But we’re not guns, made of steel. We’repeople.
I exhale. I need to remember that this is actually a good thing. He’s not snatching up his phone to call the authorities. He’s notattempting to read me my rights as he arrests me. He’s suggesting that this could be positive. That this couldwork.
“You’re saying you don’t hate me? You don’t think I’m awful?”
Brian pauses, gaze going fuzzy as he appears to truly consider my question.
“Do you think I am?” he asks.
“Well, no, but—you’re the good guy.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re the bad guy.”
“Doesn’t it though?”
Brian stands, offers me his hands, and when I place my fingertips on his, he urges me to my feet. My body tenses, ready for anything. But all he does is pull me close and murmur, “If I’m being honest, knowing that my wife is some badass assassin who can take care of herself? It’s kind of hot.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
An hour later, Piper’s beenput to bed in my office, and Brian and I lie twisted in the bedsheets, his panting the only sound in our otherwise silent home. I stare at the ceiling, thinking I can skip my next day’s workout after that marathon session and wondering how the hell things turned out this way.
He loves me.
He doesn’t care that I kill people.
He doesn’t want to end things with my arrest and prosecution.
I turn to look at him. “Brian?”
“Mm?” He shifts in bed, winces at the wound that incapacitated him only minimally as we went not one round, but two, which, in our mid-thirties, is nothing short of incredible.
I experiment with how to say it, but when the words come out, they are quite plain and to the point: “How can you love me when I do what I do? I’m not normal.”
“I won’t lie—it’s a lot to take in. A lot to come to terms with. But I love you, Nadia. All of you. And if this is part of who you are, and you’re dealing with it the best way you know how, I cantry to understand that. To accept it, to acceptyou. In your own way, you’re doing the right thing.”
It’s true, I suppose, that I’m doing the right thing. That at least, according to my grandmother’s principles, I’m using who I am to make the world better.
“Gran always said it’s my superpower.” Another thought occurs to me. “Why the hell did you think having another baby was a good idea?”
He hesitates, holding his breath for a beat. “I thought you were pulling away. The girls have been such a blessing to our family.” He looks at me like he can peer into my soul. “Having Eliza brought us so much closer. I wondered if you were having an affair. I thought maybe having another baby would fix it.”
“Babies don’t fix relationships.”
“I know, and yet it made sense in my head. I just—” He sighs, rolls over, shuffles through the nightstand until he pulls out an old pair of glasses and squints at them. “I was desperate, Nadia. I don’t want to lose you.”
I let those words soak into my being, let myself feel wanted and known for who I truly am. His warmth feels soothing, and I snuggle closer, hesitating only when his breathing hitches—the injury.
“I have pain meds,” I say. “Want some?”
“God, yes.”
I’m out of bed, searching for the Tylenol-codeine pills, when I hear the noise.
Halfway to the bathroom, I glance down the hall outside our bedroom door. It could be Eliza, waking up from a nightmare. It could be Evie, and she’s wet the bed. Or…
I kick the door shut, cutting off any potential assailant’s view of inside the room.
“Down!” I bark at Brian, and like he’s done it before—which I’m sure he has—he drops to the ground. Not a second later, the door explodes, a giant chunk splintering inward as a bullet pierces through and lodges in the opposite wall. On hands and knees, I crawl toward the dresser, reach beneath it, yank out a Glock with a suppressor and specialty rounds—the sort thatwon’tgo through a wall, won’t put my daughters’ lives at risk, should I ever need to shoot inside my own home—and squat on the opposite side of the furniture, aiming directly toward the door.
