Page 80 of Exacting Vengeance

“You’re late,” his mother shouted back.

“Sorry, Ma.” Deke gave his mother a big, wet, smacking smooch on the cheek.

“You’re forgiven.” She patted his cheek like he was still ten years old, then went back to looking at magazines with Gina.

A minute later, Deke came into the dining room holding three open bottles of beer and handed them out. “Salut.”

After they’d clinked bottles, Kyle took a long, cold slug. “Thanks for all the long hours,” he said to his brothers.

“Always,” Deke said between sips. “Any word from Lance?”

“No.” Kyle and Jack responded simultaneously.

“Gina’s gonna kill him,” Jack said. “If he shows up for the wedding it will be the first time she meets him. If he doesn’t show, the first time she does meet him, she’ll kill him for being a no-show pain in the ass.”

“Amen to that, and God help Lance.” Deke held up his bottle, and they clinked again. “My money’s on her tying his balls into a knot.”

Jack chuckled and lifted his gaze to where their mother and Gina were still hunkered down at the kitchen table. “That’s a distinct possibility.”

Not for the first time that night, Kyle’s heart ached with more emotion than he thought possible. He wanted what his brother and Gina had. The love, the laugher, and everything else. Maybe it wasn’t in the cards for him. Could be he still didn’t deserve the joys of his own family again. If only Victoria didn’t occupy every waking moment of every day.

Gina came in and pulled cloth napkins from the buffet drawer. “I need to set the dinner table, and Mom wants your input on the seating chart.” As a unit, they stood. “Kyle, why don’t you stay and help me? Jack and Deke can handle the seating stuff.”

He scooped up the origami figures and tossed them on the buffet. Setting the table with Gina reminded him of another night, nearly a year ago on the day he first met Gina. Ironically, they’d talked about Victoria. Not specifically, but Gina had figured out there’d been something between them. She was the Wonder Woman of intuitive powers.

“So,” she said, glancing at him as she laid out the napkins, “how’s Victoria, the woman you brought to your self-defense class last month? I haven’t seen her there since. And did you buy her a briefcase? Did she like it?”

“I did, and she did.” As he took dinner plates from the hutch, he chuckled. Getting his brothers out of the room was all part of her plan. “As for class, she’s been busy.”

“You’ve all been busy lately. I’ve barely seen my fiancé in the last two weeks, and when he does come home, he falls right into bed.” She shook her head and made a tsking sound. “Jack’s been no fun at all lately.”

“Sorry about that.” He really was.

Because of their close bond, his brothers had been busting their asses for him on this case. And for Victoria. But Gina was a strong woman and completely in love with his brother. Their relationship would survive long hours away from home.

He began taking out glasses from the hutch. Raised voices and laughter came from the kitchen.

“Victoria is the woman we talked about last year.” Gina pulled out silverware from a drawer and faced him across the table. “Isn’t she?”

He paused a beat before setting down a glass. “Yes.” The conversation with her about Victoria hadn’t been specific. Just that he’d known a woman—a friend—who’d been a victim of domestic abuse.

“You said it was complicated. Is it still complicated?”

“More so now than ever.” He hadn’t seen or spoken with her directly in more than two weeks. He couldn’t, not without losing focus on the most important thing in his life: keeping her out of prison. “She did something a long time ago. Something illegal.”

“Intentionally?” Her forehead furrowed as she came around the table. “That doesn’t sound like the woman I met, and I doubt you would have had feelings for someone with bad intentions. Besides,” she added, giving him a sly look, “surely you recall how many laws I broke.”

The quip had him smiling.

Last year, Jack had caught Gina and her friends breaking into Mafia mobsters’ homes like stealthy ninjas, stealing their illegally obtained cash and secretly giving the money to a local women’s shelter.

“Point taken,” he admitted, but this was a little different, not that he could get into the details. “She took something critical to a criminal investigation and never told me or anyone else in the FBI. She could have but didn’t. I vouched for her, and she lied.”

“A lie by omission, but a lie nevertheless,” Gina said. “Assuming deep down she’s a good person, there must have been an equally good reason she never told you. I understand that hurt you, but is it possible she didn’t have a choice?”

Kyle put down the glass he’d been holding and rested his hands on the table. “That’s what she said, and I know you’re right.” He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her, essentially being Yuri’s slave, forced to do whatever he ordered her to—like keep a ledger and hide cash for him—or risk getting hit. That was how abusers controlled their victims. With fear. The only reason she’d kept the ledger for Yuri was out of fear—the same reason she’d never come forward with it.

Gina was right.