Baptized.
Reborn.
Or maybe just… living.
He was mine.
I was his.
Regardless of the past.
This.
This destructive chaos was our future.
Hours later, I was sprawled out across him. “You awake?”
“Yeah.” His voice was hoarse. “You?”
“Obviously.” I laughed.
“Asking me to leave this life… my family,” he started. “It’s like taking a knife to my heart. It’s in my blood. My veins. My bones.”
“I would never ask you to,” I said simply. “First off, the world’s a safer place with your rage firmly in it—and second he asks, well second, how could anyone be upset over how you protect your blood? Your family? It’s heroic.”
“I kill people.” He groaned.
I smiled against him. “When you put it that way…”
“Does your dad know she showed up?”
“Oh, he heard us yelling at each other at about the same time Phoenix, Tank, and every other boss came running out half-drunk and confused and by then Junior and Serena had run out of the house, and well let’s just say Claire had a lot of sorries to say—she owes you one too. But not now.”
“I don’t. I can’t.” Panic rose in my chest. “I don’t know if I can see her.”
“Your choice.” I kissed her on the nose. “According to a very apologetic and sad text from Scary Dad, her flight back to New York leaves in the morning.”
I tried to keep it in but couldn’t. I just couldn’t. “How could she?” And then. “I gave her my pearls, I gave—”
“About that.” Ash made a face in the dark. A guilty face. A rare face. “I kind of couldn’t stand to see you lay the only thing your mom had given you down into the dirt, so I replaced them with a fake set and had yours cleaned. They’re in the right drawer of my nightstand.”
“What? You did that?”
Ash ignored my question with one of his own. “One more thing.” He kissed my lips softly. “Did I hurt you… that night?”
“You freed me,” I found myself saying.
“Until the stars fall,” he whispered.
I froze. “You mean the sky?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I like this version better—our version. Until the stars fall.”
“Until the stars fall,” I whispered against his skin.
Epilogue
“Life is not a problem but a reality to be experienced.”— Soren Kierkegaard
Tank
I rode with Annie to the airport.
I saw her confront Claire.
There were tears.
Yelling.
Hugging.
And then… this huge part of Ash’s life, of Annie’s, just flew off.
It was better that way.
For everyone. For the healing that needed to take place, though, I knew, it had wrecked a lot of us, made our trust just a bit frayed.
Especially when it came to me still being in the FBI, playing both sides as much as I could.
Which left me here, at the Capo’s compound celebrating Spring Break and drinking wine, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Listen up!” Serena pulled out a whistle and blew it while everyone was groaning from hangovers for the last night. “We’re going on a trip!”
“My mouth literally tastes like sand and not the nice kind full of colors but the rotten kind and shit, whoever that is, stop mouth breathing!” Maksim groaned.
“It’s the cat.”
“We don’t have a cat.” Ash fell back against Annie like he needed about a million more years of sleep after all their noise last night in the bathroom during movie night. It’s like they never slept.
Only. Sex.
As if on cue, something randomly meowed. The hell?
“Who the fuck stole a cat last night?” Valerian roared.
Maksim looked down at the scratches on his chest. “I admit nothing until my lawyer is present.”
“He just wanted some pussy,” King piped up and then burst out laughing, earning groans from everyone around them.
I was still seeing double thanks to no sleep after trailing behind Kartini, who did nothing but taunt me at every single opportunity. When she wasn’t wearing low cut outfits, she was talking about another tattoo or piercing, and when she wasn’t drinking, she was vaping, and when she wasn’t doing any of those things, she was dancing or binge-watching.
She was the epitome of a sleep study for the FBI—survive her, and congrats, you can do your job without going insane.
So a vacation?
Sounded incredible.
Thank God I wouldn’t have to go.
“So we decided to elope.” Serena grinned. Was she seriously still talking? “And all of you are going to be there, and we do mean all of you.” I literally hid behind a bottle of booze only to earn a glare from Serena that said she could clearly see what I was trying to do.
“Looks like we’re gonna be spending a lot more time together then, huh, Tank?” Kartini squeezed my thigh.
My body shook. Yup, I was definitely going to puke.
“I uh, have a thing.” I lied out my ass.
“Change it.” Serena glared, clearly eavesdropping. “Or I’ll march my ass right up to headquarters holding my hot pink gun and—”