Free Vendetta by Capri Montgomery

going to have to wait until he gets back anyway.” Gavin could tell Drake didn’t like waiting. The man was patient most times, but Sabian had worn all of their patience thin; Drake included.
     
    “Why?”
     
    “I thought you said we’re checking out Washington.”
     
    “No. I said there are two factions, and there are. My sources tell me there’s something linked to a bigger issue going on in the Seattle-Lynwood area and that’s something a friend of a friend wants me to keep an eye on as well. I’m sure none of you thought Sabian was the end all be all to this ring of treason.”
     
    “I don’t follow,” Mike sat down at the table. His crisp blue eyes narrowed as if he thought he were being dragged back into government work. Valencia laughed.
     
    “The split cell isn’t your problem. JJ was mine, and I wanted him elsewhere for a little while. He’ll get information I can take back to my friend and I’ll get some breathing room to do what we need to do.”
     
    “Which is?” Mike’s tone was one filled with measured anger.
     
    “Take down the man who almost killed Thomas,” she said. This wasn’t about stopping a traitor for her. This was about revenge. Gavin could tell that from her words.
     
    “This is just about a vendetta for you? You don’t care what Sabian is up to?”
     
    “No,” she said so sincerely that Gavin felt almost knocked back. “Look; I’ve seen our government do a lot of shady things. I’ve seen them kill without conscious, and barter with the enemy when they thought it would get them what they wanted. You can’t honestly tell me that you don’t know this is bigger than Sabian. He has somebody in higher power, maybe in congress, maybe in the senate, but he has a group backing him or he would have been gone already. I know, because he’s the type of man that I would have got the call for the hit on.”
     
    “You’re out of that game,” Thomas said.
     
    “I’m out until they need me; that was the deal.” She arranged her knives. “Right now I don’t care who Sabian is in bed with. That’s not my problem. If you all want to save the world then you do it. But for me, this is personal. Somebody tried to kill a good man; a friend of mine, somebody I look at as my family. And in my family there’s no forgiveness for that betrayal. Thomas is like a brother to me. His enemy is my enemy and I will give my last breath to keep him safe.” She looked at Thomas. Gavin could see the shocked expression on his brother’s face, as if he didn’t know the depth of her commitment to him.
     
    “When you came to see me in Hawaii; when you told me of your mission, of what you wanted to do, I knew I was going to help you when the time came. I made that vow and we sealed it, whether you understood it or not, over afternoon tea.”
     
    “I thought you were just being hospitable.”
     
    She laughed. “I’m not British, Thomas. Tea in the afternoon, for no reason at all, isn’t something I do. I shared that tea with you, a mix of herbs and spices to symbolize the bond of blood, body and spirit oath.”
     
    “I remember the little bowl we both drank out of,” he said smoothly. “I remember you turned it one full rotation before handing it to me to drink and then drinking behind me. I remember it was nasty.” He chuckled. “And I prayed you weren’t going to ask me to drink more.”
     
    She laughed hard. “It’s a rather revolting drink. I would say it’s an acquired taste, but it’s not. Fortunately we only mix it in my family when we are welcoming a new person into our fold. Usually we have to have the permission of the entire family, but occasionally exceptions are made.”
     
    “And one was made for me?”
     
    “I made it,” she said effortlessly. “I told my family after.”
     
    “Was there trouble?”
     
    “No. I have never asked for anybody to be included before and I think they realized that outside of my husband, you would be the last person I