“Don’t be long.”
I climbed the stairs and made my way into the bedroom, stopping to glance at my son in his crib. Cerb was stretched out on the floor beside it, head on his paws, deep in slumber. The rise and fall of Link’s tiny chest gave me a sense of comfort and I moved into the bathroom to wash the last job of the day from my body.
When I emerged, towel wrapped around my waist, hair damp and hanging around my face, Mia was sat on the end of the bed with a mug in her hands. The scent of coffee filled the room. Decaf. A mug of lies. “You can keep that,” I told her, nodding at it.
Her lip curled in disgust. “It’s an abomination.” Clarity on the fact that it was indeed decaffeinated.
“And yet you were willing to give it to me?”
“You need to unwind.”
“I’ll do fine without it,” I muttered under my breath.
Mia didn’t pick up the fight. She got to her feet and walked around the bed, placing the mug on the nightstand beside a stack of parenting books. By the time I changed and turned around she was already under the covers, dark eyes trained on every movement I made.
“Like what you see?” I asked, raising an eyebrow as I walked over to join her.
“I’m marrying you, aren’t I?”
“Tethered to me in this life and the next.”
Even though I couldn’t see it in the darkness of the room, I knew Mia would be pink at the thought of us being bound together for life.
I’d bitten my tongue on asking her to push the date of the wedding forward. We’d christened Link and all the rest of our plans had gone to hell anyway, but Mia deserved a day without worry and I hoped to at least give her that glorious moment in the sun. Plus, trying to get her to organise another event with minimal time to breathe might be my demise.
The minute I climbed into bed, Mia drew herself up to my side. Space had become non-existent between us when we were alone lately. Not that it was a problem. I would have had her permanently next to me if I thought it was safe and if I didn’t fear for my life when she saw some of the risks I took. I wrapped an arm around her and kissed her head.
“Who was it?” she asked quietly.
“No one important,” I replied.
She lifted her head from my chest, and I chastised myself for not coming up with something less conspicuous. We didn’t hide things from each other. There had been too many lies that had almost torn us apart to warrant any more. And my answer was out of the ordinary.
“Who was it?” she asked, firmly this time.
I sighed. “It was a job and it’s been dealt with.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “That’s not how we work.” Like a dog with a bone, she wouldn’t let this go.
“Angelo did his job. Part of it at least. He cleaned up the footage we gave him and found who targeted Chas.”
Mia pushed herself up, using me as leverage. “Are we closer to finding Xavier?”
It crushed me to hear the amount of hope in her voice. Constantly looking over your shoulder was a tiresome job and I wanted nothing more than to offer her some reprieve. This was the reason I hadn’t wanted to tell her because all I had was disappointment in store.
“No. Whoever shot at you knew what they were doing. All the cameras were tampered with. Either defaced or away from their usual position.”
Mia deflated at my words. “Chas?” she asked. “It wasn’t the same person then?”
“No,” I told her. There was no doubt in my mind that Xavier was behind what Mia went through that day. It was clean crime aside from the fact he’d missed his target and hit one of his own. None of us had banked on Franco’s loyalty to her running that deep. “That was someone else.” Mia looked at me expectantly, and I released another sigh. “A kid doing some work for Silas.”
“You killed Silas?” Mia asked, eyes growing wide and voice rising.
I hushed her. It was a blessing that Link was sleeping peacefully, and I wanted to buy as much time as I could before he awoke, hungry for food and attention.
“No,” I told her again. My hand reached out and wrapped around her elbow, pulling Mia into me and she came willingly. “I didn’t kill Silas. We dealt with the idiot that pulled the trigger.”
“And what about Silas?”
