Chapter 12 #2
“Nic.” Victoria’s soft voice trembled and Nic glanced her direction again. Standing in the conference room doorway, her eyes were shiny with unshed tears. “You look good. Filled out”—her chuckle was watery as she looked him up and down—“but good.”
He unwound from Mary, smiling. “So do you, V.”
She rushed him the next instant, slamming into his middle and wrapping her arms around him tight. He couldn’t help but return the hug. Couldn’t help but bury his nose in her hair and inhale the smell that was uniquely hers, the same after all these years.
Three women had raised him, each with a distinct smell stamped into his brain.
His mother, until he was six, the fragrance of Shalimar perfume—woody, vanilla, with a hint of floral—so that whenever he smelled Earl Grey tea, the bergamot would trigger a rush of memories, some he was still just becoming aware of.
Mary, who he couldn’t pin one fragrance on but who would forever be associated in his mind with the aromas of the kitchen, her love poured into every dish she’d ever prepared him.
And Victoria, then and now, still smelled like the earth and the sun—comforting warmth personified.
She’d only been in his life for three years, but in that time, she’d given him courage, acceptance, and love.
“God, I missed you,” she mumbled against his shirt, which was growing damp from the tears she’d let loose. “I thought about you every day.”
“We had to stop her going after you multiple times,” Garrett said, his voice deeper, richer, than it had been at eighteen.
“Especially when you visited the base.” His sister, almost as tall as Garrett’s five-ten, stood next to him, clutching his hand.
They’d protected her that long, even when he’d been so close.
Now they’d shown themselves, thinking it safe, when it was more dangerous than ever.
“She almost made it on a flight to your commissioning in San Diego.”
Victoria drew back, glaring over her shoulder at her son.
“I wanted to give him his present in person.” She was wiping tears from her eyes when she turned back to Nic.
“I wanted you to know someone was proud of you. You’d kept me—us—safe, so I wanted to give you something to keep your medals and ribbons safe. ”
“The travel case?” The zippered leather pouch with the US Navy crest on the front had arrived anonymously and he’d carried it throughout his service. Well used and well loved, it now lived in his safe at Gravity, with all his service medals and ribbons safely inside.
Nodding, she hugged him again. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be there.”
“You were.” Holding her tight, he met and held Garrett’s gaze over her head. “You always were.”
They stayed like that, Victoria in his arms, Garrett in his sights, until the other family member present cleared her throat. Garrett looked affectionately over at his sister. “Had to stop this one a time or two as well. She’s wanted to meet you for a very long while now.”
Taking him by the hand, Victoria led him over. “You saved more than my and Garrett’s lives that day. Nic, this is your sister, Lette.”
“Mom tells me I’m named after you.” The young woman held out her hand. “Nicolette Sare.”
Nic slid his hand into hers, impressed by her strong, sure grip. “Or Nicolette Scott.”
She smirked, the same one he frequently saw in the mirror. “Or Nicolette Price, if we want to get biological.”
Icy fear flooded his veins.
This was his flesh and blood, the sibling he never knew he had, and a fresh target for the man gunning for his family.
Out of an abundance of caution, Nic was having the Sares escorted back to their hotel separately.
Garrett had left with Mary twenty-five minutes ago, Mel had departed ten minutes after with Victoria, and now Nic was waiting for Eddie to arrive to escort Nicolette.
He’d see her to the hotel, then ferry Garrett back to the Federal Building to meet with Cam and fill him in on the latest developments.
Or clusterfuck, more accurately.
How had everything in the dark of last night seemed so hopeful, so promising, and in the light of morning, utterly dark? And what about the darkness the woman sitting in the conference room had just stepped into? She had no idea the jeopardy her future was now in.
“You should go talk to her.”
Nic’s eyes remained on Lette as he spoke to Dennis. “Has anyone else seen that will?”
Dennis had read aloud Curtis’s will a short time ago, and it had included bequests to both him and Lette—the house and any remaining funds in the offshore account, among other things.
“Only the six of us around that table today, plus Curtis. And I won’t file it with probate until you give the go-ahead.”
“If Dad’s lenders had found out about her, about the offshore account you set up . . .”
“Everything was being monitored. There’s no evidence anyone connected knows about her.”
Did that include Vaughn? The worst and only one of his father’s lenders left, who’d killed Curtis. “My father is dead, I have a sister, the lo—” Nic cut himself off. He was sure that what he was about to say, what Garrett used to be to him, was no longer true.
“Her father is dead too,” Dennis said quietly. He stepped closer, clasping Nic’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, but I was keeping her safe as best as I could within the bounds of legal ethics.”
The rational part of him, sidelined by his earlier anger, understood that.
Hell, that same part of him might have done the same.
Had done the same in not telling Cam the whole story at first—for his safety.
And Cam didn’t even need protection. “I’m sorry for snapping earlier.
You did what you thought was right. What you could do. ”
Dennis squeezed his arm. “Thank you for saying so, even if you’re still coming to terms with it.” They laughed lightly before Dennis grew serious again. “I’ll deliver updated probate documents to you by the end of the week.”
He disappeared toward his office, and Nic hesitated with his hand on the conference room door.
He was eager to talk to Lette, to get to know his sister, but he felt like his awkward teen self all over again, not knowing where to begin.
Not wanting to scare her with his intensity or the truth of the situation they were in.
He could approach her like a witness—he was good at handling those—but she wasn’t a witness.
Lette was his sibling. All his life he’d been an only child and now he wasn’t.
What did he know about being a brother? He absently ran a hand over his hip, the left one, and a frame of reference clicked into place.
Cam.
He’d been around Cam and his brothers in Boston.
Witnessed the love and devotion they had for each other and their family, even when they weren’t always on the same page.
They came together and held each other up when it counted.
Cam could pick up a phone, say he needed them here, and Nic had no doubt they’d get on a plane as soon as possible.
But Cam wasn’t his only frame of reference. Others clicked into place.
Aidan and Danny, together with their sisters and nieces and nephews, the Talley clan tighter than any he’d known.
Jamie with his sister and utterly devoted to his nieces.
The lengths Mel had gone to for her deceased brother.
Eddie and his other SEAL-team brothers who’d kept Nic alive, who’d hauled his injured ass out of the field and back to safety.
He already was a brother, but now he was a brother by blood too. He could make this work. What all those examples had in common was trust. Which was what he needed to start building with Lette, especially if he was going to keep her safe.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the conference room door.
Lette jumped a little, twisting in her seat to look over her shoulder.
Her blue eyes were still a bit wide, as they had been when he’d vaguely warned of the danger that required the extra security, but they were also determined, bravely holding his gaze. So much like his own.
“Just me,” he said, one hand raised as he gently closed the door.
“I’m not usually this jumpy.”
He took the seat next to her. “Garrett still jumpy enough for the both of you?”
“My brother cannot sit still to save his life. I don’t know how—” She cut herself off, brow furrowed. “I mean, my other brother.”
“It’s fine, Lette.”
“No, it’s not, because I did know about you.” She reached beneath her shirt collar and lifted out a chain, and on the end of it was something he never expected to see again. “I’ve always known I had two brothers.” She handed him his high school class ring.
He turned it over in his palm, thumb running over the bearcat on each side and the ruby on the top, remembering how he’d shoved it into Garrett’s hand the day they’d fled.
He felt Lette’s gaze on him and he let her look her fill, eyes still locked on the ring as he tried to wrap his brain around the fact he had a sister and she was sitting next to him.
“They always said I looked like you—all limbs, blue eyes, same smirk, especially when I was arguing.”
He glanced up, smiling. “I’m almost afraid to ask what else they told you about me.”
“All good, Nic. And any time we got news of you, through the military grapevine or when you’d give a press conference about a case you won, we’d celebrate for you.”
He’d had this whole family, one member of which he didn’t even know about, all of whom celebrated for him. Yet without him.
“And your celebrations?” he asked hoarsely, wanting to know about the others he’d missed.
“Garrett’s graduation from East Carolina, though I was only five, so I don’t remember much.”
“Did he play?” Nic couldn’t help asking.
She didn’t have to ask what he was referring to. “Club level.”
Of course Garrett wouldn’t have played varsity. He’d been good enough to make almost any team, certainly ECU’s, but he would have drawn too much attention.