It feels like a heavy weight to bear, and it also sounds like paradise. I’ve always been a little naïve—maybe even willfully. I’ve never had to lift a finger for myself that I didn’t want to. But I’ve also never been allowed any weakness.
There’s a part of me so exhausted I just want to collapse in Kane’s arms and allow the boys to take care of this problem. I want to sleep and not wake until it’s over.
But I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I did.
“You have my cooperation,” I say to him.
He kisses me, long and slow, until I’m mostly breathless, and then he knocks our foreheads together. “Tomorrow, Phoenix will finish securing the house, and we can go home. You’ll haveyour dress fitting and the last food tasting, and soon, my sweet thing, you will be our wife.”
It means something that he saysourwife. Almost like it doesn’t matter that I’m taking his name and sitting in his arms. It’s all of us. There’s no choosing. There’s no real hierarchy inside our little bubble. There’s just them, and they’ve made room in the exact shape of me.
I’m wanted.
I’m needed.
I’m home.
Chapter 12
KANE
Alice sleepsin my bed for the remainder of our time in the safe house, but soon enough, it’s time to pop the bubble. I think of this place for our honeymoon, though I’m not sure what kind of time away we’ll be able to afford while my kingdom is in disarray.
It all depends on what happens because the wedding is soon, and we now have a house full of prisoners to deal with.
Ari has been itching to get his hands bloody, and Phoenix has been desperate to get back on the grid so he can slip into his well-earned confidence. James is just worried, and Alice is still floating somewhere in the limbo of belonging and not knowing where she stands.
Words don’t seem to help with her. She’s far too like the rest of my boys—far too like me—for that to happen. It’ll take years of us remaining steady and proving to her that she belongs with us. But we all have the patience for it. How could we not with her, when we needed it so much for ourselves?
A call comes in the morning as I’m sitting at the table waiting for the house to wake. It’s the first noise my phone’s made since Phoenix put it back on the grid, and I don’t need to look at the screen to know exactly who’s trying to reach me.
“Aldis,” I say in greeting.
He sighs quietly on the other line. “Will you kill him?”
That must mean our team was successful. “You know damn well I can’t tell you that, and I wouldn’t either way. You’re slipping.”
He says nothing for a good long moment. “I believe Rhys, and you know where my loyalties lie, so I’m not trying to play both sides. He has no reason to lie to me.”
“He has every reason now,” I remind him. God only knows how Rhys’ recovery is coming along. I haven’t checked because it’s a guilt that will eat at me until the day I die. Mostly because if Alice’s fear and suspicion is right and we’re looking at the wrong person, Rhys would have suffered for nothing.
“Rhys knew exactly what would happen the moment he crawled into a Romano bed,” Aldis says bluntly. “He’s just grateful you care enough about him to let him live.”
I close my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose, and think about the Romano I have inmybed. She’d tossed and turned most of the night, but when I left her this morning, she was finally sleeping peacefully.
Alice was merely a mission, but she became something so much more long before I wanted to admit it. I would have done the same thing Rhys did. I would have betrayed the family for her in a heartbeat.
“I’m going to assume that whatever issue you had that took you into hiding is resolved,” Aldis says after a long beat. “I tried to reach you over the last couple of days, and it seemed like everything had shut down.”
“It had.” But we are secure again. The person hacking into our system wasn’t more clever than Phoenix—they just got lucky. They got an in. And it won’t happen again. So much blood will be spilled in Ari’s playroom that the floors will never comeclean. And I don’t know that the Walsh empire will heal from the wound.
But needs must.
“The IT department was gutted,” Aldis goes on. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“No,” I tell him bluntly. I won’t speak a word to anyone outside of this household until Guido is buried and everything the Romanos ever touched is ash. “Now, are you calling for information or for a favor?”
“I’m calling because you’re my nephew, and I’m worried about you,” he says, and I hear the honesty in his voice that hurts. “What can I do?”