“To be free. I told you, Jake and Cam, they have the same dreams.”
Ranger’s gaze flickered, acknowledging. But something darker lingered. “Sambinis didn’t just murder your Russian daddy.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do to the fuckers who helped them?”
It was my turn to be dry. “In an ideal world, burn them alive. In reality, whatever is quickest, which is ironic given that Jake believes the way the Sambini family were despatched was too fast for what they deserved.”
Ranger grunted, fingers twitching again. “He didn’t think that when he got it in his head that you were on that boat with them.”
Gravel raked my stomach. “I would never have got on that boat. I knew what it was for.”
Ranger didn’t, and he did not ask. About that or anything else. He fell quiet again, dumping his head on his folded arms. Thinking, in a way most people probably did not believe him capable of. Deducing the facts: that whoever our enemies were, and whatever they had done, in a few days’ time, I would travel to wherever Jake needed me and stand at his side to face them.
His heavy sigh broke the silence. He flopped onto his back. “That was a really long and boring way to tell a story.”
“Thatis rude.”
“So?”
So... nothing. Ranger was still naked—we both were. It was hard to think about organised crime when I wanted to trace the trail of dark hair on his lean abdomen to his?—
“I’m coming with you.”
I blinked and forced my gaze back to him. “I know.”
Suspicion clouded his black stare. “Oh yeah?”
“Alexei told me to bring you because you are a good soldier.”
“You needed him to tell you that?”
“No, I needed a reason to be reckless with your life, when all I want to do is send you and Lida to the ends of the earth to keep you safe.”
“That’s sweet, Vik. But it’s not going to happen. I already talked it out with Lida. She’s going to stay here and watch over the kids.”
I could not protest his logic. I had such conversations with my dog all the time. “This fight... for what it is worth, it will not be fair. Jake has the few men we can trust with him already. I have only you.”
“I’m not enough for you?”
Ranger’s eyes gleamed with heat, but enough severity remained that I knew he did not misunderstand me.
I elaborated anyway. “To prevail, it needs to be a mass assassination. I do not yet know if we have enough to achieve that.”
“You have hundreds of minions.”
I shook my head. “For something like this... it cannot just be men.”
“Family.” Ranger nodded, slowly. “Jakov said that when he asked me to come here.”
Because my brother knew.That I loved Ranger, maybe not. But that I could.
Spent, I shut my eyes for a little while. Sleeping, maybe. Drifting. Ranger stayed close; I felt him. Felt him arrange the sheets to cover me—cover us—and the gentle brush of his fingers through my hair sometime later. “I did not know you were this nice.”
Ranger’s low laugh eased my eyes open. His smile... I did not have words to describe it as he skated his thumb over my cheekbone. “There you are.”
“Where did I go?”
