Dominance Never Dies (Masters and Mercenaries #11)(93)

“Give her time. And don’t you ever f*cking run off on an op without telling me again.”

He’d waited for this dressing down. “I understand.”

“No, I don’t think you understand at all, Case. Why the hell would you do that?”

How to explain to Ian? He should know. “You wouldn’t have let me go. I know that’s a horrible excuse, but I wanted to get out there and prove myself. I wanted to find Theo. I wanted to prove to you I could lead.”

“What?” Ian was staring at him like he’d grown a couple of horns.

He’d avoided his brother for this very reason. He hadn’t wanted to admit that he wasn’t good enough. “Look, I know what you think of me. I get it. Theo was the smart one. Theo was the one you were grooming for leadership. I’m okay with that most of the time. It was stupid. I wanted to prove I could lead, too.”

Ian stepped up to him, his eyes going fierce. “If you weren’t still recovering I would punch you, you dumb *. I sent Theo out on what I thought was a fairly simple operation as the lead because he needed seasoning. He needed experience. I knew he was in love with Erin and he wasn’t strong enough for her then. Not really. He needed to toughen up or it wouldn’t work. He wouldn’t be able to accept the fact that she was a stronger leader than he was so I was going to turn him into one. I didn’t have to do that with you. You walked in here as one of the strongest, most stable operatives I’ve ever seen. I didn’t coddle you because you never needed it.”

“What?”

Ian put a hand on Case’s shoulder. “I didn’t pay attention to you because I knew you would be okay. Well, until you went batshit over a woman. I kind of hoped you wouldn’t do that but then Mia walked in and it was inevitable. Hutch wasn’t your fault. I would have done the same thing. I would have made the same calls. Hutch got caught because he wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings. I’ve seen the tape. You’ve seen it. He was in a hurry and he didn’t even lock the door behind him. He was trained better than that.”

“He asked me to call off the op. He knew something was wrong.”

“And do you know what I would have told him? I would have told him to suck it up and do his job. He has always cut corners and none of us kicked his ass for it. I would feel the exact same guilt you feel right now. That’s what it means to be a leader. You make the hard calls. Tell me what Theo did wrong in the Caymans. Tell me what you would have done.”

He’d thought it through a million times. “He should have called in. The parameters of his mission changed. It was his duty to inform his CO of the changes and await instructions.”

“And if I’d told you to leave Ten behind?”

Again, nothing he hadn’t considered over and over again when he couldn’t sleep. “I would have gathered my team, come home, and begun operations to rescue Ten from MSS. We were outnumbered, outgunned, and going in blind. I wouldn’t have risked my team. But isn’t that exactly what I did? Isn’t that why I lost Hutch?”

“It’s different. You made a call that would have gotten you the information you needed, with minimal risk. Ten made the right call originally. It was Theo who screwed up and didn’t listen to Erin. If I’d been in your place, I would have done the same thing. Sometimes we make the right calls and everything still goes to shit. Never for a minute think I don’t trust you. The only mistake you made was not calling me and that was made because you were trying to chase down your girl. Don’t do it again. Making the mistake. Not chasing down your girl. I’m afraid she’s going to be pretty hard to convince this time. You were a dick. You have to lose the short fuse, my brother. I know. I had to do the same damn thing.”

Ian didn’t hate him. Ian wasn’t sidelining him. Now that he thought past his own insecurity he could see how Ian had trusted him—with clients, with ops, with his family.

He’d been fumbling without Theo to back him up, but he had value too.

“How do I fix things with Mia?” He wanted to. He wanted her.

“First you answer this question. Who comes first—Mia or Theo?”

It was the question he didn’t want to have to answer. It was exactly why he’d decided to send Mia away. “That’s not fair.”

Ian wasn’t backing down. “No, it isn’t, but it’s true and it’s right. Who comes first?”

“Mia.” Always Mia. If he was going to be her man, he had to put her first. She had to come before brotherhood, before friendship, before conscience. “But Ian, I’m not some rich boy who can give her everything. We come from two different worlds.”

Cool blue eyes rolled. “You two need to talk because you don’t know her at all.”

“Of course I do.” He knew her more intimately than any other woman on the planet.

“Then you know about her childhood? You know that after her parents died the family was split up. The older boys went to a group home. She and Bran were placed with a family, but at some point, Bran ran away, taking her with him. That was when they decided to split up her and Bran. He went through home after home. Mia ended up with a couple of chicks who adopted her. One was a doctor. The other stayed at home and raised Mia. She lived a middle-class existence for most of her life. Drew and the boys were dirt poor. His money wasn’t inherited. He earned every penny with blood and sweat and his brilliant, annoying brain.”