Epilogue #2
“Is this a fancy word for something else? Like when you call an eggplant aubergine?”
“Do you want me to send Brayden to help?” she sighed.
Eh, yes. Not only was I becoming a father, but I also adopted Brayden, the kid I won at a poker night at the Ferrantes’ casino. Ultimately, I wanted to leave him behind when I moved to the UK, but Gia said it was inhumane. So I figured I could be someone else’s Daniel.
Minus the getting killed in prison part.
“No. Just tell me,” I insisted.
“Oh, hold on. Let me google it.” She was quiet for a second. “Cilantro.”
“Ah, cilantro. Why didn’t you say ?”
I stared at the dozens of different leafy greens in front of me.
Of course I had no idea what cilantro was. Might as well stay coriander.
“What does it look like?” I groaned.
“Sort of like parsley but with a wider leaf. Try and taste it. If it tastes like something you put in dishes, it’s cilantro. If it tastes like something you put in a salad or for garnishing, it’s parsley.”
I glowered at the greens for a few seconds before Row tromped his way into my garden.
He and Cal were visiting us, and he volunteered to cook.
“Jesus fuck, how useless can you be out of the board room?” He shouldered me out of the way, crouching down and plucking a wag of green shit and burying his nose inside it. “Smells good. Gia has a green thumb.”
“And I have a lethal fist, so shut the fuck up about my woman’s body.”
Row stared at me, aghast. “You’re insane.”
Maybe, but I was up to the gills in pills and therapy sessions these days, so I didn’t feel that way so much anymore.
We made our way back to the house. Inside, Cal and Gia were cooing and adoring each other’s pregnant bellies. They were just a few weeks apart and, to my dismay, insisted on spending a lot of time together.
Serafina, their older daughter, was running around the house, breaking shit. If this was life as a parent, I didn’t get the fascination, but if Gia wanted kids, I’d give them to her.
If Gia wanted fucking Mars, we’d move there in a heartbeat.
“Tate! How good to see you,” Cal greeted, giving me a forced hug.
“No need to lie. My wife wouldn’t let me kick you out even if I wanted to. Something about etiquette.” I patted her back, wishing she’d pull away sooner rather than later.
“Are you ready?” Row turned to Gia, already chopping the cori-whatever-the-fuck on a thick wooden board. “I’m going to show you how to make the garnish.”
Whatever they were making smelled divine. I could see fish and stew and herbed potatoes.
“Yes!” Gia said excitedly, clapping her hands as she advanced toward him. Her crème woolly dress enhanced her gorgeous curves and pregnant belly. “I’m all ears.”
“I’m going to find Serafina.” Cal jerked her thumb toward the corridor. “Make sure she didn’t break too many things and, if she did, that they’re Tate’s things.”
“Thank you,” I said evenly.
Forty minutes later, we were all at the table, enjoying a hearty meal in front of my stunning English garden.
Brayden was enthusiastically telling us he got accepted to a lacrosse team at his public school while shoving bread into his mouth like it was some eating competition.
His eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. I liked that I put that glint there.
That I gave someone the second chance I had desperately needed when I was about his age.
In the middle of dinner, my phone danced in my pocket with an incoming call. I pulled it out. Achilles Ferrante’s name was on the screen.
I stayed in touch with the Ferrantes and visited them from time to time. We had business together, but it was all legitimate these days.
“I need to take this.” I tossed my napkin onto the table and stood up, waltzing outside so I could have some privacy. I stopped in front of the king’s pond pool, which reminded me fondly of my very first murder, and swiped the screen.
“Yes?” I drawled.
“Tatum,” Achilles said.
I followed two swans with my gaze as they sliced through a nearby lake, just on the edge of my property.
“I fucking know my own name. Anything else you got?”
Achilles’s laugh filled my ear. It sounded eerily like a nail rolling over a blackboard. “I have a piece of news I think would make you very happy.”
“Doubt it.”
Only one thing made me happy, and it was currently in the house, cooing over Calla Litvin’s incredibly boring story about a pie she burned yesterday.
“Tiernan Callaghan.”
The name alone made my skin crawl. He was the first and only man I did not finish off completely after he crossed me. And not from lack of desire. We both had too much on the line.
I could play with my own life but never Gia’s. Never our baby’s.
“What about him?”
“He fucked up again.” Achilles sounded significantly less dead inside, uplifted by the news. “Our last promise to leave him alive has officially expired.”
“What’d the bastard do?”
“Killed a Las Vegas pakhan right under our noses. In our territory.” There was a pause. “And dumped his body at our doorstep.” Another pregnant silence. “Most of it anyway.”
“Is that so?” I crouched down and moved an ancient stone, revealing the pack of cigarettes I kept hidden there.
I only smoked once every few weeks. Gia didn’t like it but learned to live with it.
I was still, at my core, a man accustomed to and enamored with darkness.
I lit myself a cigarette, blowing out smoke.
“And what are you telling me this for? You know damn fucking well I’m not participating in this war.
I would never jeopardize my wife’s safety. ”
“We’re not asking you to, but there’s something else…” He trailed off.
“I’m listening.”
“If we were to retaliate, we might need an ironclad alibi.”
God bless burner phones. Fucker didn’t even miss a beat when he asked this.
“You don’t think he’ll snitch?” I had no respect whatsoever for that cunt, but even I knew he wouldn’t breathe a word if the Ferrantes rearranged his facial features.
“Not him,” Achilles tsked. “His sister, I’m not so sure about.”
I was quiet for a moment.
“Sure. You were all at my estate at the time. I’ll have my guy forge CCTV footage,” I said.
“Just as long as there’s no blowback coming for my family.
” I wasn’t going to actively kill Tiernan, but I was happy to give his fate a much-needed push.
I inhaled my cigarette, smirking. “So you’ve got a death warrant with his name on it? ”
“Vello wants him alive, but just barely,” Achilles groused with annoyance. “I’m going to pluck a few body parts, though.”
“Good. Give him a DIY circumcision, and be generous about it.”
Achilles laughed.
“Won’t it mess with your ability to choose the mouthy sister a husband?”
“Nah, I have big plans for her.”
“I’d ask what they were, but I truly don’t care. Oh, and, Achilles?”
“Yeah?”
“If this backfires in any way and makes its way to my doorstep, I am going to personally kill you, your brothers, your entire family, and the Callaghans combined. Make it clean, you hear me? I don’t want my wife to be saddled with any more bodyguards.”
“Loud and clear, lover boy.”
I killed the call and tossed the still-lit cigarette into the mud, making my way back into the house. I assumed my place next to my wife, who made a face that let me know she could smell the cigarette on me. Nonetheless, she placed a reassuring hand on my back.
“Gia and I were just talking designs for the nursery,” Cal informed me.
“Oh yeah?” I leaned to kiss my wife’s cheek. “Apricity, do you have a color in mind yet?”
“Red,” she said without looking at me, taking a spoonful of her stew. “It reminds me of you.”
I grinned.
My phone pinged again. Dr. Patel.
From: Dr. Arjun Patel, MD
To: Tate Blackthorn
Subject: Success
Tate, I am happy to inform you I am delighted with your progress and mental health.
I believe you are no longer in need of my weekly service and that a three-month checkup to monitor medicine/dosage is sufficient from this point forward.
I applaud your hard work and your determination to get better.
Warmly, Dr. Patel.
“You look happy,” Row accused, frowning like this was bad news all around.
“I am,” I confirmed, looking up from the email. “Because I just got my happy ending, perfect and tied in a satin bow.”
The End