She smiled at him and leaned slightly forward to cuddle the child resting in his arms, as well as feel his warmth. His free arm slipped around her waist to anchor her there. His lips pressed against her hairline again and stayed there.
EPILOGUE - THREE MONTHS LATER
Steel
The chopper landed gentlyon its target, and the men quietly filed out and headed for the elevator. A previous client needed an escort through several Middle Eastern countries. While it was something they normally would have passed on to the traditional, visible team members the company employed, they knew with all the changes happening, this was the last chance for the six of them to go into the field together.
Nemo and Scheherazade had even flown in specially to go with them.
As a group, they entered and hit the floor to the armory to dump their gear and clean up before heading to their families.
Steel was the last one out of the locker room, and when he headed for the elevator, he stopped short. Waters, TB, Nemo, Scheherazade, Demon, and Midas were all standing there, waitingfor him. They’d been gone already for at least twenty minutes, so he was confused as to why they were still here.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “You all should be upstairs already.”
“Not this time,” Waters said. “This time, we all go to the lobby together.”
His mouth opened to say it wasn’t necessary. He’d just go to his apartment like always, but no sound came out.
“It’s about time you had your own ‘triumphant return,’” TB said softly.
When the tradition started—the women meeting their men in the lobby after a project—it had just been Waters, Kubrick, TB, and Flame. Nemo had left to go work with Gem, but when they were around Tribe, they took part in the ritual.
For a while, it hadn’t been so bad when it was Demon, Midas, and Steel missing out together. But these last few months, it had only been him not being welcomed home. Although he knew he could go and the girls would be thrilled to see him, it hadn’t felt right. It had been a couples’ thing. He had never said to anyone that it bothered him, but obviously, they knew it had hurt to not be a part of it.
Choked up with emotion, he waved them off. “It’s okay. Daleyza won’t know the tradition. You all go up.”
Nemo moved behind him and hustled him onto the elevator, with the others filling in around them. “Dude. You honestly think the girls won’t have filled her in?”
Trying to make it seem like it didn’t matter, he shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Even if they did, it’s not really her style. She’s… independent.”
Waters gave a bark of laughter. “And Kubrick isn’t? She still moves heaven and earth to be there, even if she’s on a shoot.”
He wasn’t wrong. One time, she’d been on a film site but had left the location to fly home, greet Waters, then, after a twelve-hour “welcome home celebration,” had gotten back on a plane to go back to work.
“Are you scared she won’t be there?” Midas asked.
The doors to the elevator closed. Someone pushed the button for the lobby. He broke out into a sweat watching the numbers change.
He glanced at Midas, unable to speak.
“She’ll be there,” his teammate assured him. “I’ll bet an entire shipment of NikNaks on it.”
“I’ll raise my share,” Nemo offered.
“Me too,” Demon said.
Waters and TB added their agreements.
“You want to take those odds, Nostradamus?” Midas asked with a grin.
Prior to accepting Waters’ offer, as he lay in the muck and grime of that sewer in Nicaragua, he’d been working alone, hiding behind a double life. Here at Tribe was the only place he’d ever felt part of something, and even for the past seven years, he’d still felt a partial sense of separateness. Granted, he’d put up those walls himself, but at this moment? Those walls with these men were gone, as if they’d been merely lines drawn in the sand that he’d refused to cross. This was his family.
And then there was Daleyza. Hisbelleza.
Over the six weeks he’d had with her back home before this past project, he began to see her in a whole new light. To him, she’d always been a victim of circumstance. A pawn in her family’s machinations, then again with the Colonel Cartel.
Come to find, she had never needed a protector. She could do that just fine on her own and had since long before the day their families bound them to one another. Not only that, in her own way,shehad been protectinghim. She had known the tightrope he walked. Had understood what he was doing and kept his secrets. Had stayed out of the way so he could do what he needed to do to shield her and their son from the darkest side of the cartel. She’d been his silent partner then. Could he trust himself—not her, because she’d proven herself there—to let her help him again?
