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My heart sinks.
“You want my debriefing, I’m guessing, since I’ve been too occupied to make the meetings,” I say carefully.
Strauss shakes his head fiercely, his midnight-blue eyes flickering. “Hell no. I want to thank you in person, Triton. Without you stringing them along with bad intel, you all would’ve come home in far worse shape than you did. You bought time while we set up the extract. The fact that you still delivered that sorry fuck for justice without strangling him won my respect, too.”
“Yeah, well...” I hope they can’t see my face reddening behind all the swelling.
“Triton, you did damn good,” Sex chimes in.
My eyes flick to his destroyed hand and linger there. A harsh reminder I could’ve done a hell of a lot better.
“Sex, I’m sorry as hell for what they did to you. If I could’ve just drawn their focus a little while longer—”
“Bullshit, son,” he clips. “You kept my Callie safe. Long enough for the company to get her to a safehouse where they’d never find her. I owe you my life for that.”
For a second, there’s a heavy silence.
I’m not used to these two older men staring at me with so much respect shining in their eyes, showering me with praise like I just saved the whole goddamned world from a meteor strike.
“Just did my duty, guys. Nothing more. Is that it?” I ask, hoping Strauss isn’t about to force some big public ceremony or a heap of money on me just for doing what I’m trained to do.
This was hardly a flawless mission.
Feels more like a minor miracle that we all came back alive.
If I’d handled the bad intel just a little better during the initial raid, we never would’ve wound up on a detour through hell, taking casualties.
“No. Something happened while you were captured, and I want you to hear it straight from me,” Strauss says, his eyes shifting darkly. “I paid a visit to Bruce Burr and handed over that letter you left. I’m happy to say it saved your family a heap of trouble.”
Oh, fuck.
My shame damn near turns my stomach. What did my mother do while I was down for the count? What kind of trouble does he mean?
“Boss, I’m sorry to hear it.” I drag a restless hand over my face and wince when I press on the bruises before asking, “How bad?”
“From what I’ve gathered, your mother pushed hard to have Cordelia institutionalized.”
“Delia? Goddammit, she should be finishing school!” I pound my fist on the bed.
“The damage was limited,” Strauss says with a reassuring nod. “Bruce called me a couple days after he’d read it. I vouched for you telling the truth—especially when he told me his daughter was found with cocaine and a clean drug test—and I had James dig up the old police reports for him.”
My jaw tenses so hard it could break.
Cocaine? She planted fucking drugs on my girl?
“You listening, Triton?” Sexton cuts in. “He’s saying you’ve got nothing to worry about besides what you’ll say when you see her again. From what I hear, that last dustup when your mom went crazy nixed the family factor.”
My breath stalls as I look back and forth between them. “What? You mean they split?”
“That’s what I gathered the last time I called Bruce to tell him you were coming home safe.” Landon nods, a whisper of a smile hidden in his beard. “Your mother took off when he offered her some treatment. Whenever she surfaces again, she’ll find divorce papers waiting.”
“Shit,” I whisper.
My brain spins, this unexpected freedom whirling in a new blur of possibility.
“I see you’ll need some time,” Strauss says, a chuckle at the edge of his voice. “If you’d like, I can arrange to have Miss Burr here with you tomorrow.”
“No. Not yet,” I say sharply. “She can’t see me like this.”
