Sea Haven 01 - Water Bound

brother, and you were on that yacht. Hannah and Elle wouldn’t recognize you because they weren’t expecting you, but Ilya told me you were guarding that bastard Stavros.”
    Lev remained silent. He did have a brother named Ilya—the youngest of them—torn from his mother’s arms by men in masks, as she screamed and begged them not to take her baby.
    “Elle was working undercover and your boss kidnapped her.”
    Lev’s stomach lurched. He remembered her. He’d tried to get her off the yacht when he realized Stavros’s intentions to take her. They hadn’t known she was working undercover, but she had psychic power and Stavros was determined to use that for his own gain. Stavros was as dirty as they came with fingers in everything from gun running to human trafficking. He was also buying defense plans. Lev’s job had been to work his way into the organization and become a trusted member in order to get the full scope of Stavros’s operations and find those supplying him with the women, the guns and the secrets—mostly the secrets.
    Lev had been close, but he hadn’t gotten the job done. And then the ship had gone down, killing Stavros, leaving Lev without his answers and years of work wasted. And a chance at life, away from making decisions about who lived, who died, who was left alone to meet a fate of torture, of sexual servitude so someone could find answers and shut down an entire network.
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    Save the individual? Or the masses? He’d never allowed himself to think too long on those questions. He was a tool, nothing more, to be used and discarded. He remained silent, closing his mind to the roar of pain for the unanswered questions, for the nameless faces of individuals he’d left behind. The killing had never bothered him. He’d been molded and trained and programmed for that. But the victims... That had been much more difficult to shove behind a locked door in his brain.
    He let Jonas have his shot. A hard right to the jaw. Pain exploded through his already damaged head. He shook it off, sidestepped the second blow and held up his hand. He could feel the adrenaline flowing hot and bright, the rush of power moving through his body, and knew his eyes were arctic cold, gleaming with repressed fire. He breathed away the instinct to kill, never taking his watchful gaze from the sheriff’s.
    “You get one free because I couldn’t find a way to save her. But being civilized is new for me. I have instincts and they aren’t just going to go away. You come at me again and I’m going to put your ass hard into the ground, and then your ego is going to kick in. Right now you’re angry. I accept that. But don’t be stupid. If you know my brother, you know what I’m capable of.”
    He hadn’t seen Ilya since they’d ripped him from their mother’s arms.
    All of the boys had fought to get him back—the guns, the fists, the smell of blood and death in their nostrils. No, he wasn’t going to apologize for his life. Not to this man who could never understand. Rikki could accept Lev’s sins. He had every confidence in her, but he wasn’t asking for forgiveness from anyone else.
    “You want to help me find the bastard trying to kill Rikki, or should I do it on my own?”
    Jonas slowly straightened, his expression hard. “Do you think this is finished? That I’m just going to let a killer into my town where Elle’s going to have to live with seeing you every day?”
    “She’ll be the first to tell you I was doing my job,” Lev said quietly.
    “You don’t have to like it and neither do I. It’s evident you’ve seen combat.
    Are you telling me no innocents ever suffered because you had to carry out your mission?”
    “What the hell are you doing here?”
    “Making a choice to live. I’m Levi Hammond and I intend to make my life here.”
    Jonas shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”
    “You don’t have to believe me. Only Rikki has to believe me. On the other hand, I will find this man threatening her and you’ll never find the 267

    body if you walk away from this. I had a choice whether to involve you, and I chose to let Blythe make the call. Levi Hammond’s history doesn’t have a single hole in it. In a few days people will start to vaguely remember him. I can have a life here. I’m not willing to give that up because you don’t like what I did.”
    Jonas never took his eyes from Lev’s face and Lev could feel the power in the man, the energy swirling around him.