He’d never once, in all those years, let her down. As much as he’d betrayed her now, deep down she knew that her life could have taken a very different path without him. Children’s Services had been on the verge of taking her away, placing her in foster care. She would have been alone in the world. Knowing how lost she’d been back then, there was no doubt it would have destroyed her.
In so many ways, she had her uncle Joel to thank for how she’d grown up. She’d never be able to forgive him for killing her father, destroying her company. Even now, hatred was blooming in her chest as she stared at him. But she couldn’t completely turn her back on him, leave him alone in the world either.
“I still love you, Uncle Joel,” she told him. She choked on the words, which felt like a betrayal to her father. But she reached a hand out to him, held it palm up, silently begging him to set the gun there. To be the man who’d raised her. To choose her over himself, to go to jail rather than kill another person she loved.
Because she did love Davis. She wasn’t quite sure when it had happened, or how it had happened so quickly. She might doubt his intentions, doubt if what he felt for her was real, but she had no doubts about her feelings.
“Please,” she begged her uncle, stretching her hand even farther.
His chin quivered, his gaze drifting to the weapon, then to her hand. If he noticed that Davis was a few feet closer than he’d been before, he didn’t show it. Or maybe it didn’t matter, since he still wasn’t close enough.
“Please,” she begged again, knowing he was wavering, knowing him.
His throat moved as he swallowed hard, and then his gaze went back to the weapon, his head giving a little shake, and she knew he’d made his choice.
She had a choice right now, too. The man who’d helped raise her, who’d without question saved her life when she was a child, the uncle she loved despite everything. Or the man she’d fallen for, the man who’d planned to leave in the end, but she loved anyway.
Leila let out a wail that sounded almost inhuman as she lifted the hand still hidden inside her purse, and fired her weapon.
And a man she loved fell to the floor.
Epilogue
Leila had killed her uncle.
One week ago, there’d been a single instant to make a choice—Uncle Joel or Davis. It had been half instinct when she’d fired that shot. But her aim had been true. Center mass, the way her dad had trained her so many years ago. A kill shot.
She’d never thought she’d need to use it on someone she loved. Never thought she’d do it to protect someone else she loved.
Davis had spent two days in the hospital. One of his teammates had updated her a few hours after she’d shot her uncle, telling her Davis had a pretty severe concussion. She’d been numb by then, having given her statement more than once to local police and then Davis’s team, who’d rushed in a few moments after she called 911.
The woman who’d told her about his condition, a profiler with kind eyes, had called her a few days ago to let her know Davis had been released from the hospital, cleared to go back to work. Apparently he was already working on a new case.
She hadn’t spoken to him since the paramedics had loaded him into that ambulance, clinging to consciousness through sheer will. In that moment she’d squeezed his hand, pressed a brief kiss to his lips despite all the FBI agents watching. Then she’d walked away.
Leila had killed her uncle for him. In that instant her entire life had changed.
Leaning back in the chair in her father’s office, Leila glanced around at the familiar room, somehow made foreign without her dad in it. She hadn’t officially moved into his office—and she didn’t plan to—but being here made her feel closer to him. She hadn’t been able to go into her uncle’s office yet. She wasn’t sure when that would happen, if it ever would. Every memory she had of him now was tainted by the knowledge that he’d killed her father, by the look in his eyes when she’d known he was willing to kill Davis, too. Yet, a part of her still loved him, the man who’d claimed he wasn’t sure if he even knew how to love. But he’d loved her. She still believed that.
Pressing a hand to her chest—where her grief seemed to have taken up permanent lodging—Leila stood and walked around the office. It wasn’t large, but with framed copies of some of her father’s earliest deals, it reflected how hard he’d worked to build this company.
Petrov Armor might not survive. Once news broke about the armor, about her uncle, she’d received letters of resignation from more than a third of her employees. The rest had stayed, but each day they eyed her with uncertainty, looks that said she’d betrayed their trust by keeping the truth from them when news of the faulty armor first surfaced.
The military—their biggest client—had canceled all of their orders. Petrov Armor had taken a hit so big that Leila knew she might have to let go some of the employees who’d stayed loyal, stuck around to fight with her. But
