Page 87 of When Kings Fall

“Yeah, he does. This is gonna change everything for him.” I reached out a slid my fingers into her hair, making her moan at my soft touch, and she stopped playing. “You’ve changed everything for all of us, Brianna.”

“You’ve each done the same for me as well.”

“You saved our brotherhood. You know that? It’s always meant everything to me, so seeing it straining was heartbreaking for me. But everything changed when you became a part of us. You’re like the missing link or something. It fits so well now. So, thank you.”

“I love being a part of it, with you guys.”

Gazing into her eyes, I stroked her hair and confessed, “I love you, cutie.”

Her eyes lit up. she put my guitar down, then wrapped her arms around me. “I love you too,” she breathed at my ear. “You’re such a sweetheart.”

“My tongue piercing is a part of that love, right?”

She eased back, giggling. “Oh, definitely.”

We both burst out laughing.

And it was fucking perfect.

21

~Levi~

Nico Marchetti had been investigating Osiris for a good couple of years.

He’d had eyes on him from the moment his father had first brought up the possibility of dealing with that fucker, Malcolm Lynch.

The mafia prince was certainly on the ball.

All this information that he’d compiled was incredible and it had the means to bridge the gap with mine. But it was also a whole lot to sift through to get to that point. He hadn’t left anything out, not one little thing, even what I would class as irrelevant data.

“Fuck,” I muttered, slumping back in my desk chair in my old bedroom from my childhood and shoving a hand through my hair.

“Hitting some roadblocks?”

I’d been so immersed that I hadn’t even heard the approach.

I spun on my rolling chair to see my dad standing at the threshold.

“You can come in,” I told him, amused at him hanging back there. “I’m not a bitch-ass teenager anymore forbidding you from coming into my space.”

He chuckled. “No, you’re certainly not.” He gestured at all my equipment set up. “You’re a grown man taking control of the situation, of your own life.”

“Ah, I forgot,” I said, grinning. “You’re where I learned that whole buttering up thing from.”

His lips quirked. “You got me.” He folded his arms across his chest. “First, though, how’s that going?”

“There’s a hell of a lot here. It’s going to take time to go through. There’s a ton of raw data.”

“The fact he hasn’t seen to this data at all highly suggests that he never intended to go after Lynch himself. He was always looking for someone else to do his dirty work. He wasn’t doing you a favor. You’re doing him a favor.”

“It doesn’t matter. This is dirty work I’m more than happy to do.”

“For the last time, I’m hoping.”

“Dad—”

“It’s time, son. After this, it’s time to stop.”

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