EPILOGUE
FIVE YEARS LATER
The soft breeze threads through my hair, carrying just enough relief to cut through the lingering heat of a Vegas evening. It’s one of those days where the sun seems determined to bake every surface, even as the sky begins to blush with the impending sunset.
The hem of my white summer dress brushes against my knees as I crouch down and place a bouquet of roses gently on the grave in front of me, the writing on the headstone clear thanks to a ray from the light of the sinking sun.
Rose ‘Rosie’ Lane. Beloved daughter, niece, and sister.
“Told you I’d bring you flowers,” I whisper, the contentment of fulfilling that promise not enough to outweigh the loss. “Only took me five years.”
I glance over my shoulder and up at Koen, who stands behind me, not even considering hiding the grief on my face for a moment.
I don’t do that anymore with any of them, not that I could ever hide from this man anyway.
The sun is at his back as he offers me a hand, his brown eyes locked on mine.
In one fluid movement, he pulls me to standing and positions my back against his front, then sweeps my hair away from my face and presses a kiss to my temple.
“I don’t think she minds,” he murmurs. “Right, Rosie girl?”
Beside us, Levi lets go of Ezra only long enough for him to place his own bouquet—peonies, not roses—on their mother’s grave, right beside Rosie’s. “I think they’re happy we’re happy.”
My gaze drifts to the third headstone, the one etched with a name that still tugs at my heart in its own complicated bouquet of emotion.
Oscar Lane. Uncle, friend, and greatest magician Vegas has ever seen.
Sylus and Ace stand vigil while Nicholas carefully arranges sunflowers on Oscar’s grave. He brought them all the way from Tuscany, just like the rest of the flowers lying in front of the graves now.
Tuscany.
Our home is a little slice of heaven. It’s not just a villa or really what anyone would describe as little.
A winding street lined with cypress trees leads to our home, and the house itself is sprawling and sunlit, with a terracotta roof and vines creeping along the walls.
The surrounding land is perfection, and our home sits perched on top of one of those postcard-perfect hills.
Then there are the flower fields. Rows upon rows of flowers dotting the space behind the house.
Nicholas planted them all himself, tending to every seed with a care that’s so inherently him.
When he’s not in the fields, he’s in the little shop he opened in the next town over, smiling as he sells his bouquets and talks about all things flowers with the locals.
He’s so damn content and confident like he’s finally found the piece of himself that was missing.
As if sensing my thoughts, Nicholas strokes one last sunflower petal as he lays it just so, stands, and turns his gaze to me.
That boyish grin of his spreads across his face the moment our eyes meet, dimples and all, and I can’t help but smile back.
He’s picked up parkour courses again, teaching the kids in the town over.
They adore him for it—his energy, his patience, the way he cheers them on. He loves it as much as they do.
For the first time, he’s free. Truly, really, free as he lives his dream completely separate from the Harrington name.
In fact, he ditched that, too, when he decided to change his last name. He’d asked me if I wanted him to take mine, Evans, but I told him that we both knew which name he really should pick.
So now, the man before me with a bright smile and clear eyes is Nicholas Lane.
Koen had shrugged at the gesture, saying he’d felt like a brother for years anyway. Levi, on the other hand, cried as he hugged Nicholas so hard I thought they’d both fall over.
We’d all considered changing our names at first, thinking we’d have to disappear after what went down in Vegas. But Ezra kept an eye on the police reports for weeks, and Sylus hacked into everything he could get his hands on to monitor the fallout, and we realized it wasn’t necessary.
In the end, the charges against us were minor.
Staging an unauthorized public performance.
Disturbing the peace.
Reckless endangerment due to crowd panic.
Tampering with private property.
Illegal drone usage.
Grand theft auto.
All things we could live with or, more accurately, pay our way out of if they ever managed to track us down.
Veronica couldn’t say the same, though. The evidence we’d presented at the show was so damning that even her best lawyers couldn’t spin it. She went down hard, along with her lackeys. With her empire crumbling, the authorities didn’t have much interest or time to spare for us.
Before long, Levi’s predicted headline became a reality, and Veronica Harrington was sentenced to life for murder, money laundering, and human trafficking.
Calling it gratifying doesn’t even begin to cover it. Watching her fall was nothing short of poetic justice. It wasn’t just victory. It was vindication.
For Oscar.
And for us.
When Nicholas steps back, Sylus moves forward, kneels before the headstone, and sets a piece of elaborate, gorgeous embroidery down next to the sunflowers.
Rest in Magic.
The words are stitched in swirling gold thread, and a ring of stars frames the letters. It’s his best yet, thanks to the practice and guidance he’s had in Tuscany.
Sylus brushes his fingers over the edge of the fabric as if smoothing it into place. “You know, you always said the magic wasn’t in the tricks but in the people you share it with.” His voice cracks, but he powers through it with a laugh. “Guess you were right. Again.”
“He’d love it,” Ezra says softly. “It’s perfect.”
Sylus shrugs, but his lips twitch with a small smile as he glances at him. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t gonna stitch Eat a Dick on there, was I?”
Koen snorts a laugh and then pulls me even closer to him. “Pretty sure he’d have laughed at that too.”
“Damn right, he would’ve.” Sylus stands up and brushes grass from his knees. “Rest easy, Oscar. You deserve it.”
My throat tightens with emotion as Ace easily throws an arm around Sylus’s shoulders and pulls him into a one-sided hug.
Sylus has flourished in Italy in a way I could’ve never anticipated.
It’s like the slower pace of life agrees with him, even if he would probably never admit it.
He spends his days lounging by the pool, gaming in the shade, or zipping around on his Vespa, weaving through narrow, cobblestoned streets like he was born for it.
And don’t even get me started on his Italian. We all tried to learn together, but somehow Sylus became the freaking master. Turns out, when you befriend a group of sweet little nonnas in the village and take embroidery and crafting classes with them, you pick up the language fast.
They adore him, of course, their Sylus, as they call him. They teach him recipes, fuss over his stitches, and tsk at him when he curses, which only makes him laugh and apologize in rapid, flawless Italian.
Sometimes, when he’s bored, he tags along with me to my astronomy classes at the nearby university. It’s such a small thing, really, just a single course I signed up for on a whim. I still have no idea what I want to do with it, if anything, but the guys convinced me to see it through.
“Why not?” Koen had said one night as we lay sprawled on blankets outside the villa, the stars above so bright and sharp they felt closer than ever. “You love this stuff. Do it for you.”
“Yeah, and for us.” Nicholas had chimed in from my other side, “Someone has to make sure the constellations we glued to our bedroom ceiling are right.”
And Sylus, grinning up at the sky from where he’d lounged between my legs with his head resting on my stomach, had added, “If nothing else, Sparkle, it’s a damn good excuse to buy fancy notebooks.”
But it’s only when Ace had said that Rosalee would have loved it for me, did I sign up.
And it is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I love the quiet joy of it—the diagrams, the stories behind the stars, the way the universe feels like a puzzle I’m just beginning to understand.
After my first class, I came home to Sylus lounging in the library with the nonnas’ latest biscotti recipe and a new embroidery project.
“Learn anything about my star today, Sparkle?” he’d asked, making me roll my eyes.
“Pretty sure that one doesn’t count as part of any known constellation.”
“It should. I’m practically a celestial phenomenon.”
“More like a shooting star. Brief and messy.”
“Messy?” He had clutched his chest. “You wound me, baby. I’ll have you know my star gets rave reviews.”
“From who? The nonnas?”
He’d barked out a laugh then and tossed his embroidery aside before proceeding to show me why his star absolutely is a celestial phenomenon.
But the best part? The nights in Tuscany, when the sky is so dark and deep it feels infinite, and the stars seem to stretch forever, like scattered glitter across the black velvet of the sky.
They feel so close like I could reach out and pluck one from the heavens. Those nights, lying with the guys on blankets under that endlessness, are magic and a reminder of how far we’ve come, of how lucky we are. Of how, even when things were at their darkest, I found a way to the light.
And now, Rosalee has her own piece of it too.
Koen had hired people, experts—the best, because that’s what he does—to bring Rosalee’s remains to Tuscany. She now rests on a hill just beyond the villa, between two cypress trees that seem to touch the sky. It overlooks the rolling green fields and the vineyards, the perfect slice of peace.
The first time he’d shown me, I couldn’t breathe. There, nestled between the trees, was the small stone in the form of a rose with her name on it.
My sister is there now, in the place we dreamed of. No longer in Phoenix, no longer tied to the tragedy of the past.
She’ll be with me forever.