Chapter Seven
Isla
I didn’t just make myself something to eat.
I cooked for both of us.
Losing myself in one of the few comforts I knew and loved to escape in, I pan seared the fish, used the herbs to make a chimichurri sauce, and roasted the vegetables.
The chopping and dicing and balancing of flavors with the limited supplies I’d found in the suite’s kitchen wasn’t a chore.
It was art, and I was proud of my creation.
The tasks of food prep, while mundane and repetitive, not only spoke to my soul, but they’d given me the time to process and come to terms with what my brother had done. More importantly, I recognized the lengths he’d gone to, and I didn’t have it in me to be angry with him.
My anxiety over all of it was still there, simmering away. But for the most part it was staying in the peripheral. Which meant it was probably waiting for when I’d be alone with my nighttime thoughts, then it’d invade every subconscious crevice of my mind and send me spiraling.
I figured that was a later me problem.
Right now, I was hungry, and I couldn’t avoid the glaringly obvious reason why my brother was here in the first place.
He loved me.
He didn’t often say the words, but he made gestures, and this was a grand one. The suite, the fresh ingredients in the fridge, making the appointment, finding me in the first place. He didn’t need to do any of it, but he’d chosen to, and I loved him for it.
I loved him, period.
So, I’d cooked with that mind—bolder flavors, larger portions, and a more masculine presentation. By the time I was plating everything, I looked up, and my brother was coming out of the bedroom. “Food’s ready.”
He nodded. “Smells good.”
“Thank you.” I carried the two plates to the dining area. “What would you like to drink?” Unlike our father, I’d never seen my brother drink alcohol.
“Water’s fine. I’ll get it.” Moving around me, he grabbed two glasses. “You?”
“Water also, please.” But there was lemonade in the fridge. An organic kind with only three ingredients. It was thoughtful that he’d gotten it, or had the hotel staff get it. Lemonade had been my favorite drink as a kid. It still was, but there was nothing like making it yourself.
My brother set down two glasses of water before taking a seat.
Then we ate.
Him unceremoniously, me silently thanking whatever fisherman had caught the mahi-mahi.
His lack of conversation, while not unusual, felt different. It took me almost until we were done eating before I aimed to smooth over my earlier reaction. “The food, the suite—it was thoughtful.”
He finished his last bite and looked up from his plate.
I tried again. “What I meant to say was thank you.”
Seemingly casual, yet anything but, my brother asked a question out of the blue. “Do you know whose yacht you got on in France?”
I wouldn’t exactly say I got on the ostentatious boat. More like I was involuntarily thrown into a helicopter, then flown out to the mega yacht while my brother was busy getting into a firefight with men who worked for said yacht owner.
But I didn’t say any of that.
“Yeah, a SEAL.” Which meant he most likely had given me a fake name, and he definitely had a questionable call sign. Although my brother’s wasn’t any better. “Why are you asking? I sent you a text. I told you I was fine.” We had the two distinct codes for a reason.
Ignoring my question, my brother looked out at the ocean. “He hasn’t been military for a long time.”
“So? Neither have you.” At least, as far as I knew, he hadn’t.
Although, come to think of it, I didn’t know the exact year or date when my brother had separated from the Navy.
Or if he’d been kicked out. My brother never talked about his time on the Teams, or any part of his service, except on rare occasions when he’d mention that he’d been downrange.
But he hadn’t spoken of a deployment for years.
“It doesn’t make him any less than who he is. Once a SEAL, always a SEAL, right?”
“Marines,” he corrected. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
“Okay, fine, not a SEAL saying, but you know what I mean. You’re not much different than him.”
“We are nothing alike.”
I smirked. “Right.”
“He has a price on his head.”
That didn’t surprise me. Both my brother and father had said Tier Ones always had a bounty on them.
If terrorists got a hold of their name, it was inevitable.
“What for?” I should’ve asked by who. Hell, I should’ve asked my brother outright if he’d served with him, but he wouldn’t have told me if he had.
And I was stupidly more fixated on gathering any details I could scrabble together about who Phoenix Erikson was, not when he’d deployed. The devil was always in the details.
My brother didn’t reply.
“Oh, come on. Who am I going to tell?” I glanced around. “The fancy hotel suite? Him?” I half laughed. “I’d have to find him first.”
“Don’t.” Stern, clipped, my brother barked the command at me like it was a direct order.
“Wolf,” I snapped back in warning because we didn’t do this. Not ever. I didn’t ask him what he did, and he didn’t ask me.
Going perfectly still, his gaze instantly turned into a void.
A void I’d been seeing with alarming frequency. Grabbing his hand, silently chiding myself for snapping at him, I tugged on his arm. “Hey.”
He looked at me, but his warfighter mask, the expression he’d grown when we were kids, it had already slipped back into place. “No one calls me that anymore.”
“I do.” I’d always called him Wolf, ever since—
“Use my name, Isla.” Pulling out of my grasp, he stood and turned toward his bedroom.
Shocked, feeling whiplashed by the one person who’d never been anything but a steady presence in my life, I sat there.
A man who suddenly didn’t look like my brother glanced back. “If I see him near you again, he’s dead.”
Pins-and-needles panic flooded my veins. “You will not kill him.”
“He drew on you, Isla.”
“I was trespassing on his property. He asked who I was. I didn’t answer.” I never answered. “You were there. You saw his aim.” It’d been on my heart, not my head. He hadn’t been seriously aiming. “He wanted answers. He thought he could intimidate me. I had the situation handled.”
My brother’s face twisted with a rare show of rage. “He had armed backup, Isla.”
I repeated myself. “I had it handled.” And if I hadn’t, if I’d taken my last breath that day, then so be it.
I’d been at peace with my death for a long damn time.
My brother, of all people, should’ve understood that.
“The situation escalated because you showed up. You told him to stand down. You scoped him, Wolf. What the hell did you think he would do?”
His tone went low and lethal. “No one aims at my family, Isla.”
“I’m your family, and I’m right here.” And I needed to steer this conversation away from last month because I’d never seen my brother this angry. Not at me. “You never told me why you showed up in France.”
“Why do you think?” His tone wasn’t harsh, but the words, their meaning, they were as awful as if my brother had thrown the ugliest, cruelest insult at me he could imagine.
“I didn’t ask for this.” He knew damn well what I was talking about.
His nostrils flared with an inhale, then all at once, his stone-faced mask shuttered into place, and he issued a cold warning. “Stay away from him.”
I wasn’t going to make my brother that promise.
Not because I knew where the hell Phoenix Erikson and his giant yacht were, or what I’d do if I did see him again, but because this was the reason why I’d left home.
No one was going to dictate my death. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to be a party to it happening to someone else.
“You will not kill anyone because of me.”
“Yes, I will, Isla.” My brother strode into his bedroom and shut the door.