Page 73 of Honor ’N’ Duty

“Sure I can. Watch me.” Josh shrugged from Kade’s grasp and took another step toward the door, but Kade blocked him. Tango backed him up, lowering his head and uttering a low growl. Josh’s face twisted with disbelief. “Seriously?”

“I’m a federal agent, Josh, and you’re sitting right in the middle of a major takedown operation. Everyone on the premises is getting arrested and questioned. I can’t just let you go. You know that.”

They’d both been raised in a military family and both attended West Point. His brother, of all people, should understand the requirements that came with duty.

“You’re my brother, for God’s sake,” Josh countered, getting in Kade’s face. “Are you really going to arrest me?”

His brain struggled for the answer, but all he could think was: This can’t be happening. Of all the weird, twisted things he’d expected to find when he’d opened the door to the cabana, this wasn’t it. Worse, he couldn’t believe what he was about to do. What he had to do.

He dropped Tango’s leash and drew a set of handcuffs from his belt. “Turn around.”

Josh scoffed. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.” He clenched his jaw, still finding the entire situation surreal, as if he were watching the scene go down but it wasn’t really him about to cuff his own brother. “I’ll do everything I can to help you. I’ll talk to the AUSA. I’ll make them understand. I’ll find the best criminal defense attorney in the state and get you out of this.”

“Kade—”

With his heart pumping so hard it felt like it would leap straight from his chest into the swimming pool not fifteen feet away, he took his brother’s arm and spun him. He snapped on the cuffs before Josh could utter another word.

He loved his brother, but how could he possibly have compromised everything he’d been led to believe his entire life…everything he’d lived and fought for?

A hundred years cannot repair one moment’s loss of honor.

Over his shoulder, Josh speared him with a pained look of shock so fierce he might as well have stabbed him in the heart.

That was the last time he’d seen his brother alive.

Tears leaked from Laia’s eyes, and he’d put them there. “I’m sorry,” he said. “At the time, I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing.” Had he known the devastation that would rain down on Laia’s head in the aftermath of his decision, would he have done things differently? “I should have told you sooner. I just—” Was a coward. A chicken-shit of immeasurable proportions.

Instead of railing at him some more, she stared up at him with sympathetic eyes. “You were just doing your job. He was my husband, but he was also a criminal, and I have to accept that. I did accept it, a long time ago. Hearing the details now… It’s a lot. I’m going to need some time to process it. Now there’s a certain reality to it that I didn’t comprehend before. I can’t begin to understand how hard that must have been for you.”

He didn’t deserve the kindness she was showing him. He didn’t deserve anything at all from her. One of the many reasons he’d stayed away all these years. The guilt. The grief. He’d been consumed with it and in many ways still was. Looking back, he owed his brother and would never be able to fix it.

Laia stood, and when she palmed the side of his face, his heart squeezed and he nearly lost it.

In a shaky voice, she said, “You’re not to blame.”

“Aren’t I?” he croaked. How in the world could he make her understand?

“You had an obligation, a duty. To let Josh go would have compromised everything that you are.”

Well, hell. She did understand, but it didn’t change anything, and it didn’t make him feel a whit better. In fact, it made him feel worse, guiltier, and more like he was the very last man on the planet she should wind up with because he didn’t deserve her.

When Laia dropped her hand, he tried clasping it to his chest, but she pulled away. “I just need time to…process all this. Would you take me back to the shack, please?”

“Of course.”

He and Smoke followed her from the room, down the long corridor, and outside to his SUV. The sorrow he’d felt moments ago worsened, becoming an agonizing pain dead center in his chest.

She’d said she understood, but that didn’t stop him from worrying that whatever foundation had existed between them was on the verge of cracking down the center.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Experiencing so many emotions in one day—shock, anger, sadness, grief—the very same ones Laia had lived through after learning who and what Josh had become, had sapped the strength out of her. The moment the front door of the shack closed behind her, she nearly sank to the floor in a boneless heap of jelly.

She pulled her phone from her purse and flipped the side switch, taking it off silent mode, then set it on the counter. In the living room she found Rosa and Jamie watching The Little Mermaid. How many times had she forced him to watch that movie or more reruns of The Nanny? Poor Jamie.

During the drive from the DHS office, Kade had called ahead to notify Jamie they were on their way. Other than that, he hadn’t said a word. Neither had she. Now he was on his way back to the office to work with Manny on the search warrant affidavit for the safe deposit box.