Page 35 of Flawed Revenge

Knew that she wasn't the only one who needed someone to hold her up sometimes.

Maybe Leo wasn't as strong and together as he pretended to be. Maybe he needed her as much as she needed him.

For some reason that made this easier. Kate lifted her hands and placed her palms on Leo’s bare chest, her fingers stroking his smooth skin. When she tilted her head back, she saw Leo looking down at her, hunger in his eyes, but more than that, love.

Pure, unadulterated love.

For her.

“I want to not be scared anymore. I want it to be between us the way it was before. Those ten months we were together were the best of my life, and they left me with the most perfect gift, the best little girl in the world,” she murmured as she pushed up onto her tiptoes so she could brush her lips against his.

Against her stomach, she felt him grow hard, and just as she was reaching for him, curling her fingers around his length, a loud siren suddenly went off, making her freeze.

Leo, too, went completely still, and she didn't need to be able to clearly see his expression to know what was in it.

Fear.

Whatever that siren meant, it had scared Leo. Terrified him.

“What is it?” she asked, pretty sure she didn't want to know the answer.

“A warning.”

“Warning?”

“Our location might have just been compromised.”

“Compromised?”

“No one should know where we are. If someone does …”

“Then none of us are safe,” she finished for him. Which meant she and her daughter were now in danger along with Leo and the rest of his team. In trying to find a way to save Ariella’s life, she’d brought her into a whole new world of danger instead.

Chapter

Eleven

March 17th

8:16 A.M.

It had taken longer than he would have liked to get there.

Lion felt an urgency pulsing through his system, leaving him unsettled. A feeling that said while he and his family had all made it out of the Delta Team mansion unscathed, with none of their perimeter sensors alerting them to the arrival of an intruder, something still wasn't right.

They weren't safe.

He didn't know how he knew that, he just … felt it deep in his bones.

After the alarm sounded this morning, he’d thrown the T-shirt back over Kate’s head and sent her off to get herself and Ariella dressed and packed with a few changes of clothes and essentials only. Then he’d gotten dressed, grabbed his go bag, and met the others in the kitchen. It had taken them less than thirty minutes to get out of that house and to the small, private airfield they used, where they all piled onto the private jet and took off.

Completely unaware that anything was wrong, Ariella was chattering away to her mother in the seats across from him. She had her teddy bear on her lap, her iPad in her hands, and she was discussing which movie her mom wanted to watch with her. Kate was doing a good job of pretending that nothing was going on, but he could see the strain in her eyes, hear it in her voice, and see that her entire body was taut, like if it had to endure one more burden it would snap.

Everyone was doing their best not to scare the little girl, and they’d told her they were just traveling to the city so they could run more tests and prepare her for the bone marrow transplant. Which wasn't entirely untrue.

If someone really had managed to link the remote Gothic mansion to him and his team, they weren't safe there. With the mansion potentially compromised, the next safest place for all of them was Prey’s headquarters in Manhattan, so that’s where they were going.

There were multiple apartments in the building, which meant that each couple could have their own space, but they’d still be together to support one another. With Dr. Gardner dead, it made sense that the only other person who might be after them was the scientist’s mother.