Mercenary team.
They’re mercenaries.
The man I love… is a mercenary.
Hell, the man my sister married, my brother-in-law, another man I love in my own special, familial way, and the father of my future niece, is a mercenary.
The two other men I’ve been around enough to call actual friends… are mercenaries. They each have wives, and Corbin has kids, and all of them know that these men we cherish and love with our very souls… kill people—albeit very bad people—for a living. Wait… do they?
“Do… do Twyla, Vi, and Clarice know? Or is this part something you expect me to be able to keep from them?” My eyes have gone wide.
Neil reaches down and strokes my cheek, his face going soft. “They know, goddess.”
A sense of relief fills me at that, and I begin to add it all up in my head. I skim through a hundred conversations I’ve witnessed between these men that seemed to be in some sort of code, and it all clicks into place. I’d been at the hospital when the team brought my sister after they rescued her. I’d heard countless stories of security details they’d been paid to do, so Imperium Security wasn’t an all-out lie. It was just… more than what everyone was led to believe it was.
And as my mind whirls with all this knowledge I now understand to be true, one thing stands out to me, a conversation I heard at the hospital while I held Twyla’s hand and the four men talked outside her room.
“Just this once. Just this once, man, and we’ll never have to worry about him getting out of it like they always do,” Seth raged.
Neil’s voice had come next. “There are eye-witnesses. Way too much evidence this time. Combined with the restraining order and police report containing Astrid’s photos from when he beat her, he won’t get away with it. He won’t. Remember, life for a life. Your girl is still alive, right there in that room.”
“For now. But what if he gets off and comes back to finish the job? I can’t let that happen, Doc. I cannot allow that to happen.” Seth’s voice was full of conviction.
“If he isn’t sentenced, punished enough for our liking, then I promise, I swear to you, brother, we will break our one rule to make sure nothing happens to her nor her sister. They will never be at risk, on my life.”
That wasn’t just a man threatening to kill someone for hurting his woman. That wasn’t just heated, exaggerated words of violent passion. No. These men weren’t just shit-talking; they actually planned to murder Brandon if he hadn’t gotten the sentence he had. And if he somehow managed to get out of his thirty-five-year sentence early, Twyla and I would still never have to worry about him. And for that, I’m… grateful.
I am grateful to these men who would commit an act I’d never have the courage to do myself. This team who serves justice when the system fails.
And as I lift my head to look into his stormy blue eyes, so clearly bracing for my response to this revelation, actually fearful that I would not accept this part of him…
I forget about the ink and my shirt and launch myself upward into his lap, his huge arms automatically coming around me in a tight hug around my waist that feels desperate for acceptance. I sit up tall and wrap my arms around his neck, pull his head down to my naked chest, holding him there with a hand to the back of his head, cradling him tighter when I feel his body shudder.
I think I feel wetness on my chest—but surely not. There’s no way my giant, strong, alpha Viking of a man could possibly even produce tears, let alone shed them.
But then I remember his story, the sweet, shy, introverted boy who was finally pulled out of his shell by his childhood love. The gentle, scholarly, bookish teen who wanted to be a doctor. The man who’s spent his lifetime wanting to help heal people, to give them a new life they could enjoy and be happy. A selfless man who has worried about making this world a safer place for everyone else instead of focusing on his own life.
He’s been alone without this kind of closeness for twenty-four years. And while I know he’s been with women at the club and I’m sure others well before he got into the lifestyle, he hadn’t felt this intimacy, this love, this need and acceptance in all this time. Not until now. Not until me.
He’s a true gentle giant of a man, and while he may look like a hardened warrior on the outside, and he’s most definitely the toughest and most intimidating man who could bring his enemies to their knees, he’s also still that same sweet little boy on the inside deep down. And that’s the tiny part of him that’s at the forefront in this moment, as he holds me like I’m his lifeline and weeps against my chest.