Page 72 of Assassin's Heart
“Leah moving in means Brooke comes with her. Having a child here…”
“Would be different.”
At least he didn’t saydifficult. Or flat-out no.
“There’s something else you should know.”
Levi stood abruptly. An ache started up between my eyes.
“I’ve been discussing things with Branson.” Our head of security at Hacr had been there since our uncle’s death over a decade ago. He was a good man, but getting older. “He’s asked to retire next year. I want to take his place.”
Levi jerked to a stop between one pacing step and the next, spun to face me. “You’re taking yourself out of the field?”
I stood too, needing to be on the same level as he was. My future was at stake here, mine and Leah’s, and yet it felt far too much like I was abandoning the man who’d raised me. “Levi, I will always have your back. Yours and Eli’s. Don’t ever think anything else.” I hesitated. “I need… I want a family with Leah. In a perfect world our lives would’ve been much different and there would be no question that I would marry her, have children, be…normal. But the three of us, we’re not normal. After what she’s been through, I can’t ask her to accept the risk that having anactiveassassin as her husband would bring.”
I rounded the couch to move closer to him. “I won’t be in the field, but I also won’t deny you if you need me. Which is another reason I want them here, not me somewhere else, where you might not be able to get to me. Our family belongs together.”
Levi resumed his pacing, and I waited. In reality it didn’t matter if we agreed or not. This house, like the company, had been divided equally between the three of us. But I wouldn’t bring Leah and Brooke here if they were unwanted; they didn’t deserve that.
“You’re planning to marry her?” Levi asked. With his back to me, his opinion of that wasn’t clear, but my answer was.
“As soon as she’ll have me.”
He reached the end of his path, turned, and stopped. His expression was grim, but the harder I looked, the clearer it became that it was worry riding him, not resentment. I wish I could help him see that the worry for this family wasn’t all on his shoulders. We shared that responsibility, but Levi wouldn’t accept that. He never had.
“Bring them here, then.”
I snorted. “I’d fucking love to make that happen. Just got to get Leah to agree.”
Levi glanced at the ceiling, toward his own feminine half. “Good luck with that.”
I thought about asking if everything was all right between the two of them, but my brother would just clam up if I did. Making a mental note to catch Abby alone tomorrow for a little interrogation, I moved into Levi’s space and gave him a hard hug before slapping him on the back. “I might need it, bro. Thanks.”
∞
“That’s ten!” Brooke squealed as she gathered the green and red cards from the center of the table and added them to the stack in front of her.
“How can that be ten?” I protested. “How can ‘kitten’ win if the category is ‘scary’?”
Brooke shrugged. “Ask Mommy.”
“It’s the crab apple version,” Leah explained. On the side that Brooke couldn’t see, she winked my way. “Go with it.” To Brooke, “Time for bed!”
Well, ifgame overmeant time for bed…
After much grumbling, Brooke was hustled into the shower. She came to find me in the kitchen when she was finished, her pink pj’s with the rainbow-horned unicorns snug around her. “Remi, will you brush my hair?”
I set the last plate from dinner in the dishwasher before drying my hands on the towel tucked into my hip pocket. “You want me to brush your hair?” That didn’t sound as panicked as I thought, did it? “What about Mommy?”
Leah’s smirk told me the panic was loud and clear. “She wants you, big guy.”
“Yeah, you, Remi. Please?”
I groaned. Who could resist that face? I was a killer, for fuck’s sake. Why was it so hard to tell this child no? What if I pulled her hair? Would she cry? The thought of those blue eyes filled with tears clenched my gut in a way I’d never have admitted to six months ago.
I passed the towel to Leah. “Okay, little one, your choice.”
Leah took the towel. I was a few steps away when she used it to snap my ass. “Start from the bottom.”
