“Hermano.”

Daniel jerked upright, almost toppling his chair as he stared at his brother. Antonio’s head was all bandaged up, face still puffy and red, sticky and glistening with whatever ointment the nurses used on his wounds. Left arm in a cast, right hand handcuffed to the bed, Antonio turned swollen eyes to the guards visible through the door, before he frowned at Daniel.

“What are you doing here?” Antonio’s voice was hoarse with censure and pain.

“How do you feel?” Daniel ignored the question as he stood, stretching out the kinks in his back and neck as he went to his brother, sitting on the bed gingerly. “Shall I call a nurse?”

“Contéstame.” Antonio’s gaze flipped back and forth from the heavily guarded door to Daniel. “Are you fucking crazy?”

He shouldn’t have come, that was what his brother was trying so eloquently to say. But that wasn’t going to work with Daniel. Not now. He bent forward to meet Antonio’s furious gaze. “Who was it?” he asked.

Antonio’s gaze went blank. “Get away from here.”

He smiled, cupping his brother’s face gently. “You do not protect me,” he snarled. “I protect you. That is my job. I protect you, so I ask again: Who?”

Antonio’s jaw tightened but he kept silent.

Daniel wanted to shake him, but he sighed instead. “I have leverage on all the right people.” Which was why Antonio was in this state of the art private medical facility here in LA, and not in the regular hospital they’d originally taken him. Dealing with Syren had its upside at times. “Tell me who,” he pleaded. “Tell me and I’ll have it handled.”

Antonio licked his lips. “Doesn’t matter. The only way I’m safe is to get out.”

Try as hard as he could, that was the one thing Daniel couldn’t accomplish. “’Tonio, give me names.”

“I am alive,” Antonio said. “They don’t want me dead. If they did I would be.”

Daniel straightened, watching his brother’s face closely. He got nothing. “Who is they?”

“It’s a warning, hermano.” Antonio’s mouth crooked into a weak grimace. “How many times have we delivered those, huh?”

None. At least for Daniel. He didn’t do warnings. If it warranted a warning, it warranted punishment. And his type of punishment was death. He didn’t see fear in Antonio’s eyes. Maybe his brother was hiding it, but Daniel didn’t think so. What he spied—before Antonio smothered it—was a weariness.

A yearning for surrender.

An acceptance of what was, and what would be.

He frowned, not understanding it. Refusing to believe it. “Antonio, háblame.” Talk to me. “I will take back our home,” he vowed. “For us, for Petra—”

“Did you do it? Did you get Konstantinou?”

Daniel stiffened. Before Antonio got locked up, Daniel had shared his plans of going after Stavros.

“Did you make him pay for what he did to you, to us?”

He’d managed what, fifteen minutes? No thinking about Stavros and the cold gaze he’d turned on Daniel when he’d ordered him gone.

He’d planned on leaving, yes.

He hadn’t planned on them ending up in bed. Maybe he’d hoped. Maybe he’d hungered. But it had been no plan, and in the aftermath he’d had to walk away.

The most difficult walk of his recollection, those twenty-seven steps from Stavros’ bedroom to the elevator.

Was it done? Could it ever be done?

“No.” He held Antonio’s gaze. “It will never be done.” Amid the questions staring up at him, he said simply, “Some things have changed.”

“What?”

He couldn’t say it. Couldn’t tell his brother that while Daniel had been out there, intent on getting back the home he’d had with Petra, that Stavros Konstantinou was becoming dangerously close to being it.

Being home.

“We have an agreement,” Daniel told him instead. “Konstantinou and I have reached a truce.”

Antonio scowled. “You trust it?”

“I trust him.”

Antonio’s incredulous laugh quickly turned into a cough, with him gasping for breath. “You trust no one,” he rasped. “Brother, you barely trust me, and I’m your blood.” His eyes narrowed. “What are you really up to?”

“Nothing for you to concern yourself over.” He stood, waving away anything else his brother would have said. It wasn’t as if Daniel hadn’t spoken the same words to himself ever since this thing with Stavros began. “I need you to get well. That is most important.”

“The business,” Antonio murmured. “We should be running it. It belongs to us.” He tried to sit up, groaning, pain sharpening his features before he gave up and settled back against the pillows. “That leverage you have, use it, hermano. Get me out of here so we can get our legacy back.”

“I can’t do that.” Maybe if he didn’t have the responsibility of her. Maybe if he still harbored that death wish, he could give his brother what he wanted. But Daniel didn’t want to go back. He couldn’t. “My leverage doesn’t go that far.”

But it could. If he wanted.

Licking his split lip, Antonio jerked a nod. Though stark disappointment remained in his eyes, he didn’t voice it. Instead he changed the subject. “Toro?”

Daniel shrugged with a small smile. “He is your son, which means he is very much like you. Except he follows direction.”

The happiness his words brought to Antonio’s eyes softened Daniel the tiniest bit. He could never understand why Antonio never claimed his son. Why he never gave Toro the Nieto name. Why he deprived his own flesh and blood his love and his time. But watching his brother now, Daniel had no doubt that Antonio cared for Toro.

“Keep him safe.” Antonio’s lashes dropped as he pleaded with Daniel. “Keep my son safe.”

“I will.” Daniel leaned over him, patting Antonio’s face. “Rest. I will watch over you.” He stayed there with his brother, until Antonio succumbed to the medication and fell back asleep.

Daniel hated the useless feeling that gripped him. He was a man of action, but there was nothing to be done except sit and watch Antonio get better on his own. He couldn’t fix his brother, but he for sure could find out who was behind the attack and make them pay.

* * *

“I’m not sending you out there.” Christophe looked Stavros up and down, a frown on his face. “You’re not in the right space.”

“Right space?” Stavros lurched upright from his previous position of reclining his chair, legs propped up on his desk. “Theíos, this is not a request. I need an assignment.” Preferably one that took him out of the country. He needed to put distance between himself and all the fucking memories of Daniel Nieto that had him flying into murderous rages.

“What have you done?” Christophe crossed his arms. “What do we need to fix?”

He’d expected that question. Still, hearing it made Stavros flinch. His uncle would be the one to help clean up his messes as a teenager and young adult, before he’d learned to handle his shit himself. Before he’d learned how to go it alone. He’d fuck shit up, it was what he did. The one thing he was good at. Only this time... “I didn’t do anything.”

Christophe watched him closely. “Then why are you running away?”

For most of his life, Stavros had wished his father had seen him the way Christophe did. The way his uncle knew him.

“Is this about Nieto?”

Wasn’t everything about Daniel? Wasn’t Stavros’ sleepless nights all about Daniel? Wasn’t the fact that he’d cut off all personal entanglements with Bruce all about Daniel? “No.”

“Just like you leaving the family to go work in Africa wasn’t about you running from Annika?”

“Don’t,” he snapped. “Don’t bring her up.” He hadn’t thought about Annika in so long.

“Stavros.” Christophe sighed as he stepped closer to the desk. He leaned forward, planting both palms down on the flat surface as he glared at Stavros. “You feel for him. Now you’re running from it, just like you ran from Annika.”

What right did he have to want that man after he took so much from him? “Just give me a job, theíos.” He held Christophe’s gaze, chin stubbornly tilted.

Much like his uncle’s.

“Does he blame you?” Christophe asked softly. “Does he put it all on you the way things went down?”

“Of course he blames me.” The words were biting as they flew from his mouth, but Christophe didn’t flinch. “I killed his wife. I killed her. I took her from him. And he blames me. He hates me.”

“But that doesn’t stop him from sleeping with you.”

Stavros snorted. “It did. He walked away. So I need— It’s different. I have to stop feeling like this.”

“You’re going against your true nature, boy. Retreat isn’t you.” Christophe straightened, and stared him down. “You don’t back down.”

But he had to. He’d done enough to disrupt Daniel’s life. “I’m going to Lisbon tonight,” he told his uncle. “If you have any assignments in that part of the world, I’m taking it.” Despite allowing his uncle to run the operation, Stavros was still the one in charge.

“You want an assignment, I have one for you.” Christophe pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and tapped it a few times before holding it out to Stavros. “Here. Your new assignment.”

Daniel’s face stared back at Stavros. He was younger, but his eyes were still that deadly dark. The shape of his mouth hard and cruel. “What is this?”

“There’s a bounty on his head. You said you wanted an assignment.” Christophe shrugged.

Stavros got up and grabbed the phone. “Felipe Guzmán did this?” That fucker was a dead man walking.

“Don’t know, but I heard someone else has already taken the job.” Christophe’s gaze was steady on his face. “I’m sure you won’t let that stop you.”

“Who?”

“Not sure. But our sources think The Perez Boys were behind the prison ambush of Antonio Nieto.”

Fuck. They were coming at Daniel from all sides.

He dropped back into his seat. Two weeks since he last saw Daniel, and fuck him, but Stavros wanted to see him again. He’d kept tabs on Antonio’s situation, so he knew the man was still alive, but that was as much as he knew. He stared down at the photo on the phone’s small screen. Daniel’s eyes pierced him, touching the dark places.

Fucking magic.

He’d been prepared to walk away from it. He’d easily accepted Daniel’s decision as if the bastard spoke for them both, when he didn’t. Not on that, he didn’t.

“Tell me what you said when I decided to go to Africa.” He didn’t look up at Christophe as he stroked a finger over the image on the screen. “Tell me what you said.”

“Feelings aren’t something you run from,” Christophe answered softly. “You bring them with you wherever you go.”

Stavros had learned that all too well.

“Stay and fight for what you want.” Christophe’s words echoed in his head, back then and now.

“Fight for it. Earn it. And keep it,” he repeated the words back to his uncle and the other man smiled sadly. Stavros hadn’t appreciated the words as a young man. Staying around Annika had felt impossible, and self-control had never been something he’d familiarized himself with.

He still had no self-control to speak of, but being without Daniel felt impossible. As improbable as them being together. Did he want that?

“Anipsiós.”

“Syren Rua.” He handed the phone back to Christophe. “Arrange a meeting. As soon as possible.”

“Is that wise?” Christophe’s eyes narrowed. “Do you trust him?”

“No. But he can get me what I want.”

“And what will you do in the meantime?” Christophe asked.

“I’m sure I’ll come up with something.”