She lifted her good hand from the water and rested it on the rim of the tub.
“My targets aren’t just wealthy people. They’re predators. People who use their money and their access to destroy others and never face a single consequence for it. There’s a difference between having money and weaponizing it.”
“That’s true.”
“You walked away from that world, and even if you hadn’t, you and your family would never have been someone I looked at to target.”
“But you still have to admit that having money gives people an advantage.”
She shrugged. “I’m not on some crusade to even the playing field across the board. Some people have money, some people don’t. Having money doesn’t make you evil, just like not having money doesn’t make you automatically good.”
“I guess that’s true, too.” But it was hard because he’d always know he had his money to fall back on. Hell, when he was offering to help her find a new career, not for one second had he wondered how he would pay for it.
He never had to look at how much stuff cost when he went to the grocery store or stress about increasing gas prices when he was at the pump. Those were things he took for granted.
She blinked over at him. “You thought I would be upset about this.”
He shrugged. “I thought it might represent everything you hated. That I might represent everything you hated.”
“Well, that’s not how I feel about wealth in general. And especially not about you. You’ve used your life to protect people. To stand between them and the things they’re afraid of.” Her gray eyes held his. “You are the opposite of the people I go after. Not because you left the money behind. Because of what you chose to do instead. You’re a hero.”
Ridiculous. “That’s not how I see myself at all.”
“Of course it’s not. If you saw yourself that way, none of it would be true.”
Something behind his ribs unlocked. He’d carried the weight of his wealth for the entire time they’d been talking—the fear that his background would rewrite everything she saw when she looked at him.
That the trust fund would eclipse the man.
It didn’t. He could see it in her face. The acceptance was real and unforced. Her being okay with that was its own kind of trust.
The bath and the conversation had taken something out of both of them. He could see the exhaustion settling back into her frame, heavier now that the tension of the conversation had released and left nothing to hold her up.
He helped her out. Dried her carefully—the wrist, the knee, the places where her body was still negotiating with itself. Found clothes for her and got her into bed, pulling the covers up, tucking the pillow under her wrist.
“Rest,” he said. “I’ve got some things to take care of.”
Her eyes were already closing. “Isaac.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you.” Barely a whisper. “For telling me.”
He touched her hair. Once. Then he left the room and pulled the door shut behind him.
The house settled around him as he walked through it. The lake had gone dark through the windows, the last light fading to a thin line of copper at the far shore. By the time he sat down at the desk in the study, Fallon’s breathing had gone slow and even behind the closed bedroom door.
He opened his laptop and stared at the blank email for a long time. Ryder had told him to talk to Ian DeRose and Isaac was going to do that.
Just not in the way Ryder had suggested.
The cursor blinked against the white field. He put his hands on the keys. Took them off. Pressed his palms flat against the surface of the desk and felt the grain of the wood under his fingers.
Zodiac Tactical was the life he’d built after walking away from everything else. The military had given him purpose, but Zodiac had given him a home.
Ian had looked at him during that first interview and seen something worth investing in: not the family name, not the money, just a man who wanted to do work that mattered. He’d given Isaac trust, a team, and a place where the skills he’d built meant something.
Years of that. Missions, operations, the slow accumulation of a reputation he’d earned with his own hands. A brotherhood that would take a bullet for each other without hesitation and bitch about the coffee afterward.
