“We’ll come back when this shit gets sorted, Xun,” Abel assured. “We’ll find you.” His eyes swept the round table in the private room in Jian-Li’s restaurant where we were all having lunch, before he finished, “All of you when it’s done.”

“And what if it gets done in a way that there’s no you to find us ’cause you got no one takin’ your back?” Snake asked. “How will we know what happened to Lilah?”

“Sorry to say, man,” Abel replied gently, his tone stating he was sorry, “you won’t.”

“That doesn’t work for me, seein’ as she’s Lilah. A woman now, but she used to be a little girl I held in my arms and gave a bottle,” Snake shot back.

My heart twisted.

“Then you need to make it work for you,” Abel returned, “seein’ as you fall in order to keep her alive, she’s gotta live that life knowin’ you did that shit for her.”

“And she’ll feel it. I know it,” Snake retorted. “Then she’ll settle in the knowledge she had that kind of love.”

My heart twisted further and my lips whispered, “Snake.”

He looked to me. “You are not takin’ off.”

“Please understand,” I begged.

“Not gonna happen,” he bit off.

I drew in breath then looked to my dad. “Daddy?”

Dad looked whipped and my heart endured another vicious twist.

“Always knew,” he began, “one day I would no longer be the one whose job it was to shelter you from the storm. Hated havin’ that knowledge, knowin’ I’d have to give that over to the guy who’d claim you. Best job a man can have, bein’ a father, lookin’ after his little girl. Just had to hope like fuck the man that turned out to be was worthy.” He looked to Abel, then back to me. “Don’t know him all that well. I still feel in my gut that he is.”

Gratitude and bitterness mingled in my soul at what I thought he was saying.

“But no way, little girl,” Dad continued, “that storm turns into a fuckin’ hurricane, I’m turnin’ my back on you. Either of you.”

“Dad—”

“It won’t happen,” he stated inflexibly, surprising me. “You leave, we follow. We gotta fight, we fall, shit happens. But I will not live the rest of my years knowin’ my little girl lives a threat day to day and I didn’t do what I could to keep her safe.”

“It’s important to us to know you’re safe,” I replied and threw out a hand to the table. “All of you.”

“You known me your whole life?” Dad asked.

Shit.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Then you know this shit you’re sayin’ is not gonna happen.”

Abel growled.

I squeezed his thigh and tried again.

“Please, Dad, see it from our perspective.”