“Come with us.” Sia led me forward. The sun was shining and the weather was warm. I followed them around the small cluster of trees. Then . . . I stopped in my tracks, seeing what was looking at me from underneath the shade of a sycamore tree.
My hands shook, and I knew tears were falling from my eyes as I stared down at the ground . . . at two white marble headstones. One reading, “Aia Durand, loving wife and mother.” The other reading, “Dominic Durand, loving father and husband.” A choked, pained sound came from my throat when I edged closer and saw the picture . . . my picture of them, the one I had kept in my side drawer for so many years; it was engraved into each of the stones.
“Love doesn’t see color. Only pure hearts” was etched on the bottom of each headstone, below the dates of their births and deaths.
My legs couldn’t take it. I fell to my knees. I held out my hand and ran my fingers over the headstones. One at a time, seeing their faces in my head as I did so. But seeing them smiling. Not that night. Seeing them so fucking perfectly. Seeing them when they danced in the kitchen like no one was looking. Sitting on the porch, on the swing, hand in hand . . . and seeing Mamma watching from the doorway as my papa played his trumpet to me as I fell to sleep.
“How?” I whispered, the engravings blurring with my tears.
“Mrs. Moreau and I talked,” Cowboy said. “She agreed that you, their son, should have them be wherever you are.” I stared at that picture, my heart fucking swelling so big I thought it would burst free from my chest. “We exhumed their graves and brought them here, to Texas . . . to you.”
“To us,” Sia added, and my eyes closed.
My head fell forward and my hands planted in the grass beneath my fingers. Nine years. For nine years I had missed them. I’d felt the injustice that in death they weren’t together, when they’d vowed never to be apart. A vow they kept until the choice was taken from their hands.
And then Cowboy and Sia, the people I loved most in the entire world, brought them to me, to sleep side by side for eternity.
Finally together, at last. No more hatred. No more pain . . . simply peace, and each other. My throat was so clogged, I didn’t think I’d be able to speak. But I managed to whisper, “Thank you.” And I knew, although it was real quiet, that they heard it.
Sia dropped beside me first. I pulled her into my arms. She held me right back, her tears falling on my bare shoulders. I laid my forehead on hers. “Thank you, älskling,” I murmured. I pressed my lips to hers and kissed her. Kissed her over and over again until she understood just what this meant to me.
I felt Cowboy sit beside me too. I looked at my best friend, and he nodded. “It was time,” he said. “It was time they came back to us again.” He shrugged, and then said huskily, “I miss them too, every day.” He looked away into the distance. “They were my parents too, in the end . . .”
Wrapping my hand around his neck, I pulled him in. “Merci.” I felt him rub my head. When we pulled back, Sia melted against my side. I held her close, just fucking living in the moment.
As I stared at my parents’ graves, I understood why they did it. How they survived all those years of hatred and abuse. Never losing their smiles, their love . . . never losing hope.
Because the way they loved each other deserved to be fought for, with everything they were . . . and it deserved to be victorious against those who only held hate in their hearts.
They loved and they lived for themselves, and no one else. As I felt Cowboy and Sia on either side, I knew I had that too. And if anyone couldn’t accept us, then I would fight too. Despite years of not believing it, I now knew for certain that I deserved this. I deserved my Sia and my best friend forever by my side.
So I vowed I would live for the parents who didn’t get the chance to grow old together.
And I would love.
I would be happy.
Because I finally was . . . so fucking happy.
The End
Bonus Chapter
Crow
Louisiana
“Welcome!”
I held my arms out wide as the final cunt, Jase Du Pont, walked through the door. His eyes widened, then the same instinct to run kicked into him as all those I’d killed before.
The door slammed shut before he could escape, courtesy of my brother, Thunder, standing outside. Brother had, as always, helped me in this new game of Hades’ Choice.
Du Pont’s head whipped around. I watched, my dick getting real fucking hard, as his eyes found his friends. He stumbled back, and I put my hand in my pocket and ran my fingers over my marble dice.
“What the fuck is this?” Du Pont’s piss-ant voice shook as he tried to push against the door.
I frowned, then looked over at his friends. “What do you mean?” I asked. “It’s a Klan meeting. That’s why you’re here, no?” We’d known the assholes would never have missed a good old Klan meeting. Piece of fucking cake to get them here.
It was fucking disappointing just how easy it was.
Du Pont stayed silent, his eyes darting from me to his friends. I walked to where they sat and took a white hood off one of their heads. I crouched down, studying his face real hard. My eyes narrowed. “Davide’s here, see?” Du Pont’s breathing came hard, until he moved his head and puked on the ground. I shrugged, then put the white hood back on Davide’s head. “Guess it’s hard to make him out now.”
I stood and approached Du Pont. He scrambled back against the wall. As I came closer, he froze, his eyes like a deer in headlights.
“Who the fuck’re you?” His eyes fell to my cut. “Hades Hangmen? Who the fuck are they?”
I smiled a cold fucking smile. Du Pont’s nose flared as he looked at me . . . the full length of me. I glanced down too, seeing the blood on my arms. I knew it was on my face as well. I could smell it. “You bothered by the blood?” I asked. Du Pont skirted across the wall of the old barn, trying to get away from me. I followed him, tracking him with my eyes everywhere he went. I dusted at the blood on my arm. “It belongs to your friends.” Du Pont stopped dead. I pointed my thumb to the back wall. “Davide, Pierre, Stan. Your friends, right?”
“What the fuck have you done to them?” he asked, voice breaking with fear.
I fucking loved the smell of fear.
My head twitched, and I smiled. “This is it, yeah?” I gestured around the old barn.
“What?”
“Where you tied up my brother.” I pointed to the door. “Just out there. Tied him to a tree.”
Du Pont shook his head. “What the fuck are you—” He stopped mid-sentence, then looked back at his friends. At how they died. The way Hades’ dice had chosen to take them.
“Branded an ‘N’ into his back and then left him to fucking die . . . Ring any bells?”
Du Pont began shaking his head. A desperate smile—my favorite kind of smile—came on his lips. “Valan?” He laughed. “We were just fucking around. We were kids.”
My blood thickened in my veins as the cunt continued to speak, trying to dig himself out of his white-power hole. I didn’t know what the fuck he said. My mind drifted off at the thought of cutting out this asshole’s tongue and sending it to his Grand Wizard in a shiny silver gift box.
Of sending his tiny severed dick to his wife on her birthday.
Feeling Hades’ dice warm in my pocket, I cut the shit and punched the fucker right in his jaw. He fell to the ground, eyes dazed and head slumping to his chest. Dragging him by his c
ollar, I dumped him on a chair in the center of the barn, next to an upturned old barrel. I tied his arms and legs to the chair and waited on a stool on the opposite side of the barrel.
I closed my eyes and inhaled. The dice burned, waiting to be thrown. The smell of charred skin traveled up my nose.
It was a real good fucking smell.
A quick breath came from across me. I smiled before I’d even opened my eyes.
It was time to play.
“Hades has a game,” I said and slowly opened my eyes. Du Pont’s stunned eyes fell on me, trying to focus. I leaned forward, forearms on my thighs. My leg twitched as adrenaline built inside me . . . waiting for the game to begin. I rolled my neck, my cock getting hard at what I knew would be coming. I glanced down at the inked crow on my arm. Its red eyes looked up at me as I lifted my elbow.
The scent of oncoming death filled the room.
“Hades?” Du Pont asked, trying to pull against his ties. “What the fuck are you talking about, you psycho?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my dice. I rolled them in my hand, the marble cubes dancing over my fingers. Du Pont’s eyes fell to them. He swallowed. Sweat dripped from his brow.
“You killed the Durands.” Du Pont’s face turned white as those words slipped from my mouth. He pulled harder against his ties.
My dice rolled faster and faster through my hands. I could hear the fucker’s harsh breathing from here.
It was fucking music to my ears.
“The Dark Lord decides if you live or die,” I shook the dice in my fist, hovering it above the barrel. “Hades’ Choice.” Du Pont watched my hand. My head tipped to the side. “What will I roll?” His eyes quickly searched mine. “What number will they show?”
Du Pont shook his head. “You can’t be serious.”
“Choose,” I snarled, shaking the dice harder. I leaned forward, his friends’ blood mixing with a falling drop of sweat from my brow. Fucker watched it fall to the ground. Du Pont’s eyes flew to his friends, and his face crumbled, no doubt seeing what his future would be if he chose wrong.