I waved a hand. “A story for another night.” I did not want to relive how I had a chance to help them, but I chose to run to mysisters’ room instead. We had barely survived. “But they are my responsibility, and I chosethislife, one of crime and bloodshed, to ensure they never had to face the horrors I saw that night.”
She sucked in a breath. “Obi, I’m so sorry.”
I refused to meet her eye. I did not need her apology. “Tonight, I dreamt of my youngest sister, Ekene. She…one night, a few years after they died, she caught me returning home covered in blood. At first, she thought it was mine. But when I assured her it was not, she turned on me.”
I looked down at my hands. That night, they had been drenched in sticky gore. Afterward, I had scrubbed them so raw that I needed bandages to heal the skin. In the vividness of the nightmare, I’d once again pictured them drenched, and I’d scrubbed them clean in the shower.
“In the nightmare, and in reality, she accused me of becoming everything we feared since we were children,” I continued. “A violent, ruthless man who killed for no reason other than because they could. It didn’t matter what I said to her, how I tried to explain I was trying to keep her safe—she screamed that I was a monster. She screamed so loudly she woke our other siblings. She told them all how she found me covered in blood. After that, none of them looked at me the same.”
“She didn’t know,” Leona whispered. “She didn’t understand.”
“She knew exactly.” I shook my head. “Ekene is brilliant and perceptive, more so even than me. She was entirely right.”
She pushed off the couch and came to stand in front of me. “You’re not a monster, Obi.”
“I am what I needed to become.” When I met her gaze, she flinched at the hardness in my eyes. “Everything I have done has led me here. I cannot let it all be for nothing.”
Even my failures. Even the boy who taught me that distractions meant death.
She took a step closer, reaching out to grab my hand, where I had leaned it against the desk. Her fingers played across my skin, pausing on my wrist. My heart raced at her soft touch.
“It won’t be,” she murmured. She was so close I could smell the scent of her soap. “We can do this. We won’t fail.”
We would not fail because I would lead us until she was ready. I would secure our future, so she could live as our queen.
She glanced up at me through her long lashes. I could fist my hand in her hair and fuse our lips. My fingers longed to feel her skin.
I pulled out of her grasp. “You should sleep, Leona.”
She swallowed, blinking at me. It was better this way. She would see the truth of that once she learned what we needed to do.
“Okay,” she said as she took a step backward. “You can tell me these things, Obi. We’re in this together. I won’t run away.”
I rubbed the back of my neck and nodded, not trusting myself to utter another word. I forced myself to tamp down the emotion, the vulnerability. Weakness, that’s all it was. We needed strength.
“Thank you for telling me,” she murmured, then pulled open the door and slipped through.
I stared at it until dawn broke over the horizon.
Back to work.
18
WYNN
Iwas the earliest riser out of my brothers. Ryuji and Ciel might enjoy sleeping in all day long and staying up late, but I preferred to rise with the sun. I accomplished more that way. In my past, it had always meant more time for working. More time for researching, and more time for hunting down traffickers. Rising early gave me purpose.
In those first months after Willow and I escaped, neither of us could sleep, partially because we were homeless and living on the streets, but mostly because of our trauma. When we were picked up by the Irish, we’d fallen into a routine of getting up early to exercise. We were taught to quell the demons and to focus by moving our bodies.
Getting up early was part of my natural rhythm now. No matter how late I went to bed the night before, I had to follow the same morning routine, usually right at dawn.
Make breakfast, work out, shower, and then work on whatever contracts Obi had assigned. The structure was not only a coping mechanism; it was also comfort.
Since Leona came into our lives, she had easily fallen into my routine.Shewas a comfort.
We met for breakfast, went to the gym, trained, and then we met up with the guys to work through what we needed to do. Always shortly after dawn.
Today, when she never showed up for breakfast, I knew something was off. She was rarely late, and she hadn’t missed a single morning of training since the first day she stepped into our penthouse.
