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She thought about it, imagined her and Lyon holed up in a villa or cottage somewhere. She imagined their baby not knowing who he or she really was, not knowing they were a child of the Lion.
She imagined them having quiet dinners together, trying not to give away who they really were, where they were from, in case someone came looking for them.
They would be comfortable. But they would be hiding.
“No,” she said.
He blinked. “No?”
She took a deep breath. “No. We aren’t running.” He started to protest and she held up a hand. “It’s my turn.”
Her voice had turned to steel, an echo of the way things had been between them in the early days of their marriage, when he was a domineering brute and she had been too stubborn for her own good.
He nodded and she continued.
“If you don’t figure out who’s doing this in the next three weeks, I’ll leave — but only temporarily and not somewhere far away. You can hide me away in a small town somewhere. I’ll even consider another state.” She thought of Orcas Island. That would do. “But you will stay here and fight for what’s yours. For what’s ours. You can join me when it’s time for the baby, and then you will return and continue fighting until this new enemy — whoever he or she may be — is eliminated. And if a new enemy emerges, if a hundred new enemies emerge, we’ll do whatever must be done to keep our child safe. I acknowledge this means I would have to go as well.” She looked up at him. “But you’re the Lion. You don’t run from anything or anyone. Not even for me. And we’re not leaving behind what’s ours.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and she wondered if he would be angry. If she’d found some invisible boundary that was still between them, one which she was still not allowed to cross.
Then he dragged his knuckles down her cheek, his eyes lit with a strange amber fire. “You have to be sure.”
She lifted her chin. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
She thought she saw admiration in his eyes, but it didn’t really matter. She wasn’t making this choice to earn his admiration.
She was making it because it was right. Because it was just.
Lyon had worked his whole life to be pakhan. And there was no better leader for the bratva than him.
A smile slowly lifted the corners of his mouth. “Then we stay. We fight.”
She nodded, meeting his gaze. “We stay. We fight.” She smiled. “Although you might have told me about the plan to leave before we cleaned out the baby department at Sak’s.”
He threw back his head and laughed, then pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly against him. “I wanted you to have fun. To do something any other pregnant woman would get to do in preparing for a baby. I want you to have everything.”
She held his face in her hands and kissed him. “I already do.”
35
Lyon was in his office working on a list of ways to increase revenue when Alek burst in, his expression animated with excitement.
Lyon stood. “What is it?”
“Kofi has something,” Alek said.
Lyon was headed for the door before Alek could say anything else. His conversation with Kira in the park a few days earlier had been a relief — both the confession of his plans and Kira’s reaction to them — but the clock was still ticking, and he still wanted his wife to give birth in their city, to bring the baby home to the house in Lake Forest and the nursery that Kira was painstakingly preparing for their child.
The warehouse was quiet upstairs. The soldiers and brigadiers were all on the street, trying to head off more attacks by their unseen enemy, trying to reassure the associates that all was in hand, but the hum of conversation from the new cyberlab reached him as they made their way down the metal stairs that connected the mezzanine level rooms to what had once been the factory floor.
The lab had been staffed quickly, and what had once been an expanse of concrete dotted with the ghostly shapes of abandoned factory equipment was now a hive of activity.
Several long tables were set up in rows, an array of computer equipment scattered across their surfaces. The analysts and hackers Kofi had hired to work in the lab, most of them younger than thirty, glanced up as Lyon approached.
He tried to nod and smile, though geniality wasn’t his strong suit. He didn’t know exactly what each of them did, but Kofi — a former analyst with Homeland Security and the NSA, with another five years doing highly illegal corporate espionage for hire — had come highly recommended by the head of Damian’s lab.
Lyon had reviewed the results of the in-depth background checks they’d done on each and every candidate, ruled out the ones with higher-than-average risk for outside influence, then left the hiring to Kofi.
Lyon and Alek made their way through the rows of tables to a long one at the very back occupied by an imposing man with burnished skin and black hair, his gaze focused on two of the four computer screens in front of him.
