Savvie wasn’t nervous.
She was confident. Bullish, even.
Her nails dug into my wrist. "How bad is it? Is it to do with your father’s death?"
My shoulders sagged. "Little one, we’ve been through this."
"No, you went through this. I told you that you’re not allowed to die. Ever."
I had to stop myself from smiling. "That’s impossible."
"I don’t care. You’re not allowed to go—"
When she sniffled—the woman who’d faced sieges and had actively honey-trapped a producer at the TV network where she worked so she could leak the footage live on breakfast television—I knew I was a fucking goner.
I climbed onto the bed, sighing when she wriggled over to let me onto the mattress before she pretty much entangled me with her limbs as if that would keep me close.
Her face nestled into my throat, and her hands grabbed at me, holding me tightly in her embrace.
Da’s passing, the death of her hero, had shaken her more than I could have anticipated, though thiswasthe first time I’d been called away on business since that day.
The city was still feeling the shockwaves of Da’s death, and the nation had lost their First Lady to an assassin.
In the aftermath, with police blockades in place and half of Manhattan on lockdown, shit had been quiet.
"Da lived a long life," I tried to soothe. Longer than he’d fucking deserved, that was for sure.
As I stroked my hand over her hair, holding her as tight as she held me, I tried to figure out how I could support her, but I didn’t know how to help her when verbalizing my own feelings for a man whose passing I was finding hard to grieve didn’t come easy.
Da had been a confusing man in life, but in death, that was magnified tenfold.
"How do I know someone isn’t going to try to take you away from me too?"
The words broke me from my thoughts, sending me reeling as I hugged her harder, trying to reassure her physically as, verbally, I comforted, "You don’t know that.Wedon’t know that. Who was it who told me that my life, my work, is as dangerous as yours?"
Her baby sister had been kidnapped by a deranged fan, after all, because their father was Dagger Daniels—rock god extraordinaire.
"Threats are everywhere," she whispered, breaking my fucking heart with how despairing she sounded. "I don’t want to lose you."
"I know you don’t, sweetheart. But I don’t intend on going anywhere. I have to make a name for myself. I have to prove my worth. Then I’ll be untouchable like…" I broke off before I could finish the sentence.
How could I say Da was untouchable when his death proved otherwise?
That was when I realized her cheeks were wet.
My wife was weeping like her heart was breaking.
Rage spilled into me on her behalf and it made me say shit I should have kept silent about.
"Baby, Da didn’t get executed because of who he was." At my words, she tensed, but ignoring that tension, I continued, "It wasn’t a business rival—"
"You say that like you know who killed him."
I sighed. "I know that he framed himself. He was sick, little one. Very sick."
She swallowed. "With what?"
"ALS."