced at the ceiling, toward his own feminine half. “Good luck with that.”
I thought about asking if everything was all right between the two of them, but my brother would just clam up if I did. Making a mental note to catch Abby alone tomorrow for a little interrogation, I moved into Levi’s space and gave him a hard hug before slapping him on the back. “I might need it, bro. Thanks.”
∞
“That’s ten!” Brooke squealed as she gathered the green and red cards from the center of the table and added them to the stack in front of her.
“How can that be ten?” I protested. “How can ‘kitten’ win if the category is ‘scary’?”
Brooke shrugged. “Ask Mommy.”
“It’s the crab apple version,” Leah explained. On the side that Brooke couldn’t see, she winked my way. “Go with it.” To Brooke, “Time for bed!”
Well, if game over meant time for bed...
After much grumbling, Brooke was hustled into the shower. She came to find me in the kitchen when she was finished, her pink pj’s with the rainbow-horned unicorns snug around her. “Remi, will you brush my hair?”
I set the last plate from dinner in the dishwasher before drying my hands on the towel tucked into my hip pocket. “You want me to brush your hair?” That didn’t sound as panicked as I thought, did it? “What about Mommy?”
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