God, he loved this woman. “We are.”
When Suzanne looked to Calvin next, Roman understood that as one of her closest friends from childhood—and an honorary Sullivan, from what Roman had seen during the wedding—Calvin’s opinion clearly mattered to her.
“Finding someone to love, and having them love you back, that’s a big deal. Pretty much the biggest deal there is. Especially if you’re both committed to doing whatever it takes to keep that love alive.” Grief seemed to flash through the other man’s eyes for a split second before he smiled at them. “I’m happy for you, Suz, Roman.”
Which left Suzanne’s father still to weigh in. Roman knew how much was riding on his approval, and he prayed they’d get it.
“If I had been a better father,” William finally said in a voice that resonated with emotion, “your brothers wouldn’t have had to step in to watch over you when I wasn’t there to do it. But I’m glad they did, because you’ve had three protectors instead of just one. And now,” her father said as he met Roman’s gaze and held it, “I’m even more thankful that you have another man who would give his life for you.”
Roman had accepted a long time ago that he’d never be able to respect his own father, but as Suzanne threw herself into William’s arms, he was glad she didn’t have to do the same. He knew now that her father wasn’t going to quit working to win back her trust and her love, no matter how humbling or difficult that might be for him.
While Alec still didn’t look thrilled about how things had gone down, he didn’t look like he was going to hire a hit man to take Roman out, either. Then again, he hadn’t yet heard the final piece of news.
“I’m not working as Suzanne’s bodyguard anymore.”
Harry frowned, clearly confused. “I know you weren’t going to let us pay you and were planning to find someone else to protect Suzanne, but surely now that we’ve hashed everything out—”
“She doesn’t need a bodyguard.” He nearly laughed out loud at the triumphant look she gave everyone. “She’s already told you this, but now I’m going to reinforce it. Suzanne does a damned fine job of watching over herself. Just the way all of you do. The issues she’s having at work—with her phone and the servers, with the fire—aren’t because she’s careless or weak in any way. She doesn’t need some guy with big muscles to trail after her twenty-four seven. She needs to nail this sucker to the wall and then make it clear to anyone else who tries to come after her that she won’t stand for it. And neither will the people she loves. I’m no longer on the job, but I’m still going to be standing beside her, just like all of you.”
William, his arm around Suzanne, pressed a kiss to her forehead. Then, he looked at his sons, at Rosa and Calvin, and Roman. Though he might not have acted like the head of the family for far too long, it was obvious to all of them that he was finally ready to take on the role that should have been his all along. “Let’s get started.”
Suzanne’s smile was a mile wide as she led the group over to the dining room table, where she’d already set up the computers and tablets she’d had with her in her wedding bags. “We need to go through three months of phone logs and server records and cross reference the information to see if anything strange comes up. For the DDoS attacks, I’ve pulled IP traces to find the origin of each broadcast packet for the CPU storm—”
Harry held up a hand. “In English, please.”
“Sorry. What I’m saying is we need to find out where the attacks came from that sent all this garbage to overflow my corporate and personal computers, denying service for legitimate work. So for both the phone and the server logs, if each of you could note the cities and countries for each line item, I’m hoping we’ll be able to put together a pattern that will give me some clues as to who might be behind this.”
Everyone took a seat behind a screen and Drake let out a low whistle. “There’s a hell of a lot of line items here.”
“No kidding,” Alec said. “This is why I went into planes instead of computers.”
“Now you guys see why I didn’t want to spend any time going through these logs before now,” Suzanne told the group. “It’s literally the most mind-numbing work in the world.”
“Work we’re happy to do,” Rosa said, obviously already one of the family even though there wasn’t a ring on her finger yet.
Suzanne said that once you fell in love with a Sullivan, the entire extended family would be behind you. But it went both ways—Roman and Rosa were both completely behind the Sullivans now too.