Page 51 of Fall of a Kingdom

Helena started fussing and Piper heard it over the phone and began to cry.

“Tell Ash, Duncan and Ramsey we said Merry Christmas,” I said.

“Will do. Talk soon, yeah?” Barrett said.

“Yep.”

“Love you,” she said.

“Love you back,” I replied.

Sasha pressed a button, and the screen went black and even though he tried to soothe Helena, he wasn’t having much luck. He handed her off to me. I put her to my shoulder, and she stuck her head in the crook of my neck and began to calm down.

“Magic touch,” he said with a wry smile.

“For now. She prefers you at night,” I pointed out. “Wow, they have another baby.”

“She looks happy, doesn’t she?”

“She does.” I nodded.

The anniversary of Igor Dolinsky’s death this year had caused a lot of turmoil. It weighed heavily on both Sasha and Barrett. Flynn and I were outsiders and only knew what they chose to share with us. Sasha had told me about owning Dolinsky’s house and that Barrett had free run of the place. It was strange, and I wasn’t sure I understood the reason for the secrecy, but then again, I wasn’t a part of it. Their relationship had always been unusual, and it was something I’d long ago accepted.

I was glad Barrett was back in Scotland with her family. She seemed deliriously happy, and now that they had a new baby, they could focus on the future and stop living in the past.

Barrett did things in her own way, and so did I. It was one of the many reasons we understood one another. It reminded me that at one point in time we’d been engaged in an emotional war, with Sasha between us.

And yet after all of that she’d become like a sister to me. I could call her in the middle of the night, and she’d answer. If I needed her, I had no doubt at all that she’d fly to me immediately, wherever I was.

There was a reason Barrett was Helena’s godmother. If anything happened to Sasha and me…

“Did you mean it?” Sasha asked.

I took the spot on the couch next to him. Helena was warm in my arms and seemed comfortable as she snuggled against me. “Mean what?”

“About living in Scotland?”

“We can’t live in Scotland,” I protested. “Not with what you’re involved in. You have to be close to the coast.

“That’s not what I asked.”

I paused for a moment and really pondered his question. “I do feel like we’re left out of things, being over here in the States and them being so far away. But that’s not a reason to move to Scotland, even if we could.”

He scratched his jaw, the sound of his fingers rasping against his stubble. “We should move to Scotland,” Sasha said.

My head whipped around from staring at a wall, and I met his gaze. “What?”

He nodded. “You clearly have no desire to move to New York, and to be frank, neither do I.”

“You just said you needed a city and were bored with life here.”

“Da, I’m bored with lifehere.”

“But how can you run things in New York and Boston if we live in Scotland?”

He looked amused. “The same way I’ve been doing it while we’ve been here. Dimitri handles New York. We have men in Boston. I didn’t come back because I wanted to take the reins again. I knew what I was giving up when I walked away. I came back because of you.”

“A man like you can’t just walk away from all that,” I insisted despite his heartfelt statement.