Epilogue
Zane Lewis shoved his hand into his pocket and wrapped his hand around the jump drive.
His eyes remained on the Chapel Dome, but his thoughts were in Brazil.
One second. That was all it took for the world to change.
“You got a second?” Kira asked before she entered Zane’s office.
Zane looked up from the contract his wife had placed on his desk, complete with sticky tabs marking where he needed to sign. The woman knew he wouldn’t read the contract. It wouldn’t be on his desk unless the terms were exactly as he expected. There was no need to double check his wife’s work.
“You didn’t miss anything,” Zane told her.
“Boss—”
“No, Kira. You call me boss when you’re being a pain in the ass, not when you’re standing in my office to explain all the ways you think you fucked up.
You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t miss anything.
I know you don’t want to believe this, Mini-Me, but sometimes we don’t get a hundred percent of the intel, a hundred percent of the time.
Sometimes we get it three days too late.
Sometimes when we get it, it’s fucked. You’re damn near perfect, KK, don’t sweat the one percent. ”
“But, Stella—”
“Trust me when I tell you everything worked out the way it was supposed to.”
“But—”
Zane interrupted her again. “She deserves peace, Kira. She’s worked hard for it. If that piece of shit had been laid at her feet, she would’ve had to make a decision. Now it’s behind her.”
Zane held his cyber specialist’s gaze. A woman who had come to him full of snark and sass, hiding the pain of loss.
A woman who had found her place, her home.
A woman who owned a piece of his heart—the little sister he never had, never knew he needed, but she filled something in him when she came to work for him.
“Peace or revenge,” she muttered.
“Peace or revenge,” Zane confirmed.
“I’m still going to find out how he slipped past all of my protocols,” she huffed.
“Do I work here?” Stella asked as she barged into Zane’s office.
Zane looked up from his email, asking his own stupid question since he had her report in his inbox. “Where are you on the Holland Case?”
She rolled her eyes and he thought for the seven-millionth time over the year that men were easier than women. They didn’t roll their eyes, they slung insults, and if the need were to arise, beat the hell out of each other.
“Already wrapped up and sent to you. And seriously, all these years I thought Z Corps did super spy shit.”
“A favor for a friend. His daughter is hellbent on marrying this guy. Jared doesn’t like him; thinks he’s playing his girl. He needed more than a gut feeling.”
Stella shook her head, a look of pure disgust washing over her pretty face.
“He is. Or they both are. His texts and DMs are full of spicy convos with women who are not his fiancée and she’s got pictures of herself in her bedroom with a pile of clothes on a chair in the corner—a plaid shirt and leather jacket that are not the fiancé’s, but they do belong to the fiancé’s best friend, if the group pictures she posted from a week ago are anything to go by.
So, good luck with the call to your friend. ”
Fucking favors.
“Great, thanks. Kira has a new file for you.”
“I don’t work here.”
“You don’t?”
Stella looked to the wall of windows. Once he had her in profile, he took her in.
Blair McKnight.
Stella Eloise.
Lore.
Stella Phillips.
A woman who had been forced down a path she had no business traveling.
A pawn.
Now a woman who lived life on her terms.
The Queen to Cash’s King.
When her gaze came back to his, he saw it, everything she’d never say.
Gratitude.
With a nod, she walked out.
Zane didn’t look up. He didn’t have to, he knew the feel of his woman when she was close. The change in the air when she was near, her smell, the sound of her footsteps. The peace she brought.
Before she rounded his desk, he’d already pushed back and swiveled, ready for her.
Every day, multiple times a day, Ivy came to him and sat on his lap, for no other reason than to check his pulse.
He knew the moment she saw it, though she didn’t know exactly what she saw.
“Why do you have Eric’s bullet out?” Ivy whispered.
Zane’s gaze went from the thumb drive to the .
308 bullet with Wheeler etched on the brass.
The one that was normally tucked into the flag that was folded and displayed—not proudly but with honor—behind his desk.
He’d long ago explained the meaning of that bullet.
As far as he knew, all of his men carried one—a round with your name engraved on it.
A superstition that was nothing more than a delusion.
A fallacy, that if a man carried the bullet with his name on it, he wouldn’t catch one from the enemy.
Not that a round had ended Eric Wheeler.
He’d given his life.
Freely, selflessly, to save the lives of the men he called brothers.
“I’ve kept a lot of secrets,” Zane started. “All of them out of obligation. But this one feels wrong.”
Not a flinch. No stiffness. No shifting. Nothing but trust. That was what Ivy gave him. She wasn’t worried—whatever secrets he was protecting wouldn’t harm her.
“Whatever it is, you’re doing it for the right reasons.”
“How do you know?”
Ivy lowered her head to her husband’s shoulder, kissed the underside of his jaw, and whispered, “Because I know you. You are a man who protects those he loves no matter the cost. Even when the price chips at your soul, you don’t back down.”
Zane Lewis sat with his beautiful wife on his lap. The mother of his children. The woman who had given him everything, and he waited for the harmony only she could provide to come.
But for the first time since he’d laid eyes on her, that peace never came.
Six men and one woman stood in front of a granite headstone.
Over the years—twenty-five of them to be exact—they’d made this pilgrimage.
It never got easier.
But this year felt different.
“Heard the boys are coming home on leave,” Jax said, looking at Linc.
“Tomorrow. Got ‘em for two days before they spin up,” Linc returned.
“Where are they…what the fuck?”
Everyone turned in unison to watch a tall, dark-haired man weave through the tombstones.
A dead man walking.
“Holy shit,” Jasmin whispered and pitched to the side to lean on her husband.
And now Zane Lewis knew why today felt different.
Today was the day he’d pay the price for the secret he’d never told a soul.
“That’s impossible,” Colin grunted as the man stopped a few feet away.
Intelligent brown eyes sliced through the group before landing on the marker. He didn’t make a move, but he felt it.
Eric Wheeler
Long Live The Brotherhood
Nothing else.
There should’ve been more carved into that granite.
So much fucking more.
His eyes lifted and cut through the group once more.
Navy working uniform—nametape—Wheeler.
“I’m Zander,” he introduced himself.
The sound of his voice, so much like his father’s, was like shrapnel to the gut.
“I take it you’re the men who served with my dad.”
The collective inhale was so deep it rattled the trees nearby.
Yeah, the day had come.
It was time to introduce Eric’s son to the team.