Damn. I really wished I weren't tied up. A hand cannon would've been nice too. Instead all I could do was sit there and bleed. I really wished I weren't tied up. A hand cannon would've been nice too. Instead all I could do was sit there and bleed.

Troy shrugged. "What's there to decide?

Dak didn't follow through on the hit. In fact, he rescued her from us. The bylaws are pretty straightforward."

Ah. So it was the Council we were running from. I guess that cleared up that mystery. So it was the Council we were running from. I guess that cleared up that mystery.

Too bad I couldn't celebrate.

Lou nodded. "I agree. We shoot Dak and his lady friend. Paris gets a warning."

"I don't know about that," Dela said. "Those bylaws haven't been changed since the Middle Ages. I think there's some wiggle room here."

Flo spoke up in her French accent: "Dela is right. We have to change with the times."

I looked expectantly at Grandma, but she refused to meet my gaze. The way the Council haggled as if we weren't even there really pissed me off. Grandma said her goal was to buy us some time, but she sure as hell wasn't helping us.

"Either we do as we've always done and follow the letter of the law, or we disband," Lou demanded.

"We've always followed the code. No exceptions. We can't bring back the others we've punished. We can't change things now," Troy argued.

"What about the last traitor?" Lou shouted.

"My grandson was terminated for his treachery." He pointed a finger at me. "The same rules have to apply."

I was not too happy to see that his argument was starting to work on the others. I was also not too happy to be compared to Lou's slimy grandson, who tried to turn the whole family in to international authorities last fall.

"Do we get to say anything?" I yelled.

"No," Troy answered. "You betrayed the family. And Paris helped you. I think only the highest penalty should apply. All three of you should pay the price."

Leonie kept quiet, which was probably good. This was her first introduction to the extended family, and I was sure she wouldn't want to make a bad impression.

"You have to vote, Uncle Troy," Paris said.

"And it looks like the women are against you."

"Be quiet, Paris!" Grandma snapped. "He's right. I'm not happy about it."

"Well, I'm so sorry to have to inconvenience you, Grandma," I said. "You almost made a mistake with me before. Do you want to make the same mistake again?"

Dela looked sad. "I'm afraid we have no choice, Dak. But I promise you we will change these rules. Unfortunately you'll be dead, but the amendments will benefit your son."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, that makes me feel much better."

Lou turned away from me. "So, how do we finish it?"

Troy pointed at Leonie. "First, Dak has to complete the job he started. Then we take care of him and Paris."

They were going to make me kill Leonie?

Bullshit on that! I wasn't about to do it. It's like that old saw you see in movies where the bad guys make the good guy dig his own grave, and he does it, thinking he's buying himself some time, but in the end he's dead and and he's done their backbreaking work for them. No way. he's done their backbreaking work for them. No way.

"Ha!" I shouted. "I'm not going to do it. You can't make me kill her." What were they going to do? Give me a gun? I'd take them out before they could react.

"Oh, you'll do it, all right." Lou and Troy came down to where I was and untied one of my hands. They took a rod as long as my arm and attached it to a slot in the chair, then secured my arm to the rod. Lou took his Glock and ejected the magazine-meaning there was only one bullet left in the gun. He placed the gun in my hand while Troy used duct tape to secure it. My arm and hand with a gun in it, like it or not, were pointed straight at Leonie.

"Well, I'm not pulling the trigger," I said defiantly. How could they make me do that?

Lou laughed. "It's remote-controlled, boy.

I'll actually deploy the trigger. You'll be holding the gun that kills your girlfriend. It's genius, really."

I was starting to sweat. At any moment that sadist could push a button that would blow a large hole in Leonie's head. And I had no control over it.

"No!" Paris cried. "Don't make him do it!

Don't you people have hearts?" Attaboy. Attaboy. Still my wingman-till the bitter end. Still my wingman-till the bitter end.

I figured I had only one chance. It wouldn't save any of us, but it would make it so I didn't blow my lover's brains out. There was only a split second to act before they figured out what I was doing. I took a deep breath and threw my weight to my right as hard and fast as possible.

It worked. I tipped over. Lou must've pressed the button, because the gun went off as I fell, missing Leonie by inches. My triumph was short-lived, as I now realized I was stuck on the floor, tied to a chair with my arm duct-taped to a rod.

Of course, this wouldn't stop them from killing us. But if they had their heart set on my killing Leonie, it would buy us a few moments while they set me up and loaded the gun again.

"I love you, Leonie," I called out from my awkward position on the floor. I just didn't want her to die without hearing that.

"I love you too, Dak," Leonie said quietly.

"Come on, people!" Paris called out from somewhere behind me. "They're married! Can't you cut them some slack?" I thought that if I ever got out of this I'd do something really nice for Paris. Maybe buy him a book on how to make Harvey Wallbangers, or the entire set of Rat Pack movies. Something like that.

A loud bang came from somewhere behind me. I couldn't see what happened, so I focused on Leonie's face, which happened to be looking at me.

"We would've had a great life together," I said to her.

Leonie smiled. "I know."

Behind me I could hear voices, but I was too caught up in her. She looked beautiful.

Glowing, actually. Like an angel. A gorgeous angel. The Madonna.

"Dak," she began.

"You don't have to say it." I wanted to make this as easy as possible for her. She didn't have to prove herself to me.

"I really need to tell you something," she persisted.

"Leonie, it's okay. I understand, or know, or whatever. There's nothing you could say that would affect how I feel for you at this very moment."

"I'm pregnant," Leonie said.

Chapter Thirty-five.

Tommy: "Roy, have you got the hammer?" "Roy, have you got the hammer?"

Roy: "Always got the hammer, Tommy." "Always got the hammer, Tommy."

-Death to Smoochy

I was filled with a feeling I'd never had before. For the first time in my life I was so mind-numbingly happy, I forgot all about where we were. Hell, I didn't mind that the very expensive condoms I kept in my nightstand had failed. In fact, I was happy they had, for the second time in my life. Louis was going to have a baby brother or sister! He'd love that.

"That's enough!" I heard my mother's voice scream behind me. "I've had it with you, Mother!" She sounded angrier than I'd ever heard her before.

Someone was lifting me and my chair upright. Paris and his dad, Uncle Pete, were untying me. I looked to my right and saw Mom's cousins Cali and Montana untying Leonie.

On the dais Lou's kids, York and Georgia, had guns trained on the Council, while Troy and Florence's kids, Burma and Asia, were glowering.

"No one . . . and I mean no one no one," Mom shouted, "pulls a gun on my unborn grandchild!" I watched in amazement as her brother and cousins nodded. This was a Bombay coup d'etat!

"Consider yourselves in retirement,"

Burma's crisp English accent admonished.

The five members of the Council faced the greater number of their own children. All eight of them. Without a word they handed their pistols over to York and Georgia. In a split second a new Council had taken over. It was an amazing thing to behold.

"How did you know?" I asked Mom after she spent several minutes fawning all over Leonie.

She turned to look at me with surprise.

"Missi called. She told me what happened in Vegas."

Missi popped up beside her, causing me to jump backward. "After you left Lulu told me the whole Council was in Vegas. That was more than I thought you could handle."

I saw Mom's eyebrows go up at the mention of Lulu, but to her credit she didn't ask.

"So I called your mom and mine and Operation Nursing Home commenced earlier than planned."

"Operation Nursing Home?" Paris asked.

"We've been planning to take over the Council for the past few years now," Mom explained. "We knew none of them would ever let go. So Pete and the cousins and I decided it was time for a new regime. We've been wanting to make some changes for a long time."

Leonie slumped into my arms. Apparently she'd had her fill of Bombay family fun for the day.

Paris and I took one of the Jeeps and drove to the airstrip on the island, and in a few hours the three of us were on our private jet en route to home.

We weren't sure if it was safe for Leonie at her house, so we checked her into a suite at the downtown Marriott, and Paris and I headed to my condo to pick up a few things.

We got to my place to find the door wide-open. I didn't ever leave it unlocked, let alone standing ajar. Quietly we slipped inside and locked the door behind us. Voices came from the hallway. They sounded like two men. I reached inside my coat closet and pulled out the hidden shotgun and handgun I kept there.

I pointed to Paris, silently telling him to take one side of the hallway. He nodded and we crept toward my bedroom. After making eye contact for a second, we burst into the room, guns blazing (which looked really cool, I'd bet).

Neil and Anders grinned sheepishly from their places on the floor. They were wrist-deep in my underwear drawer, and the whole image was something I wanted desperately to forget.

"What the hell hell?" I said, keeping the shotgun trained on Anders's midsection. "Doc Savages, I presume?" I asked in my best James Bond voice.

"Heh, heh." Neil laughed nervously. "Well, you see . . ." He looked at Anders, who conveniently shrugged.

Turned out our friends, the Mossad and CIA operatives, were looking for Paris's blackmail photos of them. They were both up for promotions, and Paris's threats of the photos were more than they could bear. So, they hired a couple of real lowlifes to break into my place, using my old obsession as a taunt to throw me off track.

And while I was relieved to hear that Doc Savage was no longer a threat, we were still pissed off at our old college buddies.

So it was little more than twenty-four hourslater that Neil and Anders found themselves naked, bound, and gagged in an S and M den in Paraguay, under the not-so-tender ministrations of a three-hundred-pound tranny dominatrix named Earl.

You just couldn't put a price on the digital photos Earl sent back. Oh, we would never send them to their office. Of course, they wouldn't know that.

Epilogue.

"I wish I could do something about this. But I can't. But I can promise you two things. One: I'll always look this good. Two: I'll never give up on you . . . ever."

-Hellboy, Hellboy Hellboy

"Just sign here, Mrs. Bombay," Eli Morgan said, pointing his knockoff Montblanc pen at a dotted line.

Leonie looked at me for a moment. Was she hesitating?

"You don't have to do this," I said, "if you're not ready."

She looked at the now frowning Mr. Morgan, then down at her round tummy.