Page 96 of Full Throttle

My throat tightened. “I’m the best man for the job.”

“Cain,” Lee began, his voice low. “You have nothing to prove. You don’t have to continue working for something you already have.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Forgiveness,” he simply said.

He held my stare, both of us unmoving as the room around us grew quiet. There was so much history between Lee and me, so much distrust and pain, and yet?

“What did you just say to me?” The question was barely a whisper.

Leon Torrance’s forgiveness was something I’d never thought I’d get, no matter how close we grew. I just assumed it would be a dark part of our past, and we would never speak of it. Hell, we hadn’t since before Christmas.

“You did what you had to do for the people you cared about,” he surmised, walking around the island, heading directly for Amara. Her eyes followed him, and when he was beside her, she tipped her head back as his arm went around her. “You did what I would’ve done, Cain. I can’t fault you for that.”

A noise came from the other side of the kitchen, and I found Mina covering her mouth with her hand. Dontell’s eyes were on Leon, shining with disbelief.

Glad to know I wasn’t the only one surprised. “We don’t have to do this right now,” I told Lee.

“Why? Because it isn’t the right time?” he shot back, moving from Amara. “It will never be the right time, Cain. Did you fuck me over? Yeah. I thought I found a fucking brother inside, someone who was going to come back to Houston with me.”

A lump formed in my throat. “You have no idea how badly I wanted to,” I found myself saying, my voice unsteady. Leon was more of a brother than Xander had ever been. I betrayed him to help Xander because, back then, I was foolish enough to think that blood was thicker than water.

That was the biggest lie I’d ever told myself, and years later, I was still paying for it.

Leon looked at me then, the look in his eyes the same as when he looked at Jer or Dontell. “I was a fucking dick to you when you showed up a few months ago—”

“You had every right to be, Lee,” I reminded him in a swift cut off.

He shook his head. “I didn’t.”

Behind him, Amara wiped her cheek, hiding a tear that had fallen.

I gave in. “If you want to do this, we can step outside.” It was more of an offer than anything else.

“If you want that, then let’s go, but I’m willing to do this right here—in front of our family,” he told me, coming around the island.

Our family.

He came to stand in front of me. “You and me, we’re cut from the same cloth. I think you know that by know.”

I huffed through my nose as a short chuckle appeared in my chest. Wasn’t that the fucking truth.

“The night of Nikki’s accident, I tried to stop you from saving her,” he continued, and all humor left my body, my spin snapping straight as my muscles tensed. “That was a mistake, but you have to know why I did it.”

He looked down as if he needed to collect himself and when he looked back up to me, memories from our prison cell flashed before my eyes. “I stopped you because I didn’t want you getting hurt, Donovan.”

A whimper sounded from somewhere in the room, but I didn’t have to look. I knew it was Mina. The Torrance family had endured a lot of healing over the last few months, and the pain between Leon and I was the final steppingstone, it seemed.

“I had to,” I told him, not breaking eye contact.

He nodded once. “Know that, but the fact remains. I didn’t want you getting hurt because I care about you—you’re family, Cain.” He held his hand out. “You’ve never stopped being family.”

My eyes dropped to his hand, and I brought mine up. He pulled me in for a hug, and we slapped each other on the backs. “Family,” I promised as I stepped back.

“Great,” Dontell interjected. “Now that’s done, we can return to the issue at hand.” His dark eyes slid to me. “There’s no way in fuck that you’re going into the Devils Den on your own.”

“Especially not without Collin’s permission,” Mina added.

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