45. Levi
LEVI
He slips a picture out of his wallet and hands it over to me.
The soft green eyes staring up at mine are like a punch to the chest.
“No.”
He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t have to. It’s the eyes. The same ones that haunt my fantasies match the eyes of the man standing in front of me.
“You’re her father . . .”
“If you can call it that,” Marks grunts, snatching the picture out of my hand as if it’s his most prized possession.
“So why am I here?”
Marks looks away.
“I made a mistake.”
“Doesn’t explain what you want from me.”
He cocks a brow, cocking his head to the side in thought.
“You’re a very hard person to read, Cross.”
“Your point?”
“Just that. You’re a very hard person to read . . . except,” he holds the picture up in front of me. “. . . When it comes to my daughter.”
All the blood rushes to my head at the soft green eyes that stare back at me from the photograph.
Fuck.
My mind is reeling, and I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the woman in the picture being the same woman who’s plagued my mind for the last three months.
“What the fuck did you do?”
Something dark flashes across his gaze.
“No.”
My gun’s out of my pocket in the blink of an eye, aimed directly at the center of his forehead.
“You can shoot me, if you need to,” he says, so nonchalant, I debate on doing it for the fucking hell of it. “It won’t change anything.”
“I could just end it right now,” I spit, venom coating every word.
“You could. Though, do you really think it would save her? Wright’s son is looking for her, as we speak. He’ll use her against me regardless of whether I’m alive or dead.”
“And who is his son?”
“That’s the problem. We don’t know.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.” I scrub a hand over my face. “You’re a real fucking asshole, you know that?”
“Of course, I know that. Why do you think I’ve never been a part of her life?”
“Yeah,” I grunt. “Father of the fucking year.”
I can’t fucking believe I’m considering this.
“And what’s going to stop him when he decides to come for her?”
“You.”
I should walk away right now. Leave him to figure it out on his own.
But . . . can I live with the alternative? Knowing what I know?
Fucking hell.
“If I do this . . . I have some demands.”
Marks cocks a brow, pulling out a letter from his jacket.
“This is a letter of release, stating you’re restored to your former job title. No therapy. No warming the bench. Fully reinstated agent status.”
I grit my teeth, my blood burning in my veins.
I should take it, get my life back.
There’s just one thing that’s standing in my way.
“No.”
“No?”
“I don’t want it.” I take a step towards him, ignoring the burn in my chest. “One million.”
Marks stares at me, his eyes dark and foreboding. I think he’s going to deny me before he finally speaks.
“One million is nothing.”
I shrug.
“It’s what I want.”
One million for being a shitty fucking father. One million for all the times she’s gone without because of him.
One million because that’s exactly what she told me it would take, and God knows I need all the help I can get.
Marks pauses for a moment before a grin spreads across his face.
“You’ve got yourself a deal.”
The blood that stains the bandage over Ava’s shoulder makes me sick.
I’ve been around it all my life, yet the sight of it now, knowing it’s hers and that I failed her, makes me wish it were mine instead.
It should have been me.
She’s out of it. Has been for hours, and yet, I haven’t moved, sitting in the hospital chair beside her bed despite everyone coming in and out of the room.
It would take a fucking nuke to move me now.
Call it what you want, but I’m just crazy enough to light this city and watch it burn to the ground before I’d leave her side again.
I thought I was doing the right thing, giving her the space she asked for. I let them trick me, and for that, I feel like I deserve that bullet they dug out of her side.
I never would have guessed Donovan would be her brother. Never could have imagined it when Marks came to me. All the signs were there. I should have fucking realized what it all meant.
She paid the price. The love of my life paid the price. And for that . . . I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive myself.
“You going to sit here all night?” Christian asks, stepping quietly into the room. His voice is low, aware of the heaviness already thick in the air. My family left over an hour ago to head down to the cafeteria, while I stayed behind, unwilling to leave her side.
He places a tray of food on the small stand beside me. I don’t look at it. I’m not hungry. The smell alone turns my stomach.
“Mila,” he explains, and I grunt in response.
He sighs and lowers himself into the seat beside mine, the one that’s barely been empty since we got here. For a long moment, neither of us speaks. We don’t need to. The silence says more than words ever could.
He’s thinking the same thing I am.
“Any word on Mendez?” I finally ask, my voice like gravel from disuse.
Christian nods once, casting a quick glance at Ava to make sure she’s still asleep. She is—her chest rising and falling under the hospital blankets, her face pale but peaceful. It’s the most deceptive kind of calm.
“I was hoping he’d bleed out before he made it to the hospital, but he’s stable.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “They got everything they need to put him behind bars for the rest of his miserable life.”
I shake my head, violence filling every vein in my body.
“I want to kill him, Christian.”
“Well,” he mutters, “I think you’re going to have to accept that he’s going to rot in whatever federal hellhole they throw him into. Slowly.”
I should feel some satisfaction about Alex’s fate, but I don’t. I wanted more than a quick end. I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt her. But I didn’t get the chance—not when she was in danger.
Definitely not after she took a bullet for me.
Fuck, it pisses me off so badly my hands shake when I think about him drugging her and pulling her from her cottage. Stealing her right out from under my nose.
All this time, I was worried about Palmer, but as it turns out, someone else was pulling the strings.
Palmer was just as much a pawn as the rest of us.
“I wanted to make him suffer,” I say quietly, staring straight ahead, my voice flat. “I wanted him to choke on his own blood while he begged for death.”
Christian doesn’t say anything at first. His silence is agreement enough.
“She almost died,” I whisper again, the words cutting me open from the inside. “She almost fucking died, and it’s because I wasn’t careful.”
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t try to soften it. That’s not who he is.
“You know this only ends one of two ways, right?”
I nod slowly, clenching my jaw so tight I feel it crack. Of course I know. I’ve been sitting here with the weight of that truth pressing into my spine since they wheeled her out of surgery.
“You going to tell her the truth?”
“She knows everything,” I grunt, but we both know that’s not what he means.
He chuckles under his breath, shaking his head like I’m a stubborn child. “I meant about you being in love with her.”
I go completely still.
Fuck.
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. It’s written all over my face, carved into every raw, panicked decision I’ve made in the last seventy-two hours.
“She’s better off without me,” I mutter finally, bitterness thick in my throat. “I almost got her killed. That’s not love, Christian. That’s carelessness.”
He leans back in his chair as he watches me with quiet, relentless judgment.
“You did what you thought was right.”
I shake my head. “It’s too late for that.”
Christian lets out a soft snort. “It’s never too late,” he says. “Not unless you don’t say it at all.”
I shake my head, but I don’t disagree. I’m not sure I can.
Because as much as I want her to stay—as much as I want to believe there’s a future for us after all this—I know what I am. I know what I’ve done.
And as I sit here, staring at her fragile, bruised body in that hospital bed, it hits me like a fucking freight train: I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no clue what the next step even is. Everything I thought I was—everything I built my life around—feels hollow now.
I thought the DEA was my purpose. But maybe it was just a distraction.
Because now, all I want is her.
And I’m not sure if I have the right to ask for that.
I feel like she’s stolen from me. Ripped something out of my chest and made off in the night. I want to punish her and worship her at the same time.
“Why did you give up the FBI?”
Christian thinks for a moment, quiet.
“You’re wondering if you want to go back to being an agent.” It’s not a question.
I don’t have an answer for him. Not one that doesn’t sound like a weak excuse or a coward’s confession.
“When I stepped back,” he begins, his voice low and coarse like gravel underfoot, “it was because I found something that meant more to me than whatever criminals are in the world. I found I didn’t give a fuck what they were doing, so long as she was safe .
. .” He looks at me then, really looks, and for a second, I see our mother in his eyes—dark and blazing, carved from a grief we both carry in different ways.
“If you’re asking these questions, I think you know your answer. ”
I look back at Ava, curled up beneath the tangle of pale sheets. She’s sleeping softly, her lashes creating a heavy shadow on her cheeks. She looks so small. Fragile. Like if I blink too long, she might vanish. And maybe that’s the point—maybe she will.
He’s right. I do know my answer. I’ve always known it, buried beneath pride and fear and the blood I’ve spilled for less worthy things.
“What . . .” I hesitate, jaw tight, shame crawling up my spine. “What do I do when she leaves?”
It’s a coward’s question, and we both know it. Because she will leave. Because I’ve given her every reason not to stay.
He doesn’t respond right away. Just studies me with that same unreadable stillness that used to scare the shit out of me as a kid. When he finally speaks, it’s not soft. It’s not cruel, either. It’s honest—even if I fucking hate it.
“Give her the time she needs,” he says, voice thick with something unspoken. “And when she’s ready for you, make sure you’re ready to be the man you want to be.”
I swallow hard. The weight of it settles in my chest like stone. I don’t ask what happens if I’m not ready. I already know the answer.