23. Cillian #2
“Either someone tipped her off,” I continue, “or her handler’s been watching us closely enough to know we’d figured it out and had the exit ready before she even got there.” I pause, and Valentina’s eyes widen. “Either way—”
“Either way, someone has eyes on us,” Valentina finishes, her voice suddenly very quiet.
I nod grimly. “Yes.”
She stares at me, suddenly flustered. “That’s—”
I nod. “I know.”
“Cillian, that means someone is following us,” she says, looking very alarmed, biting her bottom lip.
“I know, Val.” I reach out and take her hand again, running my thumb over her knuckles. “But no one’s going to get to you or the baby. I swear it.”
Valentina nods but doesn’t look convinced.
I can’t say I blame her. Someone has been watching us the whole time.
It’s never just been about Claire running her con. Someone above her has been watching us close enough to know the exact moment the game was up.
And we still don’t know who.
Leo shows up two hours later with a bottle of Redbreast and no warning.
I open the door and just stare at him. Leo Santoro is the last person I expected to be standing in my hallway at eight o’clock on the worst day I’ve had in recent memory.
Even though I’ve seen him many times, how similar he and Valentina look always throws me. He and Valentina have the same dark brown hair and dark eyes, but Leo’s hair has a slight wave to it that he’s clearly tried to flatten and given up on.
He looks distinctly uncomfortable being here, and I don’t necessarily blame him. We aren’t exactly best friends or even casual acquaintances, even after our respective marriages to each other’s family members.
He looks me up and down, one dark brow raised, taking in the bandage on my shoulder. The cuts and bruises on me.
“You look like shit,” he deadpans.
“Thanks.” Good manners kick in before I realize who is exactly standing at my door. “I don’t remember inviting you,” I say, slightly accusatory.
Leo shrugs. “I wasn’t aware I needed an invite to see my favorite sister and my”—an odd look crosses his face and he pauses—“brother-in-law.”
I notice the removal of favorite for me and I shake my head. He’s not my favorite either so at least we’re on the same page there.
“Besides,” he says, moving past me into the penthouse like he owns it, which is a very Leo Santoro thing to do, “someone has to check on her after what happened today.”
I close the door, stiffening. “How did you even hear about it?”
Leo scoffs and turns to give me a dark, slightly pitying look. “I know everything, Brennan.”
I roll my eyes. What that means is Emma told him because Valentina called Emma the second we got home. My wife tells my cousin everything and Emma tells her husband everything because she’s a goddamn gossip.
“Right,” I say dryly. I gesture to the bottle. “You want a glass for that or are you planning to drink it in the hallway?”
“I’d like to throw it at your head,” Leo says cheerfully before he heads down the hall and stops when he sees Valentina on the couch. Even though I can’t see his face, his whole body stiffens when he sees his sister.
I know it doesn’t look good. She has a goose egg on the side of her head and she also has cuts and scrapes too. I did the best I could to protect her.
It could have been a lot worse.
“Stop staring at me,” Valentina calls. “It’s creepy.”
I catch up to Leo just in time to see his throat bob. “I’m only staring because you’re so ugly it hurts to see.”
“Big words from someone who hasn’t seen a comb in thirty years,” Valentina shoots back, but there’s a small smile on her face.
Leo shoves the bottle at me before he crosses the room and pulls Valentina off the couch and into a tight hug.
There’s so much emotion on both of their faces that I have to look away, suddenly uncomfortable.
“Where’s Emma and the baby?” Valentina asks.
“Em wanted to come,” Leo says into her hair. “She’s super pissed she isn’t here. Seraphina has napped like shit all day and Emma decided to stay home to try and get her to sleep.”
Valentina frowns. “Why hasn’t she napped? Is she sick?”
“Nah. Sera slept over four hours last night and got us excited so she’s just resetting expectations for us.” Leo pulls back and looks at Valentina’s face carefully, cataloguing damage. “You’re all right?”
“I’m all right,” Valentina tells her brother.
He looks at her for another second like he’s deciding whether to believe that. Then he gestures to me. “You going to get those glasses you were talking about?”
I grab the glasses and pour while Leo drops onto the couch next to Valentina and subjects her to the kind of close-range older brother scrutiny that I imagine she’s been enduring her entire life.
She tolerates it for about forty-five seconds before she announces she’s going to bed.
Leo’s eyes track her as she pushes herself up off the couch, and I can see the concern move across his face before he covers it with a mockingly shocked look.
“Already?” he says, making a big show of looking at his watch. “It’s eight o’clock. What are you, ninety?”
Valentina turns around and flashes her brother a saccharine sweet smile. I hide a smile behind my glass.
“I’m pregnant and I got caught in a drive-by shooting today,” she says pleasantly. “But sure, Leo, tell me more about how I should be powering through.”
She tilts her head to the side, looking her brother up and down. “How’s your therapist, by the way? Still working on that hero complex, or did you two give up?”
Leo blinks. I snort a laugh and cover it with a cough when Leo glares at me.
Valentina looks at me and there’s a small, warm smile on her face. Something in my chest unfurls at the sight of her smile. After the day we’ve had, after everything, she still brings me joy.
“Goodnight,” she says and heads down the hall.
Leo watches her go before he picks up his whiskey glass and looks at me. “She gets meaner every time I see her.”
“She really does,” I agree.
“It’s my best quality,” Valentina calls from somewhere down the hall before we hear the door close.
Leo shakes his head, but he’s almost smiling. He takes a drink, sets the glass down, and the almost-smile fades. “Tell me everything,” he demands.
So I do. I tell him every little detail, from the phone call to Claire, to what we were discussing moments before the shooting took place. Leo listens, his frown deepening the more I talk.
Once I get to the part where Claire starts her sob story, Leo gets up and begins pacing, one hand rubbing his jaw.
When I’m done, Leo sits back down and leans forward. There’s a gleam in his eyes that concerns me.
“It was the Corsicans,” he says. “It has to be.”
I blink, thrown by this. “The—the Corsicans?” I ask in disbelief. “The ones you think were behind the car bomb?”
“And the ones who gave the intel to Connor about my estate,” Leo adds on.
I frown, irritated. “You mean when you kidnapped Emma on her wedding day and held her hostage?” I correct him, remembering how wrathful Connor was after that. I’ve never seen him in such a rage before. “We didn’t get our fucking information from the Corsicans, Leo.”
Leo scoffs, clearly disbelieving that. “Then how did Connor know how to get into my estate, Cillian? Maybe Connor didn’t want to tell you about where he got his intel.”
That’s a possibility. And now that I think about it, it was odd that Connor all of a sudden knew exactly how to storm the Santoro estate. But I’m not about to give him that.
“We don’t have proof it’s the Corsicans,” I point out.
Leo shakes his head. “We don’t need proof. It’s obvious it’s them.” He pours himself another finger of whiskey. “The question is—what do we do about it?”
“Who are you asking?” I ask dryly. “Me or Connor? Because Connor wants blood.”
That’s an understatement. My mind drifts back to the phone call I got from Connor soon after we got back to the penthouse.
I’d been dreading that call and rightfully so.
He had berated me harshly—“You had her. You had her sitting right there and you let her walk out? What the fuck were you thinking, going to a public place with no backup, no exit covered?”—before he hung up, but not before placing the blame squarely on me.
I surface back to the present to see Leo watching me.
“Connor only seems to know violence,” Leo says testily and I know he’s thinking about his brother, the one Connor murdered in cold blood all those years ago.
“Connor’s not wrong in how he talked to me,” I point out, knowing I deserved it. “He was right, which makes it worse.”
“He’s not right about all of it either,” Leo says peevishly.
The fact that Leo Santoro is actually defending me is strange enough that I pinch myself.
Leo turns the glass in his hand, “But Connor’s not the one who almost lost his wife today, even though I still think Connor wouldn’t give a shit if Teresa died.” He looks at me, his gaze serious. “What do you want?”
I pause. What do I want?
I want to find Claire Murphy and make her pay for what she’d done. I want to find whoever hired her and destroy them. I want revenge for the weeks of hell they’d put me and Valentina through.
But more than any of that, I want my wife back. I want to repair the damage I’ve done. I want to rebuild the life we’d been creating before all this happened.
“I want Valentina safe,” I finally say. “Everything else can wait.”
Leo is quiet for a moment, studying me. Then he nods. “You’ve changed.”
I chuckle and set the glass down. “Valentina changed me.”