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“Not while I’m in bed,” Kato grumbles.

I don’t bother to close the door so I can listen to their banter. I chuckle softly, a smile tugging on my lips. Yet another moment where it feels like hardly any time has passed between us.

We could’ve kept you safe.

The smile fades as Madd’s words replay in my head. I know he believes those words. I know he really thinks the three of them could have taken care of me, but there was also a very strong chance my father would have sent every ally he has after the Antonious’. Especially after Kato killed his father, putting a nineteen-year-old in charge of the syndicate.

Now? It seems Kato has the Family under control. It seems as though he’s built an army of loyal men. Or at least I assume so considering the guards who’d been positioned outside my door refused to so much as look at me for fear of Kato going all possessive psycho on them.

After flushing the toilet, I wash my hands and stare at my reflection in the mirror. It’s the same girl from four years ago looking back at me…but not. My eyes are harder, more wary. There’s a tightness in the lines to my face from years of expecting danger around every corner.

How fucked up is it that even though I’m no longer dancing naked or fucking strangers, I still have to anticipate danger?

I want to talk Kato out of this whole public display, but I know there’s no way I can stay hidden away in this estate for the rest of my life. Eventually, word will get out about my presence here.

And, once again, my father could use it to attack or somehow rally other Families against the Antonious.

If we’re doing this, it needs to be planned out well, and I won’t sit on the sidelines and let my men or anyone else dictate my life. Never again.

There’s a moment where I’m tempted to drive right up to the gate at my family’s estate and announce my presence.

That’s not enough.

I want the whole city, the wholestateto know I’m not only alive, but back home. That I have aligned myself with the Antoniou Family, that I’m willingly beside the men I love.

Fuck my father and anyone else who has a problem with it.

Maybe Kato was right – a public display is exactly what we need, and I mean literally public. As in plenty of witnesses so my father can’t have assassins waiting in the wings to take each of us out like a hunter hiding in a tree.

Pushing away from the vanity, I dry my hands and step out of the bathroom. Kato and Madd are missing, but Brix is lying face down on the bed, his face turned away from me, his long hair fanned out on the mattress…

That large Mount Everest tattoo on full display.

I tiptoe closer, wanting to spend a few seconds memorizing it before he wakes and rolls onto his back.

Although, I wouldn’t mind him rolling onto his back if I can straddle his hips and lower onto his cock. If things are still the way they used to be, he’ll be hard as stone when he wakes. Brix has always given a whole new definition to morning wood. His should be labeled morning granite, for fuck’s sake.

My eyes rake over the intricate design, the shadows and highlights, the stunning detail of the mountain.

He might have hated me all these years. He might have blamed me.

But he still loved me through it all.

Just as I carried them in my heart every moment of every day, Brix made sure he carried some kind of symbol of me etched into his beautiful flesh.

I can’t help myself; I raise my hand and drag my fingertips over the lines leading to the peak.

His skin twitches as though I’m tickling him. A few seconds later, his breathing changes, his muscles tense, and he slowly rolls his head toward me, his hair obscuring his face.

Brushing the mass away, I stare down into his pretty brown eyes. “Good morning,” I whisper.

Although it’s closing in on early afternoon, since we all slept past ten this morning.

“Hey,” he croaks, his eyes closing again before he reaches for me.

I let him drag me back into bed and nuzzle my face into the crook of his neck, breathing in his warm scent.

Fuck, I missed this. I missed every single second away from them. It’s amazing how, even with the time apart, I’d remembered every tiny detail about each of them, including their individual smells.