He turned to face his father. The years had been good to Sam Smith. Losing his wife to cancer, then finding he had a secret daughter hadn’t been easy. The transplant he’d had almost two years ago hadn’t been the easiest on any of them. Sam might not look young, but he definitely looked good for his age.
“I have to work out where we are going to hide her. I also need to figure out if this last attack was due to her being burned, or if this was because of us.”
He cocked his head to the side as he studied Ian. That look told him that his father was going to play dumb, although he knew that Sam was anything but.
“Us?”
“You, me. She seemed very interested in keeping us safe. And she is right. There were more attacks on me these last few months. I don’t know what it means, but I do know that Dillon has been probing things.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
He would roll his eyes, but he knew his father hated that. “I would have if they found anything. I have been dealing with a few problem clients, mainly because my partner is good at dealing with them.”
“And then there was the attack in Vegas.”
He nodded. “It made sense that the bastards were hired by Russians.”
“You aren’t sure though, are you?”
He shook his head. “Just something felt off. I haven’t had a hit in years. I left the Double E well before I left MI-6. Russian agents would stick out more here than they would in England.”
“But not in Vegas.”
That was true. Lots of Russian oligarchs loved Sin City.
“Are we going to talk about it?”
“What?”
“Your connection to Lila.” He shook his head. “Still can’t get used to that name.”
Sam smiled. “Her full name is Delilah, but she hates that.”
“You went to pick her up?”
He nodded. “You know that I owed Judith my entire career in MI-6. She trained me, believed in me, and, well, made sure I got all the prime assignments. Then she did the same for you. Not the training, but I know she had a hand in your career a bit.”
“Really? Why?”
He shrugged, settling his weight against the counter and crossing his arms. “Judith didn’t trust people for obvious reasons. She could trust me. She also thought that I would be a good pick for her daughter.”
He had just taken a sip and promptly choked on it. “What?”
His father’s mouth twitched. “She thought we should date. She was trying to keep her daughter in England, but we saw each other more as siblings than anything else.”
“So you never dated?”
He shook his head. “She had met Micheal through some joint assignment. They were both built to be analysts and connected on that level.”
There was a tone in his voice that caught Ian’s attention. “You didn’t like him.”
“No. There was something off about him. He didn’t like the friendship I had with Eloise. I know that MI-6 made him a good offer to work for them, but he insisted they go back to the US. I have always thought that he did that because he was convinced that he would be considered better at the work.”
“So, he thought because he was an American, they would pick him over her?”
His father sighed. “Yeah, and I felt bloody guilty after both of them died. I just didn’t like the fact that my friend was all the way across the ocean. Then they were both gone, as was Adam. When Judith asked me to go retrieve Lila, I was on the next flight out. Poor girl. She was the only person at the funeral, besides agents. She was ordered not to contact her friends.”
His chest felt funny, as if something heavy was sitting on it. He couldn’t imagine losing your entire family, then being cut off from your safety net. He’d lost his mother when he was younger, but he had his father, then soon an annoying half-sister. Plus, he had always had his mates.
