“Where’s the fun in that?” He slaps the side of the vehicle with pride, but his smile slides off his lips when he looks at me.
“No shit.” Roman bites his bottom lip. “The Stinger.” Even though he’s an identical triplet, his lip biting is what has always given him away. He’s more like Aunt Vivi than the others.
“I named a million-dollar military vehicle after her, and I had no idea,” I realize.
“Well,” he says. “If she ends up unlocking your memories, maybe you can forgive me for springing her on you. But in fairness, it took us a long fucking time to find her. Even though she kept her first name, someone buried her deep.”
“Maybe,” I mutter, then turn back to the fucking headache he managed to acquire. “How long did it take you to find this thing?”
“I didn’t find it,” he scoffs. “Me and Sterling built it.” Roman pulls open the door with a pneumatic hiss that sounds like a TV spaceship. “We’ve been working on it for two years at the warehouse—you’d know that if you ever bothered to come home. We thought it would be good for stakeouts.”
“You built an armored RV for stakeouts? You realize you’re supposed to stay hidden on stakeouts, right?” My cousins are out of their damn minds. They have more money than they could ever spend, and some of their ideas are…something a teenage boy would dream up.
I ignore the little voice in my head telling me I have just as many zeros hiding away in a bank account somewhere. I didn’t earn it, so I don’t touch it. It feels…wrong.
“I prefer mobile command center, and again, you’d know that if you came home once in a while.” He climbs inside, gesturing for me to follow. Excitable childlike energy does not match his typical grumpy ass exterior.
Roman is not the demonstrative brother—that would be Chase—so the fact that he’s practically frothing at the mouth tells me just how excited he is about this. So I force down myirritation and follow him inside what can only be described as a tiny militant bachelor pad.
“What the fuck is this, Ro?”
He pauses with his hands on a gaming console and turns his head so slowly I’d fear he were having a stroke if I didn’t also catch what I said.
“You haven’t called me Ro— Not since?—”
Swallowing nails, I nod. “Not since…before?”
My cousin smiles with a mix of sadness and hope that rips at my chest. The last thing I want is for anyone to get their hopes up. My memories have been gone for fourteen long years. It would be irresponsible to think that a single ghost from my past would be the one to unlock all those frustrating years.
No matter how special I fear she might have been to me.
“Yeah,” he croaks, then fidgets with the game controller.
I take in the interior so I don’t have to look him in the eye either. I’m not ready for the inquisition I know is coming.
There’s a small kitchenette on one side, a Murphy bed that folds down on the back wall, a compact bathroom that could belong on a yacht, and—I point at the monitors mounted above the gaming console that are straight out of a spy movie.
“Security feeds,” Roman says quickly. Too quickly. “For monitoring the perimeter.”
“One of them is definitely showing an active game of Call of Duty.”
“That’s—” He clears his throat. “That’s for blending in. You know, establishing a cover.”
“For what? A children’s birthday party venue? How are you going to blend in by playing Call of Duty in a tank?”
Roman’s typically stoic, almost stuck-up, so this ridiculous side of him is nice to see, even if it is slightly unnerving.
He’s also been my best friend since we were teenagers…and I suppose—to him—even before that. While I’ve fought to figureout who I am and what I’ve done, he’s been by my side every step of the way.
“Thank you,” I say, the sentiment soothing my soul. “For this. For everything.”
The sharp angles of his face shift, making him appear softer and looking more like Aunt Vivi than ever before. “You’d do the same for me. You have done the same for me.” He punches my shoulder. “Don’t start crying on me now though—we have work to do.”
He gestures to the security monitors. “I’ve got feeds from Rip’s car, the corners of the house, and the three I installed while you were inside playing hero.”
“I wasn’t playing?—”
“Chief said you caught her right before she hit the floor. That’s textbook romance hero behavior, my man.” He’s grinning again. “I’m just saying, if you wanted to make an impression, mission accomplished.”
