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He smirked. “Still pushing it, eh, boy?”
I snorted. “I’m not a boy.”
He stood upright and threw his cigarette on the ground, mashing it under his shoes. His men had started to shuffle around us, removing bodies and transporting them to a truck that had just arrived with the crime scene cleaners.
“I know you’re not a boy. You’re a man I would have been proud to call my own. Seeing you with your girl makes me happy. Don’t fuck up like I did, Ivan.”
“I won’t.”
I already knew I couldn’t live without Emmy. I was already way past pushing her away, running from her and how she made me feel. I was probably going to drive her crazy, but I was never letting her go again.
Chapter 56
Emmy
“I need like a hundred shots,” Anya murmured as everyone who’d been at the hangar walked into the Trinity Club well after midnight. Even my mom was still with us.
Given the intensity of what we’d all been through, you’d think we’d be ready to collapse, but I suspected we were all too wired and flushed with adrenaline to consider sleep right now.
“I second that,” Ivan grumbled, his arm wrapped tightly around my shoulders. I was beginning to fear that he wasn’t kidding when he said he wasn’t going to let me out of his sight because so far, he’d barely let me out of his arm’s reach.
“Anya, did you leave out some information about the operation today?” Garrett Callahan’s voice boomed across the room as the tall Irishman made his way to Anya’s side.
A guilty look crossed her face. “Babe, you never would have let me go if I told you the whole story,” she immediately defended, which to be honest, was a terrible defense.
“Exactly!” he barked and threw her over his shoulder.
“Hey!” she squealed, but he just slammed a heavy palm on her backside and marched toward the bathrooms.
“What is he going to do?” I asked, though I had some strong suspicions.
“I think you know exactly what he’s going to do because I’ve done it to you,” Ivan said, shooting me a sexy wink.
My cheeks pinkened. “Here?” I said in a scandalized whisper, looking around to see if my mother noticed what had happened. Thankfully, she was ordering a drink at the bar.
“Emmy! Mom!” Hannah burst through the door, with Nikolai following, and barreled into my arms. “Oh my god, please tell me everything is over. I swear, I’m aging a hundred years every time someone gets kidnapped. I can’t believe that is even a sentence that I’ve had to say more than once.”
“It’s over. Armstrong is dead.” My voice sounded hollow.
My real father burst into my life like a descending asteroid poised to crash into my life and destroy everything about it. He tried to create the maximum amount of damage before we finally contained him and took him out permanently.
I was surprised at how little I felt about him. I figured a sliver of my humanity would have me grieving some aspect of his existence, but there was nothing inside me. He was a horrible person, never showed even an inkling of goodness in the short time I’d known him, and I’d never heard one positive thing about him. There was literally nothing to grieve.
“Are you okay?” Hannah’s violet eyes scanned my features, searching for distress or sadness.
“Believe it or not, I am. He was just an evil man who needed to be taken out of the human race and now the threat is over.”
“Mom,” Hannah wailed, sniffing and giving her a huge hug. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m okay, sweetheart. I feel like I have a lot of explaining to do.”
Understatement of the century.
I wanted to drag her to a booth, sit her down and tell her to explain from beginning to end, but since she had just been through a literal shoot out, I needed to calm the hell down.
“How about we get a round of drinks and grab a table?” Hannah suggested gently, as if she had read my mind.
I felt Ivan behind me. “You go sit with your mom and I’ll get you a drink. What do you want?” He asked the question, then placed a soft kiss under my ear that gave me shivers.