Sea Haven 02 - Spirit Bound

“You’re telling me you’ve fallen in love with Judith?”
    Stefan winced. Put like that he didn’t quite know how to answer his brother. He didn’t know what love was. He only knew he had to be with her. His body, his mind, every single cell in his body knew she was meant for him. He was a man who used sex as a weapon and achieved release after release. It felt good, great even, but not like what it had been with Judith. His body had reacted of its own accord, mixing with his emotions until there was no one but Judith. Was that love?
    “I don’t know what to call it, Levi.” Deliberately he used his brother’s new identity. “I only know she’s the person I’d stand in front of. For the first time in my life I want to stay somewhere. Be someone. Is that love?”
    Lev smiled for the first time. “I’d say you’re well on your way. I’d fight with everything in me to keep Rikki. She’s fierce, Stefan, unafraid. She faces the world head-on. I’m so crazy about her, I can’t see anything or anyone else.”
    Stefan felt his gut settle a little more. Lev couldn’t fake that note in his voice. There were certain small things that gave someone away when they lied—or told the truth. The light in his eyes, the expression on his face and that awed, shocked note in the voice would be impossible to fake. His brother was very taken with his woman.
    “Are you wrapped around her little finger?”
    “Probably. Yeah. No question about it. I fell hard.”
    “I’m not leaving, Levi. I’m going to stay here and make Judith mine. And we’re damn well getting dogs and set this place up for war.”
    Lev’s eyebrow shot up. “War?”
    “When we kill Ivanov, Sorbacov will send someone else after us.”
    “Ilya lives here,” Lev informed his brother. “I doubt he would be in danger, although he went through the original school, but he was trained for other things. He worked for Interpol and retired legitimately from his job. We’ll have to send word to the others. Have you seen any of them?”
    “Only Gavriil. I helped him escape from the hospital. He went underground. He was hurt pretty bad, Lev.”
    “We can get word to him to come here if we can secure this place and come out into the open. With three of us here, it would be difficult for anyone to come against us.”
    “You know it sounds like a pipe dream,” Stefan said with a soft sigh. “Men like us don’t have homes or women of our own.”
    “I have a woman and a home and no one, including Sorbacov— especially Sorbacov—is going to take it away from me,” Lev said.
    “The one thing Sorbacov hasn’t thought through, and it makes no sense, is the fact that none of us are going to want those documents to see the light of day,” Stefan said. “We’d all become targets. No one would have a chance at a life. Our covers would be blown, our pictures in every country preventing us from moving around, we’d be hunted by everyone.”
    “He never meant for any of us to have a life,” Lev pointed out. “We weren’t human to him. We were tools he shaped into killing machines. None of us had a chance. Most of the kids I started with in those schools never made it all the way through training. He killed them when they couldn’t perform to his satisfaction.”
    “Nevertheless, had he been thinking, he would have utilized his weapons and gone after the threat to all of us, which would ultimately have benefited him. Now he’s got to hope his exterminators get to all of us before one of us gets to him.”
    “How did they get you to come here, Stefan?”
    Stefan knew the question was bound to be asked and he hadn’t yet made up his mind to trust his brother completely. Distrust was a way of life, a way to stay alive. Was he actually going to try to make a stand here, and if so, he’d have to be honest with both Judith and his brother. But there was still the matter of the microchip. He was loyal to his country. He might not want to live there—he spent very little time there and had no ties anymore—but he loved his country. If the information on that microchip was crucial to his country’s defense system, then he had to make certain it was back in the hands of responsible people.
    Lev swore under his breath and stood up. “I knew you were full of shit.”
    Stefan rose just as fast. “I don’t have it as easy as you do, Levi. You’re dead. They might suspect it’s all a hoax, but they don’t know for certain. I’ve been working on