CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
YEARS LATER
GAGE
“N atasha sent over a mock-up for the headstones.” Wells scowls, disgusted with the mere thought.
“Why the fuck are we even looking at gravestones?” Liam bites out, halting his tracks. “They’re missing, not dead.”
“In case,” Ty supplies, sprinkling gunpowder along the baseboards like it’s a goddamn art form. “She just wants our opinions. There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to weigh in later. And she, Axel, and Frank will all be pressured to hold funerals eventually.”
Wells rubs his gloved hand over his chin. “She’s panicking and grief-stricken. It will be years before anyone pushes the issue.”
“Agreed. It’s fucking morbid,” I hiss, kicking a body out of the way.
Ty stomps on the same guy’s face with a growl that masks the cracks from the skull crushing. “It’s different when foul play is suspected. The presiding judge could push for it after a couple of years.”
“I might actually get it,” I muse while stepping into the garage, throwing another dead guy over my shoulder, and hauling his cold ass into the family room. “I would have liked to be part of Ainsley’s funeral.”
“That’s so fucked up,” Liam scoffs.
“Not fucked up, dipshit,” I sneer through a grunt while I drop the corpse. “She watched me be lowered into the ground, tossed a handful of dirt on my coffin. And I know it was gutting. It seems like a suffering I should have endured.”
That wasn’t an option for countless reasons.
“I don’t want to fucking talk about it,” Liam snaps, his typical humor lost as he zeroes in on his work. “Let’s get this done and get the hell out of here.”
No one argues with that. Completing our task is far more important than this sickening conversation. Not that any of this is new for us. Our current situation has been brewing for years. We saw it coming. It was in slow motion at times, each frame freezing in a way that ached because we had to sit with it. Lie low. Meticulously plan. Get out ahead of one damn thing after another. This is the outcome of blood, sweat, and tears. Far too many tears.
What comes next is the easy part.
Natasha will figure out the details. She’s got Daniel and the three kids to help her. They’ll offer her a better direction than we can.
She asked us for opinions on our arrangements a long time ago. Between her getting older and the threats on our lives, she began fretting about the what-comes-next stage of our existence. And somehow, nailing down last wishes made it easier to swallow the inevitable.
But when she got responses like Liam insisting that she bury him with the inscription, Dick Long, a beloved gent who reached far and wide with the cards he was dealt, rode out his hand like a rugged bucking bronco, and was often blown away while keeping both of his heads in the game , she gave up. Of course he didn’t stop there. He had to drive home his point by telling her Celeste was to be buried beside him with the inscription, Celeste Carver. Dick Long’s game .
Poor Natasha. She never stood a chance with us.
No one ever does.
Squirting the gasoline like I’m pissing all over the cherry-wood cabinetry, I glance at the three guys, recalling the days when it stopped being the four of us. When we became more. “Do you think this is how Ivy did it?”
“The Little Storm would have been far more fucking graceful, even burning our shit.” Wells chuckles, pride illuminating his weary green eyes. “You look like a goddamn elephant wielding his hose.”
Liam clears his throat. “I’m going to check that everything is prepped upstairs. We should be ready to light soon.”
“Upstairs is done,” Ty croons, tossing his empty gunpowder can into our black duffel.
“I need to double-check the sauna room,” Liam insists, inching toward the steps.
Ty’s head whips toward him, brow furrowed. “It’s done, man. I just came from there. It’s all covered.”
“I’m checking anyway,” Liam shoots back, and we all stare him down.
He doesn’t break often. Internally maybe. But he keeps a brave face with us, so we usually have to push him to expose his pain. But now? He’s visibly crumbling.
Wells saunters over, gripping the back of Liam’s neck. “You can wait outside if this is too much.”
“Nah.” Liam shakes his head, but he can’t hide from the Chief. “I want to be here, for the beginning and the end. It’s just … that’s the kitchen Ivy and I designed.” He waves his hand at the two islands. “And where we all started and ended our days together.” Gesturing outside, he keeps going. Keeps breaking. “The pool where I fell in love with Celeste and the patio where I came to understand Ainsley. And beyond that are the fields where Rena grasped what it meant to be part of our family and where you worked the three of our asses into the ground every morning on that godforsaken obstacle course.”
He twists his torso and points to the great room. “And don’t get me started on the damn kids. That’s where the four of us went from self-centered assholes to parental figures, when we rocked Felicity to sleep and started calling her F-bomb.” He chokes back his sorrow with a nod to Ty for the quirky nickname before sliding his gaze to Wells again. “I could go on and on …”
This is the dark side of erasing. You might be granted a free pass, an escape, a new life, but it only comes at the cost of death. So, when he concludes his sentiment, we all feel the chill of it in the depths of our bones.
“This was my first real home.”
That is a weighty statement. And the truth of it is heaviest for him, maybe for me too in the sense of the walls of remembrance, but the absolute annihilation of losing Wicked all those years ago gave me an idea of what to expect. How scathing this wound would be. Wells and Ty once had homes and families they loved and had to say goodbye to. Not that it makes this any easier, but they may have been prepared for the anvil of emotion that would accompany our journey too. But Liam grew up here in a sense.
“The physical form goes up in smoke, not our memories,” Wells asserts, but that’s a crock of shit. He pawned most of Ivy’s paintings off on Natasha, unable to bear the image of them being destroyed.
None of us are immune to being singed by this.
Since Liam can’t seem to lighten things, I make a half-hearted attempt. “It’s also the kitchen where I fucked Ainsley while making you all cream-filled pastries, so …”
“That’s right,” Ty says with a smile. “Burn the place.”
For a beat, we all laugh, but it’s the kind of humor that hurts as much as it heals.
This is why Wells would never rush this step. The Chief always has the big picture and our best interest in mind. I’d suggested being reborn for years, so over the goddamn bullshit of the life we had fallen ass-backward into, but he knew this time around would be so much more devastating than the last. The more you have to leave behind, the more obliterating the massacre.
And we had so much here—people, property, and places we loved.
So, we took our time. Stayed. Waited until this life was no longer ours. There were moments it fucked with our psyches, disrupted our peace, but I suppose any seductive chess match will do that. There was also joy in the stillness. It was one slow move after another, slow enough to cradle the good times and strategize for the bad. These walls were both our safe haven and our captivity.
What set us apart and made us the team to beat was that we had the queens.
“Fuck,” Ty spits, glaring at his phone. “The story broke already.” He clicks on the news link and turns up the volume for us to hear the female reporter.
“Authorities are currently searching for a missing aircraft that seemingly vanished in North Atlantic airspace. While there has been no official report disclosing who was on board, the personal jet is owned by Ivanna Kingston, daughter of the late neurosurgeon, Dr. Thomas Kingston, who was beloved by his hometown and the medical community alike—”
“Jesus Christ,” Wells hisses, yanking on his hair as he scrambles to gather up our arson supplies. “Reporters will be poking around soon. We need to step it up, guys. We can mourn and remember later. Asses in gear.”
“… Sources from the private airfield in which the plane departed have revealed that aside from the flight crew, Ivanna Kingston was joined by two other notable females. Celeste Carver, granddaughter of Senator Nathaniel Carver—”
“One fucking complication after another,” I grumble, dragging one of the bodies further into the middle of the family room. “Nothing ever goes goddamn smooth.”
“I’ve got multiple igniting points ready.” Liam glances at his work, having stuffed all the emotions down due to our setback. “The whole house should go up in under five minutes.”
“… Rena Noire, the youngest of the six sibling owners of the La Lune Noire hospitality empire—”
“There’s one more guy I need to move in,” I tell them, realizing the news break and thus our expedited timeline threw me off. Making quick work of it, I grab the last stiff from the garage and dash back inside to throw him in with the others.
Wells swings his covetous stare to the door I just came from. “It’s fucking criminal to incinerate those cars.”
“That’s for sure,” Ty wheezes, his face twisted in a blend of nostalgia and agony. “Certainly sells it.”
“… While nothing official has been announced, there is speculation of foul play, as all three women have been loosely connected to the odd string of crimes that have surged the past few weeks. Sources report that the primary suspect is a well-known tycoon, but no names have been released at this time. The FBI is investigating.”
As an extra means of insurance, I chain the four dead guys to the fireplace and return to the kitchen to help pack up. In the investigation, it will appear as though they were trapped. Murdered.
They being us . Because we got damn sick of the nameless media billionaire coming for us. So, when we finally secured his identity—discovering that the answer to our torment had indeed been in front of us years ago when our girls were targeted at La Lune Noire, as we’d suspected—we decided to frame him for a slew of crimes. Including our homicides. That’s the thing about not existing according to any records: any poor schmuck can pose as you. Dead or alive.
If we’re starting over, we might as well do it with the tranquility of knowing the bastard’s time is up. Much like the Morellis and Vittoris. Because since the well-known tycoon was initially connected through Theo Vittori, we eradicated the remaining foot soldiers in both families and left a trail that led directly to him as the mastermind. The four men chained up are Morellis who had no identifiable records.
It did take years to annihilate the town as a whole, regarding connected individuals, not innocents. That was part of lying low. But we got it done. No one fucking left.
We’ve freed ourselves from the grips of the CIA with this scheme too. And I’d be willing to bet that instead of our billionaire bastard being locked up, he ends up dead. The CIA won’t risk him revealing secrets about us and incriminating them.
But the thing with games and combat alike is that you win some, you lose some. That’s always been the way with us. Our skill is unmatched. Mano a mano , we’re unbeatable. But every war has lost battles on both sides. This was no exception.
He who laughs last, laughs loudest though. The mood is somber right now, but I’m sure in the end, that will hold true.
The sliding door beyond the morning room whirs open, and Ainsley’s voice filters through to us, growing closer with each word. “Hey, the news broke—”
“Don’t come in here,” I bark as the three guys all shout similar commands at her.
In the years since her death as Ainsley Morelli, we’ve disguised her and called her Leigh or Wicked whenever in public. Not that there were many outings. That was a challenge, one more piece of the puzzle to try our patience.
“I just wanted to tell you that Newsmax reported on the plane,” she says with a hefty dose of sass. “Fuckers can’t follow a damn order. It’s the news, for God’s sake. Knowing the date is like half their stupid job.”
Wells chuckles under his breath. He always appreciates Ainsley’s irritation with other people’s incompetence.
“ Mamalukes ,” Liam hollers back to her.
“Damn straight,” she volleys, and the mirth in her tone is undeniable.
“It’s like a tomb in here,” Rena yells, and Ty huffs out, “Motherfucker,” at the sound of her warble.
They were told to wait in the van. We didn’t want the gasoline on them or the vision in their minds.
“Are you boys blitzing our house without a freaking playlist?” she chastises.
A chorus of giggles greets us, and we all mosey out of the kitchen to glimpse our four girls just beyond the threshold of the morning room.
Smiling. Ear to fucking ear.
Because even though the guys and I demanded that we handle this without them, they’re all far stronger than we are. They adapt and bounce and hold us the fuck together.
“I listened to ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ ” Ivy volunteers.
Liam beams at her, his mouth quirked into a lopsided smile. “You jammed to a peppy Beatles song while reducing our life to ashes?” He flicks his eyes to Celeste with a teasing twinkle. “When you were arbitrating recess politics, Ace, did you scout the playground for the wide-eyed ginger with killer instincts and a black soul? Your secret weapon?”
“ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ is an impeccable choice,” Rena commends, singing the lyrics to herself.
Ty winks at his wife. “My Little Moon would know.”
She curtsies. “Thanks, sexy sailor.”
“Secret weapon, but not a black soul. It’s the way a queen approaches those types of obstacles,” Celeste razzes since she can likely read that her husband is falling apart and she knows gibes revive him.
“Or a psycho,” I contend with a megawatt grin plastered on my face.
“Takes one to know one,” Ainsley pipes up at the same time Liam hurls his arm toward me, bellowing, “Out of the mouth of babes.”
Both retorts have everyone cracking up, so I mimic Rena’s curtsy.
“Skittles has a point,” Ty jeers, side-eying my delicate bow.
“Both are fitting,” Ivy counters with a shrug, always unapologetically her. “I’ll own the title—psychotic queen.”
Adoration is etched all over Wells’s face, but authority laces his tenor. He’s stressed. “We’ll only be another minute, Little Storm. Go sit with the kids in the van.”
We’ve got a fifteen-passenger van packed and ready to bolt out the back of our property, using the drive for the shelter. That exit is already covert, so we’ll make it out undetected and be on our way. Of course, we expected to have another twenty-four hours before the story broke, but bumps in these types of affairs are a given.
“Can’t do it, Chief,” she replies with a smirk. “The kids are asleep. And you guys are doing this all wrong.”
I scoff, arms crossed over my chest to refute this playful bullshit. “Says the badass we trained.”
“Not on fire, Big Guy,” Ainsley argues, her glacial blues frolicking with mischief as she side-hugs our snarky redhead. “Isn’t Ivy our resident arsonist?”
“We’re almost done,” Ty begins with his signature mollifying glint. “But go ahead, Freckles. Give it to us.”
Expert techniques aren’t really what we need even if she possesses them. Everything about this is designed to point the investigators to the telltale mistakes found in most arson sites, especially those arrogant enough to believe there’s no chance of getting caught. Our guy has been profiled. Arrogance might as well be his middle name.
But, as usual, Ivy’s direction isn’t one we were anticipating.
“Dissociate,” she answers simply, and when none of us respond, her gaze docks on Liam. “This doesn’t break us. It builds us. Decide it. Enjoy it. Celebrate it. Because what makes this different from the perspective I’d had during my experience is that everything that shaped this into our home is coming with us.”
He nods, and Celeste kisses Ivy’s hair.
“If you’re going nowhere,” Ainsley starts, and all three girls finish in unison, watery eyes set on us, “We’re coming with you.”
“Music,” Rena trills, rubbing her round baby belly with a whoop because we’re all momentarily choked up. So much for dissociating.
“We need to move,” Wells says.
“Agreed.” Celeste spins her index finger in a circle, flaunting her dominant confidence. “Grab your shit, and we’ll have a patio dance party as a parting gift to the French chateau.”
And that’s exactly what they do. While we wrap up, their voices carry into us.
They work through several songs, debating on what is the best fit. The first several are what Ivy categorizes as low-hanging-fruit—“We Didn’t Start the Fire,” “Burning Down the House,” “Burning Love,” and “Play with Fire.” She has a point.
“They’re going on the playlist anyway,” Rena declares before suggesting, “ ‘Mad Hatter’ by Melanie Martinez.”
But by the time we gather our things and make it to the entertainment area, they’ve settled on “Bang!” by AJR and are flitting around like we’re at a beach bonfire, not setting our life ablaze. Because that’s what they do—they brighten the darkest moments.
That’s even true of Wicked, who has the uncanny ability to strut into the murky shadows, no matter how eviscerating they may seem, and slay them.
My beautiful demon transforms Hell into Heaven.
Sweeping my wife into my embrace, I cup her cheek and nip at her lips before licking the seam. She opens for me, letting me in. A soft purr escapes her, seeping into my mouth as our tongues tangle. My fingers on one hand sink into her silky locks as my others dig into the curve of her ass. She fists my shirt, erasing any space between us and anchoring us together.
Every kiss with her is as passionate as the first, maybe even more so, like she’s always afraid it could be our last. That used to nettle me because it was a small reminder of the pain and all the ways I’d failed her. But over the years, it morphed into a gift, a testament to our unwillingness to squander a single second. Not because we’re being berated by a clock, but because we’re aware how valuable every interaction is—from a romantic rendezvous to a swift kiss during a mundane Wednesday task. All of them are treasures.
Ivy’s words from a conversation we had shortly after Ainsley came to us drift through my mind.
“Sometimes, pain is a sign of privilege. We only grieve because we got to love … hardships can be reminders of the gifts. Tokens of a beautiful life.”
I’m not sure I grasped it at the time. I was too scorned. Too stuck in the anguish to sift out any gold from what I’d had. It all hurt so fucking much then. But being privy to Ainsley’s fight to overcome all she’d endured, witnessing the countless ways this family conquers whatever plagues us while always clutching and shielding one another, and preparing to burn it all down so we can start fresh? Yeah, these are my tokens of a beautiful life.
The souls I get to call mine.
“Time to light it, girls,” Liam announces, shifting us into our final steps. “Why don’t you go get in the van?”
Ivy checks the baby monitor she has in her hand. “The kids are still sleeping. Let’s do this together.”
There is no point in objecting because the girls are all sporting determined expressions, so without further ado, we all gather around, and Ivy does the honors.
The flick of a match.
A crackling spark.
A wheezing blaze devouring it all.
And vomiting ashes.
There might be music crooning, but that’s merely the background beat to the whoosh of the writhing flames that extend a chilling heat and a bruising balm.
I’m not gonna lie. It fucking stings.
The sulfuric fragrance wafts out to us, my nostrils itching, eyes prickling—nature’s warning of the beast guzzling what was ours.
And I know I’m not the only one with a lump in my throat, a pit in my stomach, and hope in my soul. It’s fascinating that one symbol is used to represent both eternal damnation and purification. But what better way to transition our lives when we’ve all been equally scorched and set free by fire time and again?
I’d say Ivy torching our Ohio house set it all in motion. That was our entrance into KORT, much like this represents our retreat. And in between, it’s been one fire after another in this life. Both literally and figuratively. But I don’t regret any of them. It’s as though the answer to our deliverance was in our own backyard all along—whether it be the phoenix gripping the sword that Ivy warned us with or the blueberry fields that Ty planted because he promised his Little Moon growth after the burn.
This was always our destiny. Walking through hellfire to emerge on the other side together. But to know we’ll take down the motherfuckers who kept us in shackles all these years makes every goddamn tormenting lick of this cremation worth it.
And as a pall of puffy smoke melds with the inky clouds, we turn our backs on the house, on what was, on the warmth of that life.
And hold on to what fucking matters most.
My lips press into Ainsley’s temple with a gentleness that is rarely how I’d depict us, but everything about having her in my arms as we strut to our getaway vehicle makes me all fucking gooey inside. “Our love is truly immortal, Ains. We’re the only ones here who have been together in every life.”
She nods, her chin wobbly because under her tough exterior, my wife is a sentimental fool. And she’s melting. Her icy blues rollick with the reflection of the blaze inside them. “One dying breath after another, until we end up with eternity. Even if it means I need to haunt your ass.”
So much better than till death do us part .
“I’m counting on it,” I quip, flashing her the demented grin that gets her all hot and bothered. “Nine lives with my sexy fucking feline and then an afterlife with her naughty spirit.”
She stops dead in her tracks, her gaze veering to the inferno of all we’re saying goodbye to, before returning to me with some sort of epiphany. “I’m a goddamn lion.”
“You sure are, Wicked.” I brush back her wild mane, and the realization that the possibilities for what’s next are limitless cloaks the entire scene.
We resume our trek to the van, and Celeste nuzzles into my other side just as Wells yanks Ainsley into his arms. Ty and Ivy do a quick rundown of correlating movies. And Liam and Rena dance like Charlie Brown characters. It’s just another day with our crazy family.
When we reach the van, the girls climb inside with the kids, and Ainsley rasps, “You always deliver the orange, Big Guy ,” before sliding the door closed.
More to come, baby.
The guys and I stand together, the four of us soaking in the flames. And I’m fucking teeming with appreciation for an ending so goddamn worthy of the celebration the girls insisted upon and the theme music they chose. Talk about going out with a damn bang.
Scorch. Stack. And motherfucking salt.
But Wells kicks that off first in pure Chief fashion. “We accomplished a lot in this life.”
Ty shakes his head, his internal war apparent, as always. “We toed the line between gray morals and black souls.”
“Weathered some fucked-up battles and became who we needed to be,” Liam corrects with a snick of his Zippo.
“All true, brothers.” I chuckle, patting them each on the back. “But it all boils down to us winning against every son of a bitch we faced. We got the girls. And we’re going out like the goddamn Romans in Carthage. By Charring Bones.”