Page 61 of Redemption

“Hm?”

“I need something from you.”

“Anything.”

The easy roll of her relaxed posture straightened, and Victoria’s sated gaze had dampened. “Tell me everything will be okay.”

“Victoria.” His heart jumped into his throat. “I promise. It will be okay.”

His chest constricted, and the pounding lust made way for something just as strong: the responsibility for having saved her. It landed deep in his heart and made him ache in a nostalgic way that didn’t make any sense.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ryder walked across the kitchen and stopped short, taking a few steps back to look in the living room. Jared Westin was not who he expected to see, especially when his wife, Sugar, and the kids weren’t there.

If Sugar had been there and in mom-mode, Ryder would’ve felt slightly more at ease. Or, even if she’d had been on the couch with her former-ATF, now-weapons-specialist hat firmly in place, he might have assumed she was there to consult on a Titan/ Delta op. But Sugar, in all of her sassy, va-va-voom glory, was notably missing.

Jared and Brock sat, elbows on their knees, heads facing down, fists holding up their heads. That wasn’t a good look. Ryder had a sinking suspicion that they wanted to talk to either Victoria or him, especially if he didn’t see Winters or Mia in the room.

“Hey, Ryder. Get in here, would you.”

Jared wasn’t asking, and Ryder hustled the few steps backward into the living room. Both men made faces that Ryder knew meant shit was about to suck.

“Bad news, huh, mate?” Ryder tried for a casual grin, but it failed. “This is gonna suck.”

Brock ran a hand over his face, groaning, and leaned back on the couch. “Yeah, it’s going to suck.”

Jared rolled his bottom lip into his mouth and gnawed on it as he cracked a few knuckles, nodding with Brock’s assessment. “Look, here’s the deal. Ivan Mikhailov is back in business.”

Fucking hell. Ryder didn’t expect that. He had no idea what he was about to hear— maybe that it was time for Victoria to get her butt in gear, figure her shit out, and go home. Maybe they were about to tell him that Victoria No Last Name was a real piece of shit, though he didn’t think that would be the case. But Ivan… That hadn’t crossed his mind

“We knew it was only a matter of time. But—”

“But that’s really fast,” Ryder said. “I mean, I know the fucker’s a billionaire. But maybe more than a few weeks? And what does back in business mean? He’s running women again?”

Jared slowly nodded his head. “Delta dismantled his network. We crushed their suppliers and netted arrests in four different countries—”

Brock blew out a frustrated gasp. “And fucking hell, man. Those were big dogs too. Some of those guys, you couldn’t get any bigger, any more important than the pieces of shit we took down.”

“Apparently, there’s always going to be more pieces of shit that important and that powerful who want to buy women,” Jared grumbled. “I just didn’t expect him to open up shop at all, much less this fast, again.”

Ryder stood there, stunned. They had saved so many women from Ivan, but that goddamn country and that goddamn culture and the belief among some people with more money than they knew what to do with and an incredible lack of respect for life—he couldn’t stomach it. “I should’ve let her kill him. Fucking hell. That asshole should be dead, rotting in hell.”

“She would have hit Locke,” Brock said.

“Would she? That’s what I keep telling myself. But is it an excuse? Or is it the truth?”

“You were never gonna risk Locke’s life,” Jared snapped. “You know that. He knows that. Brock and I do too.”

“Then we should have let her take care of business after Locke moved out of the way.” Ryder paced back and forth. “It would’ve made her no different than me. I would’ve done it. I would’ve taken the shot. I should have taken the shot. It doesn’t matter if I’m up close or far away.”

Sitting there in silence, neither of his bosses disagreed.

“We made the wrong choice, didn’t we?”

Brock stood up. “It’s done. It wasn’t the wrong choice. You don’t let civilians kill other people. There’s a fucking difference between you taking a shot on a target and letting somebody you don’t know go willy-nilly with a fucking Russian-made pistol.”

Ryder paced back and forth, the arguments on both sides of the situation storming his thoughts. He wished Sugar was here for an over-the-top, in-his-face snark. Something harsh and shocking that would kick start his mind into gear and make him focus on his job, which was to eradicate sick, devious fuckers from the face of this earth. But damn it, he’d let that one go. The person who’d violated Victoria was walking around free.

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