To be fair, we’ve already seen a lot of those through. If he is watching, I doubt Dom would be disappointed. Tobias’s renewed sense of mission has him anxious to get started. One is because of the position we’re in with the US Government. Two, so at one point, he can claim his newly architected future with Cecelia.
I can’t blame him at all for the selfish quest to end it prematurely. I had the same selfish need in savoring the seconds with the love of my life.
If given the chance, I’d do it all over again—even knowing the outcome. Though, I went in knowing it.
After years of selfless deprivation, Tobias is wise to that—of how precious a currency time is, and in no way do I disagree that we need to see the last of this through before either of us can hang it up.
Our sacrifices are too fucking many, too great—it’s our time to reign.
This time, with the addition of a queen.
Her wings and upgraded status rightfully earned.
Even as Dom’s plan to overthrow Antoine took a back seat to our war with Miami, the reforming of our organization, the election, and the destruction of loose ends—Julien never forgot. Tasked with the unimaginable, Julien recruited carefully and masterfully, strengthening the birds hidden in Antoine’s ranks. Dom’s plan hatched just in time for Cecelia to swoop in and set off a chain of events to take Antoine down.
In our short stint working together since, Julien has quickly become one of our most trusted assets, surprising us all with his capabilities. Though Dom is irreplaceable, Julien has proven to be worth his weight in fucking gold.
We’ve been maiming those remaining in Antoine’s defective army in the months since Cecelia took him down. Clearing a path for the next phase.
Some of the fuckers Antoine had under his rule were ruthless to the point they in no way wanted to change their ways to suit having wings, and so, we’ve had to put a few down. Thankfully, through Julien, we’ve been able to track down the hardest cases.
But because we’ve had to wipe so many of Antoine’s thugs from our docket, we’ve made new enemies, and they’re making their presence known.
Many of them have become bold in their quest to retaliate. As a precautionary measure, we’ve moved residences every day for the last week. Tonight, we rented out an entire boutique hotel and have armed French ravens on watch taking sweep shifts on every floor. We also have Secret Service on every block within a quarter mile—added aid from my boss and our current President.
We have no plans to go quietly, or for that matter at all, especially with the recent drastic increase in the size of our movement.
After pulling on a T-shirt, I tuck a gun in the back of my jeans and exit my room, nodding at the two birds standing guard just outside their suite door before knocking.
Seconds later, Tobias answers in nothing but his pajama bottoms, his posture wary from another day of clean up.
He opens the door just enough for me to slip in with his whisper, “Cecelia’s sleeping.”
Nodding, I bend to greet Beau, allowing him to sniff my hand before scratching behind his ears. As cute as he is, he’s a temperamental, needy little shit who will make a fuss if he’s not acknowledged or doesn’t get the love he feels he deserves. He is also the second apple of Tobias’s eye.
Scanning the large suite, I spy the open laptop at the end of a solid oak dining room table that seats a dozen and make my way toward it. Tobias takes a seat behind the table and types in the first of two passwords. The first password he created was enclosed in the note the day I delivered it.
ALWAYS BROTHERS
It’s the second we’ve never been able to get past.
“I don’t understand why he would make it so fucking hard,” Tobias groans.
“Why wouldn’t he?” I counter.
“I get that, but it’s something I’m supposed to know,” he frowns at the screen. “Tell me what he said.”
“We’ve gone over this, man. He said to put it in the right set of hands. Your prints are the only ones that fire up this fucking thing.” Just as a thought occurs to me, Cecelia speaks up from behind us.
“That’s Dom’s,” she whispers hoarsely, and we both turn our heads to see her standing just a few feet away, tightening a long, floor-length silk robe as she stares at the laptop like the fucking ghost it is. “That’s Dom’s laptop.”
“Did we wake you, Trésor?” Tobias asks, his eyes roving over her in the way they always do—a way that conveys exactly what she means to him—life.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she replies before bending to scratch her attention-seeking whore of a dog. “Today was . . . long.”
Understatement.
Today was fucking horrific. Cecelia’s body count climbed substantially in the months since she and Tobias left Atlanta, her wings spreading and strengthening by the day. The innocence of the girl I met at eighteen is long gone and replaced by a fiercely made, forged by fire fucking warrior.
“You’ve seen this?” I ask, nodding toward the laptop. She nods, her eyes traveling over the piece of Dom sitting on the table in front of the three of us.
“What’s on it?” She asks.
“We don’t know, Trésor,” Tobias sighs. “That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. For too fucking long.”
“You can’t get in?” She asks, peering at the image on the screen—Santa holding a waving American flag.
Tobias grips her hip and looks up at her from where he sits. “Remember when we met, I told you Dom and I were having a lot of problems seeing eye to eye on his extremes?”
Cecelia nods as Tobias looks back at the screen, his gaze somewhere in the past. “He was in the midst of building files of incriminating evidence against a lot of the corrupt. Somehow, he’s tapped into what no one should be able to. I sent him this laptop to help put his list together.”
She palms his shoulder in encouragement as he searches his memory. “I was searching for Abijah, so it was not long after you arrived in Triple Falls.”
She nods again, sadness etching her features, concern in her eyes for him. I see it the minute he recognizes it, and his eyes soften with devotion.
Her focus darts back to the screen. “So, Santa means a list, right?”
“Right,” Tobias nods.
She reads the little square box inside the flag. “And the hint is N-enemy?”
“Yes, we’ve exacerbated everything we can think of in that respect. We’ve even called in experts to calculate a list of possibilities, but my fingers have to be the ones to type the answer. There’s no way around it, and I haven’t exactly had the time to devote—”
“Tobias,” she interjects, “the N stands for natural.”
“Yes, Trésor, we’ve considered that, but—”
“That’s what it is,” she presses. “Natural Enemy.”
“Jesus Christ,” I utter as I look between them, the inkling growing stronger.
They both turn to me, alarmed as the image of Dom scanning his room the night he died, his back to me, shutters in. He wasn’t looking—he was thinking.
Tobias speaks up first, hope sparking in his eyes. “What?”