The Long Way Home (Corps Security #6)(44)

He hums, nods his head, but continues his silence.

“I spent the first five years trying to hunt down everyone that knew who I had been. Changed the way I looked, got a team, survived in the shadows and took out as many of those threats as I could. It was another five years when I realized I would never rid the world of all the people and organizations that could harm my family. It took another eight for me to come to terms with that, still trying to get all of the motherfuckers. The rest of that time, I’ve resigned myself to this life. I do what’s needed of me and I stay away and hidden. I make sure the family I left doesn’t feel any pain from the shitstorms I had created.”

“You didn’t trust them to keep you safe during this?”

I suck in a breath.

“I know damn well what you all are in to. I know you also were badass hunks running around doing badass stuff when you were all enlisted. I know, just as you know damn well, you should have given them the choice.”

“Not that easy, man.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Do you know what kind of men these were? The kind that peddle flesh, hand out drugs and guns to kids, have no trouble raping a woman in broad daylight. They were everywhere. There was no fucking way that they could have been kept safe when the enemies after me were larger than anything we had ever seen. And Sway, that includes our time fighting for our goddamn lives in war. Not enough eyes in the world could have watched all the angles these fucks would have attacked. You think I didn’t think this through?”

“I know you did. That’s the problem.”

“Explain.”

He leans back, picks up his hand and checks his polish. “You didn’t give them a chance to know you were still breathing because you assumed the only way to protect was to disappear and never say so much as boo. You, by the way, might still be a fine-ass hunk of love but you make a terrible ghost, darlin’. Did you ever think that you could have had both? The shadows and the connection to your old life?”

“Do you not think, if there was a chance, I wouldn’t have taken it!” I stand from my seat and start pacing. “I almost reached out, but that was when I discovered everyone was being watched, fucking stalked, and as good as my guys were, they didn’t even see it. From the shadows, where filth lives, they watched and waited. They weren’t stupid. In the underbelly of the world, faking a death isn’t uncommon. Seventeen years they watched. I know because the man I had on everyone reported that back to me. He stayed there in Hope Town, getting regular cuts at your salon, and had one job—watch and protect. He knew who was getting close and when. I knew of no fewer than three men who were on each person I left behind—including you!”

Sway gasps, but I keep going.

“Sean, the man I had on the town, had to kill a man about fifteen years after I left. Fifteen fucking years and those motherfuckers still thought I was out there. Sean got to this one before he could grab her, but that was the day that Emmy almost died. No one was the wiser, not a fucking one of you guys, because I made sure to keep the shadows from the brightness you all got to live in. That was the day I felt like I really died, knowing there would never be a time I could get close.”

“My heavens above,” he gasps, the tears coming back instantly.

“Spent every year since taking people out, some ordered and some not, to ensure that never happened. There isn’t a single one left but I can’t go back after all this time. At this point, I’m better off dead.”

“You are never better off dead. Not to me and not to them.”

“Yeah, Sway … I am.”

“Are there …” He gulps. “Are there still people watching?”

“Sean is still there, but he hasn’t reported seeing anyone in about six years. Not after I took out one of the largest crime networks in the nation. I hunted them all, Sway. Sean stayed because he made a life for himself in Hope Town, but he still keeps an eye because I asked him to never stop.”

“Then why can’t you come back?”

I drop my head and look at the floor. “There’s been too much time, Sway. Time for them to heal that would only cause pain if I came back now. For so long, it was because I couldn’t be sure there weren’t still people out there. Then it was because so much time passed while I picked them all off, it became too late. They aren’t just a group of men with nothing to lose anymore. From what I was told the one time I asked, you all have families.”

Something moves across his face that I can’t place, but whatever I saw, everything inside me screams to brace.

Fucking brace.

“Yes. We all have families.” He takes a second, then leans over to pat the chair I had left. “I think you need to sit down, honey love.”





“Shallow” by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga



What a day.

I lean over the counter and place the last folded shirt of Riley’s on the kitchen island and think about how the morning had gone.

It was shocking, first thing this morning when Riley and I were headed out, not seeing the man who had been a daily constant for our walks. I had been so used to that routine we were creating, never once having him miss a day, that I hadn’t been able to shake the concern that hit me like a battering ram. It felt wrong seeing Evan standing there where Drew should have been.