Page 209 of Made in Love and Blood

Carina nodded. “Oh, yeah...just normal discomfort today.”

The way Carina’s face contorted slightly, brows pinching together like she felt pain, made Frankie concerned.

“You’re sure that you are all right?” she asked her stepmother.

Carina just waved a hand. “Fine, really. You should tell her that story, Larkin.”

“Hmm? Which one?”

“How you met Sal, and how he got you to work for him.”

“Ah.” Larkin’s gaze darted to Frankie. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Tell me,” Frankie said, needing the distraction.

Sinking into the chair, she felt swallowed in Nico’s sweater. She only took it off to send it to get washed by the hotel’s laundry staff, but that had its downsides, too. It didn’t smell like him anymore.

“It was what,” Larkin posed, not really asking a question, “something like seven years after he’d married his first wife. Right, Carina?”

“About that,” she agreed. Legs up on the coffee table in front of them, she continued pushing against the top of her stomach and shifting slightly in her chair.

Frankie kept one eye on her while Larkin talked.

“Anyway,” Larkin said while stretching his neck back and forth, “his in-laws, your mother’s parents, were dead by then because he and Delilah had control of the Dove money at that point. I was speaking at an event for veterans with PTSD. After I got up there and talked about how I didn’t believe PTSD was a thing until I lost three quarters of my team in a five-minute span on a mission that should have been cut and dry, and walked away with every symptom known to man, your father came to speak to me.”

“At the event?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Why was he there?” Frankie asked.

“A friend thought he needed to accept some things about himself that he hadn’t been ready to deal with and figured getting him to sit through a bunch of war vet speakers would make him just enough removed from his own experiences to see what he was dealing with.”

“PTSD,” Frankie said quietly. “That’s what you mean.”

Larkin shrugged. “It’s harder to accept things about yourself when you feel like the direct cause of it. From that, I speak with experience, which is why I think, your father came to find me after the event, specifically.”

“What’d he say to you?”

“Offered me a job.”

Frankie’s eyes widened, making Larkin laugh. “Just like that?”

“Well, no. First, he asked how much it would cost for me to build him a twenty-four-hour, year-round security team. I honestly didn’t know what I was dealing with, but given I’d taken my leave from the Seals, couldn’t go home to my wife because she wouldn’t have me, and I didn’t have anything to do...I just made up a number.”

“Which was?”

“Thirty million a year.”

Frankie’s mouth fell open again. “That’s a lot.”

“Not for your father. Well, at the time, the money was your mother’s. But that’s neither here nor there because mentally she wasn’t in any state to handle money, let alone herself.”

“What does that mean?”

Larkin passed a glance to Carina who sighed.

“Does it have to be me?” she asked him.