Honor Avenged

by Tonya Burrows

  Please don’t. It would only make things worse. But Leah couldn’t say it out loud with the kids standing right there watching them, so she shook her head once. Then she gave the kids a nudge toward Regina. “Say bye to Nana Gina and I’ll start the pancakes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  And that was it. He’d done it—inexorably severed all ties with Leah. Just like he’d wanted. Just like he’d planned. He hadn’t meant for it to be so messy, but he couldn’t let her stop wearing Danny’s ring for him when he would only put her and her kids in danger.

  It was the right thing to do.

  He rubbed his chest with one palm as he walked out to his car. If it was the right thing to do, why did it feel like a crack had opened up in his heart?

  But his feelings didn’t matter. What mattered was keeping Leah and her kids safe.

  Marcus called HORNET HQ and asked if someone could come keep watch on Leah’s house. Then he went home, where he shaved and changed his clothes but found he couldn’t stand the silence in his apartment. It was like an echo chamber where his fight with Leah kept playing over and over. So he jumped in his car and wandered around the city, then returned to Leah’s to take over stakeout duty from Lanie and Jesse.

  “You good?” Jesse asked when he pulled up alongside their car and rolled the window down.

  No, he wasn’t. “Yeah. Thanks for the reprieve.”

  Jesse and Lanie shared a glance. He knew what they were thinking: hours ago, nothing could have peeled him from Leah’s side.

  Lanie opened her mouth to say something more, but he didn’t want to hear it. He waved them off. “Thanks again. I’ll call when I need another break.”

  He rolled up his window, effectively ending the conversation, and pulled to the curb in front of their rental car. They didn’t move for several minutes. A glance in the rearview mirror showed two worried faces staring at his back windshield.

  Eventually, Jesse put the car in gear and they left.

  Marcus let out his breath in a whoosh and leaned back in his seat. Everything was quiet in Leah’s neighborhood, save for a dog barking somewhere nearby.

  He should go inside and apologize to her. He wasn’t in the wrong, but he desperately wanted to make sure she knew that. They couldn’t be together. But none of that could be said in front of the kids. Last thing he wanted was for them to think he was trying to replace their father. He wasn’t. He couldn’t. Which was just one more reason a relationship between him and Leah was impossible.

  Didn’t she get that?

  By dinner time, he was restless. He couldn’t stay here any longer or else he would do something stupid, so he called to have one of his teammates come sit with her again and turned the car around. He didn’t consciously make the decision to go to his mom’s, but when he pulled into her driveway, he knew there was nowhere else he wanted to be at that moment.

  Regina was completely unsurprised when he knocked on her door. “I was wondering when I’d see you.”

  “I fucked up.”

  “Uh-huh. I was wondering when you’d realize that, too.”

  As shame washed over him, he sank to the top step of her porch. “I love her, Ma. I think I always have. I just never acknowledged it. She was Danny’s girl, you know? And I’d never hurt him, so I pushed it away. Pretended it wasn’t there.”

  Regina let the door fall shut and settled down on the step beside him as a light wind blew the salt-and-seaweed scent of the ocean through the neighborhood. She looped an arm around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. “I know, amore. I’ve always known. It’s why you never wanted anything serious with any other woman.”

  “It’s wrong to love her.”

  “No!” Outraged, Regina sat up and smacked him upside the head. “Don’t you let me hear you say that again. It’s not wrong. Love is never wrong.”

  Then why was his heart erupting inside his chest right now? He shoved to his feet and paced away from the porch. He’d spent a year running from his grief, drowning it in beer and then the ocean, but it wouldn’t be ignored any longer. It was like being rag-dolled by a wave. He wasn’t in control as it washed over him and stole the air from his lungs. He stopped moving and bent double, his hands braced on his thighs.

  “Oh, my baby.” Regina was right there by his side, wiping away the tears he couldn’t control, just like she had when he was a boy. “I know you miss him.”

  “Loving her feels like I’m betraying him.”

  A smile curved her lips. “You silly, silly man. Danny is up there in Heaven yelling at you right now because you walked away from her. When you two got together, I have no doubt he was pouring champagne and throwing confetti.”

  He shook his head. “No, he’d be pissed at me. He’s—”

  “Marcus.” She said his name sharply, in her listen-to-your-mother voice, then tempered it with a sad smile. “You know Danny. You know him. Look me in the eye and tell me he is not celebrating that the two people he loved the most on this earth have found love with each other.”

  He couldn’t stop shaking his head. She was wrong. She had to be. “It’s too soon.”

  Regina took his face between her small hands and held him still. “There’s no time limit, amore. The clock isn’t going to strike midnight and suddenly enough time has passed. Leah will grieve for Danny for the rest of her life. So will you. But you loving her and her loving you back doesn’t negate the love you both had for him. Grief and love can coexist.”

  He stared at her, not daring to believe she was telling him the truth. “You never dated after Dad died.”

  “No, I didn’t, but not for the reasons you think.” She pushed a curl off his forehead like she always had while soothing him from a nightmare. “I loved your father. He was my world. My everything. I still miss him, miss what we could’ve been, the life we all could’ve made together.” She hesitated, drew a breath, and let it out slowly. “I’ve never told you how he died—”

  He covered her hand with his own and lightly squeezed her fingers. “It’s okay, Ma. I already know Francisco Bellisario had him killed. I read the case file when I was with the FBI.” He didn’t tell her he’d also gone undercover in the Bellisario crime family, the prodigal son returning to take his place in la famiglia. His ties to the Mafia were the only reason he’d even been accepted into the Bureau in the first place, but she didn’t need to know any of that when she’d spent her whole life trying to keep him away from that world.

  She swallowed hard and nodded once. “Vinny was a good, upstanding, honorable man. He wanted nothing to do with any of the Bellisarios, and your grandfather didn’t approve. Francisco wanted to tie me—and you—to the family, so he ordered your father’s death. It’s why I packed you into the car and brought you to California. I spent my entire life terrified of what could happen if I said the wrong thing to the wrong person or made the wrong move. I never tried to date because I was afraid to put another man in harm’s way if Francisco ever found us.”

  She was trying to help, but the story of his father’s death only cemented his decision to stay away from Leah and the kids. “The bullet that killed Danny was meant for me.”

  Her face went white and she pressed a hand over her heart. “Someone tried to kill you?”

  He smirked. “C’mon, Ma. Someone’s always trying to kill me. It’s one of the perks of my chosen career.”

  She lightly smacked his cheek. “You’re not funny, kid.” She held out a hand. “Help your old ma up. Sitting on the ground like this is killing my knees.”

  “You’re not old.” He didn’t want to think about her aging…dying. A guy could only handle so much loss and grief at one time. He pulled her to her feet and adjusted her crooked glasses before kissing the tip of her nose. “And your knees are in better shape than mine.”

  “Yoga. I’m telling you, it’s a miracle.”

 
He walked her back to the porch and didn’t let go of her hand until she settled onto the custom-made porch swing he’d bought her for Mother’s Day last year.

  She sighed heavily as she sat. “I was trying to protect you by taking you away from New York, but I think I also did you a great disservice. I taught you to run away when the going gets tough. You saw me running and learned it was the easiest way to deal with problems. It isn’t.”

  He groaned. “Ma, that’s not—”

  “No.” She held up a ring-spangled finger and wagged it in his face. “You listen to me. If I had found what you and Leah have, I would’ve grabbed on and held it as tightly as possible. Even with the danger of our family hanging over our heads. I would’ve fought like hell to keep that kind of love in my life.”

  He leaned a hip against the railing and crossed his arms over his chest. “What if she gets hurt? Caught in the crossfire like Danny?”

  “And what if she gets hit by a bus tomorrow?”

  He flinched. “Ma! C’mon.”

  “What? I’m just saying. She could get hit by a bus. You could fall and crack your head open while surfing. A meteor could crash down and take out the whole godforsaken city of L.A. Take it from me, kiddo, life’s too short to be miserable, and too long to live it alone.”

  He uncrossed his arms and closed the distance between them, sitting down next to her on the swing. “You’re not alone.”

  She patted his arm. “Having a lover, a partner, to share your life with is very different than having a darling son.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She scoffed. “Don’t be. I made my choices.” She poked a finger at his chest. “You learn from my bad ones and do better.”

  They sat together in silence, gently swaying on the swing.

  “But I got Danny killed,” he said, at last voicing his biggest fear. “How could she love me, knowing that?”

  “You didn’t get Danny killed, but—” She waved it off as he opened his mouth to protest. “That’s an argument for a different time. Does Leah know what happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “And…?”

  He thought back to their fight in CAR, the utter betrayal and horror in her eyes. Then he thought of last night, of her gazing at him with such trust before leading him upstairs. “She said she loved me this morning.”

  “There’s your answer.”

  “I don’t know how she possibly could.”

  “Have you discussed it with her?”

  “No. I was—” He stopped short. It galled to admit it, but this was his mother. “Leah took off her wedding ring and it—it reminded me that Danny wasn’t here because of me. It reminded me that I was the entire reason she had to even consider taking it off. I was the reason Danny died and I was the reason she felt uncomfortable continuing to wear her ring. It put a hole right here.” He fisted a hand and thumped it against his stomach. “I didn’t want that reminder, and she said she loved me and—I used the ring to push her away. I’m so afraid I’ll get her killed, too.”

  Regina tilted her head down to eye him over the rim of her outrageous glasses. “Don’t you think you should be telling her all of this instead of me?”

  “Yeah.” But telling his mom was easier. Having this conversation with Leah would be one of the hardest things he’d ever done in his life. Right up there with making the call to tell her Danny had died. “Maybe.”

  “You should call her,” Regina said. “Or better yet, go over there.”

  His phone rang right then, and his heart tried to rabbit from his rib cage. Was it Leah calling? Please, don’t be her. He wasn’t ready to have this conversation yet.

  He lifted a hip to grab it from his pocket and breathed a soft sigh of relief when he saw Harvard’s name on the screen.

  He considered ignoring it because he’d already run an emotional gauntlet tonight. He had to make things right with Leah before fixing things with his brothers-in-arms. But ignoring the call was something the old Marcus would’ve done. Not the new-and-improved Marcus he was trying to be.

  “Hang on, Ma. I gotta take this.” He walked into the house and answered. “Yo, H. What’s up?”

  “A whole lotta bad shit,” Harvard replied, sounding 100 percent strung out on caffeine and adrenaline. He’d probably been working his computer magic and downing energy drinks, as was his habit, and he’d figured something out. Marcus could tell all that just by his tone and the way he was spewing the verbal equivalent of vomit over the line.

  “Whoa, whoa. Jesus, kid. You need to lay off the Red Bull. Take a breath.”

  Harvard did just that, sucking in a deep one. “Okay. Okay, sorry. I’m calm now. Listen, Sami and I finally pulled all the info off that damaged drive. Are you near a computer? You need to see these files.”

  Marcus glanced around, spotted his mother’s laptop on the coffee table. He slid onto the couch and popped it open. “Send ’em.”

  He balanced the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he accessed his encrypted HORNET email. The files hit his inbox a second later and he clicked through. The first few documents were all newspaper clippings about three journalists murdered in CAR while investigating Volkov Group’s activities.

  Then things got interesting.

  There were personal documents between Alexander Cabot and one of the journalists, the woman of the group, Ekaterina Krupina. Emails. Texts. It looks to have started off as a journalist-slash-source relationship, but it quickly became more intimate.

  They were lovers.

  “That’s why Cabot left Defion and disappeared,” he realized. “Ekaterina was killed in CAR and he wanted to find out why. He wanted revenge.” Marcus knew that feeling all too well. It had driven him to the edge of his sanity.

  “And when he started finding all the dirt on Volkov and Aid First, he contacted the FBI,” Harvard added. “Look at who his initial contact was.”

  Marcus opened the next document and started reading. Then stopped, flipped back a page, and read again. “Rick O’Keane? Danny’s partner.”

  But according to these documents, the investigation was shut down before it even began. Marcus had seen enough FBI reports to read between the lines. Rick had killed the investigation, but Danny had continued communication with Cabot on the down low. Had he been investigating the connection between Volkov and the journalists’ murders by himself?

  Marcus set down the phone and opened all of the attached files. He read the continued communications between Danny and Cabot, his disbelief growing with every word. He’d always known there was corruption in the Bureau. He’d seen it firsthand while working undercover on the Bellisario case. There were plenty of agents and other officials on the Mafia’s payroll, and he’d had the pleasure of taking some of them down.

  But this? This was next-level shit. The FBI was dirty, and the muck extended high up the political ladder. “No fucking way.”

  Danny’s death wasn’t the accident he’d thought it was.

  Marcus shut his eyes and thought back to that morning on the beach in Martinique. He’d been so sure that bullet had been meant for him. Lanie had seen the sniper and shouted a warning. He’d ducked and Danny was hit only because he shoved Lanie out of the way.

  But as he mentally replayed the scene, he remembered Lanie had knocked into Danny first when she spotted the sniper. Not hard, but enough to move him a few inches. So when he pushed her back, he wasn’t jumping into the line of fire. He was shoving her out of it.

  For some reason, Sebastian Haly had lied to Mercedes when he told her he’d shot the wrong guy. Danny had been the target that day. He had known what Cabot knew. The people involved needed them both to stay quiet and had paid an outrageous sum for the hit.

  Harvard squawked something on the other end of the line, reminding him about the phone, still connected, sitting on the coffee table. He picked it up again
. “You read all of this?”

  “I wouldn’t be calling you if I hadn’t. Are you with Leah now?”

  Marcus’s heart swan-dived into his stomach. If they had killed Danny for what he knew, they’d do the same to Leah if they suspected he’d told her anything. Hell, they’d already tried. Cabot had been the only reason she’d survived. And Cabot had given her the flash drive, which contained all the information needed to end powerful careers.

  This wasn’t over. They wouldn’t stop until Leah was silenced, too.

  “Jesus.” He snapped up the laptop and ran for the door. “Ma, gotta go. Get inside and lock the door behind me.”

  She popped to her feet. “What’s wrong?”

  “This thing is bigger than we thought. Please. Inside. I can’t worry about you and—”

  She waved him off. “Go to her. I’ll be fine. Go!”

  He paused for an instant by his car to make sure Regina was listening to him. She’d gone inside and was closing the door.

  “Ma,” he called.

  She stopped, poked her head out.

  “I love you,” he told her. Words he didn’t say often enough. Ones he promised he would make sure she knew every day from now on.

  Because she was right. Life was too short to be miserable and too long to be alone.

  Her grin was the same one he saw in the mirror. “I love you, too, Marcus. Go protect your girl and her babies.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The twins fought going to bed like they always did. Maya was tight-lipped and moody through dinner, then argued about doing her homework. There were dishes piled in the sink and food splattered the floor. Water pooled on the bathroom tiles, and two naked boys ran around the condo, trying to snap each other with their towels.

  Back to normal.