“He wanted you.”
That was where Ezra was confused. He didn’t understand the nature of Levi Green. “He wanted power more. He’s getting married, you know. He’s marrying a highly connected woman. She’s the daughter of the vice president, who will likely be the president when the next election cycle is over. He’s left operative status. He doesn’t need to go into the field anymore. He has whole teams at his command. That’s the kind of power he thought being married to me would get him. Or rather marrying into my family.”
His lips kicked up in a rueful smile. When he smiled like that she saw Beck. “I’m always surprised when a mention of your family comes up. Beck never talked about how connected you are.”
“Beck never cared. When we divorced he could have walked away with millions.” It had oddly been one more kick in the gut. He hadn’t wanted anything from her. “I didn’t have him sign a pre-nup. And you of all people should be happy for all those connections.”
“You can imagine how grateful I am,” Ezra replied, emotion in his voice. “And then you can multiply it by ten and not come close to how much I owe you. That’s why I’m going to talk to you about something that will be uncomfortable. I think you should reach out to Beck.”
She sat up straighter, her spine going stiff, almost as though she felt the sudden need to physically defend herself. “Why would you say that?”
“Because Roman is starting to ask questions. Because Beck has the right to know he has a son. If Levi Green is no longer a threat, I think we should contact Beck and invite him to come out here. Beck has the right to know I’m alive.” He stared at the flowers that surrounded them. “He has the right to face me and accuse me and hate me.”
Her fear deflated a bit. “Is that what this is really about? I know you think you need to face him, but that’s more about you than him. Do you really want to uproot whatever life he’s made for himself because you need closure? He’s got it.”
“If it was only about me, I would say you’re right and that seeking him out again is a selfish act,” Ezra replied. “I will admit that I miss my brother. But this is not merely about me. It’s about Roman.”
The fear was back, and it mingled with an anger she thought she’d gotten over a long time ago. She stood up. “He told me flat out he didn’t want a child of mine. He was happy we’d never had kids.”
“Beck says a lot in anger that he doesn’t mean.”
“Another reason to keep my son away from him.”
Sometimes it was easy to forget Ezra Fain was an ordained priest and that he was serious about his faith. Often he was merely her friend and brother-in-law. This was not one of those times. He gave her the same look he gave people who didn’t behave around mourning families in the hospital where he worked. “Becoming a parent is one of the life events that can change a person, that can allow growth. He didn’t have that chance. I agreed with you in the beginning. You were in danger and reaching out to him would have put you in more danger at a perilous time.”
It had been such an odd time. She’d made it to Malta a few weeks before travel had been shut down due to the pandemic that raged across the globe for more than a year. Sometimes she was sure the pandemic and all the chaos it had wrought was the very reason no one had managed to find her. She’d given birth during that time, in a country that was a short distance from one of the epicenters. “He couldn’t have come here anyway. No one could.”
“The world is healthy again,” he prodded. “It has been for years. There’s no reason to not gently reach out. Carefully, of course. I’ll be with you. I’m not going to let you go through this alone, but I think it might be time.”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t even think about Beck. She was happy. Her life was peaceful, and injecting him back into it would spark a fire she couldn’t put out. “I am a different person, Ezra. He brings out the worst in me. I do the same for him. I can’t put my son through that. I don’t know how he’ll react to Roman. He could have his own kids by now.”
“He doesn’t.”
“How would you know?”
“Because our cousins don’t keep a lock on their social media and I monitor their pages,” he admitted. “Beck was at a family reunion recently and he was alone. One of our cousin’s friends asked about him in the comments and was told that Beck is the family hermit. He’s living in Dallas and working with McKay-Taggart. From what my cousin said he doesn’t date at all. He’s going by his own name again.”
She hated the fact that her first impulse was to go to the computer and look him up, see his pictures, stare at them and see if she could pick out the changes the years had brought. She’d known he was in Dallas, but she’d imagined he’d moved on.
How would he react? Just because he wasn’t dating didn’t mean he was still thinking about her with anything but anger. He might blame her for his lack of a love life. He’d blamed her for everything else.
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not giving him a chance to savage me again. He made himself plain that night.”
Ezra stood and gave her what she liked to think of as his “peaceful, but I’m disappointed” look. “All right. I’ll let you sit with the thought for a while. I’ll help Roman with his Maltese this evening. He’s got a quiz coming up. Will you let me
