Chapter 32
Glenna had managed to spend almost four hours being rubbed, scrubbed, steamed, moisturized, and generally pampered within an inch of her life before she finally accepted that the Four X’s wives had taken Tyrone’s request to keep her occupied and applied what appeared to be an unlimited budget to making her day amazing.
She loved them for it, but nobody needed a ninety-minute massage followed by a facial, manicure, pedicure, lunch, champagne, and a stylist determined to convince her that purchasing underwear costing more than her old weekly grocery budget qualified as self-care.
Jorja had denied everything when she’d called her, then immediately ruined the denial by telling her to stop asking questions and enjoy herself, while Serena shouted something in the background about Tyrone owing them all dinner when they got home.
By that point, Glenna had stopped pretending she didn’t understand what was happening.
Tyrone wanted her occupied so she wouldn’t worry about him as he went to the retirement ceremony.
The wives knew something was up, and she had her suspicions as to what it was, but everyone had apparently agreed she didn’t need to know until whatever the hell he was doing was finished.
A few weeks ago, that would have pissed her off enough to ruin the entire day.
Now she knew him better. Tyrone wasn’t keeping her away because he thought she was weak or because whatever happened today was none of her business.
If he wanted distance, it was because he needed room to do something without worrying about her reaction, her safety, or the possibility that somebody would see her beside him and work out more than Tyrone wanted them to know.
Sullivan.
It has to be about him.
She had been thinking the name since breakfast, although Tyrone had never said the man would be at Ferguson’s retirement ceremony. He hadn’t needed to because she had brain cells, and she knew how to use them. So, she’d let the women who had rapidly become sister friends distract her…mostly.
She had drunk the champagne, allowed a stranger to put hot stones on her back, and bought clothes she would probably have walked straight past before because the price tag alone would have sent her into cardiac arrest. For the first time in years, she had bought something because she wanted it instead of asking whether Kelsey needed shoes, food, school supplies, or whatever other necessity came before she ever reached herself on the list. That realization had probably been worth the ridiculous cost of the freaking massage all by itself.
By the time she returned to the hotel, showered away half the lotions and oils someone had applied to her, and changed into the soft black dress she’d talked herself into buying, the clock had crept past six, and Tyrone still wasn’t back. She resisted texting him for exactly eleven minutes.
Glenna: You alive?
She stared at the screen, waiting for a response, then reminded herself she had spent the last several weeks surrounded by men whose phones frequently became useless appendages the moment something important required their attention.
He’ll answer when he can.
She poured herself water rather than opening the wine sitting on the minibar because she’d already consumed enough champagne to qualify on the road as being hammered, then carried the glass toward the windows overlooking the city.
North Carolina had nothing in common with the view from Mason del Tempio, and for the first time that struck her as strange because somewhere along the way she had started comparing places to La Spezia as though Italy had become the baseline for what the world was supposed to look like.
Home.
She’d said it in the storage unit without planning to, and she meant it. La Spezia had stopped being the place they were staying and had become the place she wanted to go back to.
The electronic lock clicked behind her, and she whirled around as Tyrone stepped through the door and closed it quietly behind him. Everything inside her stilled.
Something’s off.
There was no blood on him. Nothing was ripped. He had no bruising she could see. He wore the same dark shirt and jeans he had left in that morning, although the sleeves had been shoved up his forearms and the collar sat slightly crooked as though he’d dragged a hand over it too many times.
Physically, he looked fine. Emotionally, he looked different.
She’d become so accustomed to the tension Tyrone carried whenever Dwight’s name was mentioned that she hadn’t understood how permanently it lived in him until she saw him without quite so much of it.
His shoulders weren’t braced. The line between his brows remained because apparently he’d been born scowling, but his eyes no longer held that same restless question she’d seen in them every time the past came too close.
“Tyrone.”
His gaze moved over her, taking in the dress, bare feet, and probably the fact she had spent the last ten minutes pacing. “Jesus, Glens.”
She looked down at herself. “What?”
“You went to a spa looking like my woman and came back looking like one who’s about to give me a heart attack.”
The relief hit her hard enough that she laughed. “That’s your opening line?”
“Had a better one. Forgot it.”
“You’re losing your touch.”
“Come closer and say that.”
She wanted to. God, she wanted to. Instead, she searched his face. “Sullivan was there?”
The humor disappeared. “Yeah.”
She put the water glass down. “What happened?”
Tyrone walked toward her but stopped a few feet away, giving her the same choice he always did. Space if she wanted it. Him if she didn’t.
She closed the distance, and his arms came around her.
She pressed her cheek against his chest while his chin settled against the top of her head.
For several seconds neither of them spoke.
His heartbeat was steady beneath her ear, a little faster than normal but nowhere close to what she expected from a man who had spent the afternoon around the person responsible for his friend’s death.
“He’s gone,” Tyrone said quietly.
She tightened her arms around him. “Gone where?”
“MPs took him out in cuffs.”
Wait.
What?
Glenna closed her eyes. Her first emotion wasn’t satisfaction, as she’d thought it would be when this moment came; it was relief.
The handcuffs didn’t magically fix anything, but John Sullivan no longer existed as a threat moving somewhere, waiting to ambush her or her daughter.
He had a place now. In custody. Facing whatever came next.
“He admitted it?”
“Enough that nobody in the room had any doubt left.”
“The rest of the Raiders were there when it happened?”
“A whole fucking room full of them.”
Glenna leaned back far enough to see him. “You confronted him in front of everyone?”
“In the team room.”
Something in the way he said it made her chest tighten. “That’s the one with the cages?”
“Yeah.”
She knew enough about that part of his life to understand what he wasn’t saying. “Dwight’s cage?”
His throat moved. “I stood in it while I taught that motherfucker that vengeance often comes very fucking cold indeed.”
For a second she couldn’t speak. She pictured him there, surrounded by the men who had known Dwight in a way she never could, standing where her man had once prepared to walk into missions he wasn’t allowed to talk about when he came home. The image both hurt and comforted her in equal measure.
“What did Sullivan say?”
“The same shit he’s been saying. It wasn’t supposed to happen. He was desperate. He sold information, not Dwight.”
Glenna felt anger flare so quickly it nearly burned away every other emotion. “That’s supposed to make it better?”
“No.”
“Dwight was the information.”
“I told him that.”
She looked at Tyrone. Of course he had. She hadn’t expected any less, “He admitted he knew?”
“Enough. The evidence did the rest.”
“And Ferguson?”
Tyrone’s expression changed. That was when Glenna understood the day hadn’t only been difficult because Tyrone confronted Sullivan.
“He didn’t know.”
“No.”
“None of them knew?”
“No. I walked into what was supposed to be a celebration of a friend’s years in Special Operations and blew the fucking room apart.”
The guilt in his voice was small enough that somebody who didn’t know him might have missed it. Glenna didn’t. “You told them the truth.”
“On Ferg’s retirement day.”
“Would you rather he toasted Sullivan tonight believing he was one of the good guys?”
“No.”
“Then stop.”
His mouth tightened.
There was no way she was going to allow him to use this as another stick for him to beat himself with. He had enough of those as it was. “Tyrone.”
“I know.”
She wasn’t entirely sure he did know, but she could remind him of it as much as needed.
“Good.” It wasn’t lost on her that she was planning on having him around to remind him.
The old fear that she wasn’t enough tried to sneak in, but she ruthlessly shoved it back. That fear had no place here anymore.
One corner of his mouth moved. “Bossy.”
She traced her fingers down his cheek and cupped his jaw with her hand. “Apparently, you like that.”
“Apparently.”
“And you?” How could a man who was so used to giving information be so closed-mouthed when it actually mattered?
“What about me?”
If he makes me shake it out of him, I’m gonna be so freaking cranky.
“What did you say?”
His gaze dropped, and she knew enough to wait him out while he got his thoughts in order.
“I told him there wasn’t anything left I wanted from him.”
Tyrone looked toward the windows, and Glenna saw the change in him again. Not the absence of grief, because Dwight would always be there. Something else, sort of like the end of an argument he’d been having with himself for years.
“I spent so long thinking there had to be something I missed, Glens. Something in that op, something Dwight did or didn’t do, something I should’ve seen afterward. I kept trying to fix a problem that happened years before I even knew there was a fucking problem.”