After a minute, the basement sounds like it’s completely empty.
Jett holds up his hand, telling me and Patricia to wait, and then stalks deeper into the basement with his gun raised.
He returns a moment later.
“They’re gone. We’re safe. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
I hand Rebel to Patricia and then collapse against him, grabbing his blood-stained sweater in big fistfuls and sink into him as much as I can, holding so tightly nothing will ever be able to break us apart.
He reaches down and smooths his hand through my hair, tickling my scalp, the sensation spreading a thousand hands and smoothing all over my body, soothing me in a thousand different ways.
“I’ll never leave you,” he whispers, voice crackling with emotion, savage intensity boiling beneath his words. “For the rest of our lives, I’ll protect you. I’ll watch over you. Because you’re mine.”
“And you’re mine,” I sob, unable to keep the tears at bay anymore.
“Always,” he growls.
Chapter Nineteen
Jett
We take the road west, driving across the States, ending up in California. We could stay on the East Coast, but there’s too much messiness involved, too many opportunities for the Bratva to forget their discipline and try to right old wrongs.
This way, we’ll be forgotten, left to live our star-bright lives in peace.
It’s a messy ending, but they all too often are in the criminal world. In a perfect reality, Igor would be dead for what he did to Juliana’s parents, for what he’s done to countless other families.
But killing Igor would have been a mistake with so many Bratva witnesses. The only way to handle it would’ve been to slaughter all the men, and I didn’t want to start my new life like that.
With Juliana, I’m a new man.
I take us right to the west coast, to a beach house I purchased a month ago when I was planning to get out of the life. Patricia decided to come with us and set up a new event planning business out here.
“I’m sick of the cold winters and the unadventurous women, anyway,” she quipped when she told us her decision.
Juliana giggled and gave her a playful slap on the shoulder. “Is that Auntie Patricia I hear in your voice, hmm? You sound like you’re ready to conquer the world.”
The beach house isn’t decorated yet, but I know that my queen is going to right that wrong the first chance she gets.
For now, Juliana and I slump down on the simple couch in the living room together, her head resting on my chest and my arm wrapped around her shoulder. I kiss the top of her head, inhaling the just-Juliana scent of her hair.
The late afternoon sun filters through the blinds, dancing as the blinds shimmer in the light breeze through the open window.
Patricia and Rebel are elsewhere in the house, probably passed out together as they have every day we’ve been on the move. Juliana and I have always stayed together in the motel rooms, sometimes devouring each other’s bodies, sometimes just holding each other like we are now.
“What if he decides to come after us?” she murmurs, her voice catching.
“He won’t,” I growl. “In his world, having that recording released would be a fate worse than death.”
I don’t want to tell her about the other plan I put into play, right at the beginning of all this, when I spoke with my contact on the payphone.
I don’t want to get her hopes up or, if I’m being honest, my hopes either.
“I’ll always protect you,” I tell her. “And our children.”
“How many do you think we’ll have?” she whispers, her voice turning all dreamy with her lack of sleep, with her need for the future.
I keep my face buried in her hair, inhaling the scent of her with each breath, until my whole body is flooded with Juliana.
“Hundreds,” I chuckle, smirking.
“Hundreds?” she giggles. “Last time I checked, it takes nine months to make a baby. So I’m going to be giving birth until I’m – what? – ninety or something.”
“Ninety-six,” I say, moving my hands down to her belly and giving her a playful tickle. “But that’s assuming we don’t have twins and triplets. I think I can meet our target by the time you’re fifty.”
She giggles and looks up at me, her eyes bright, so stark and sincere they jab deep into my soul.
“Seriously.”
“Three—four—five,” I say. “As long as they’re healthy and happy, that’s all that matters to me.”
“Me too,” she murmurs. “Happy, with parents who love them.”
Love.
I will myself to tell her I love her, tell her the truth that’s been blazing through my mind every moment we’ve been moving west.
But I’ve got a special surprise in mind for that.
But there are things to arrange first.
There are pieces to put in play.
I close my eyes and lie back, envisioning my woman in a dress as white as an angel’s wings, radiant and wonderful as she walks down the aisle, her oaken hair cascading down to her shoulders and contrasting with the white of her dress.