Chapter 44
ELLIE
ONE YEAR LATER
The air in our new life is different.
It’s cleaner, smelling of freshly cut grass and the damp earth of the garden boxes Dominic insisted on building.
Here, in this quiet suburban neighborhood under an assumed name, we are a regular, if oversized and unconventional, family.
Witness protection is a gilded cage, but after the chaos and blood, the silence is a balm.
The marshal assigned to our case claimed we would stand out if we all remained together, but we didn’t give them a choice. It’s the six of us versus the world. Always.
My brother and the senator are also in WITSEC, but…I don’t know where. I’m just grateful they didn’t get a prison sentence for the role they played in everything. Though I miss my brother, this is for the best.
A new life.
A new start.
I’m on the porch, watering the thriving tomato plants Dom has been nurturing like they’re his own children.
Frodo lies beside me, his belly to the air like he’s basking in the heat.
The sun is warm on my skin, and for a moment, I can almost forget the ghost of a scar that pulls taut across my stomach.
“You’re drowning them,” Dom says, his voice a low, amused rumble. He comes up behind me, his hands settling on my hips, his chin resting on my shoulder. “They’re plants, Ellie, not fish.”
“They’re thirsty,” I retort, tilting the watering can. A deliberate flick of my wrist sends a small arc of water splashing onto his arm. “Oops.”
His eyes narrow playfully. “Oops, my ass.” Before I can react, he snatches the hose from its coil, a wicked grin spreading across his face. “You started a war you can’t win.”
Squealing, I turn and run, but he’s faster. A cold jet of water catches me in the back, soaking my thin cotton T-shirt. I spin around, laughing, and grab the hose, trying to wrench it from his grip.
We’re a tangle of limbs and spraying water, our shouts of mock outrage echoing in the tranquil afternoon. For a minute, we’re just two people in love, messing around in the yard. It feels almost normal.
Then Dom freezes. His laughter cuts off, his body going rigid as his gaze fixes on something over my shoulder. The playful energy vanishes, replaced by the sharp, predatory stillness I know so well. He gently pushes me behind him, his posture shifting into that of a guard.
Frodo lowers to a crouch and begins to growl, his tiny body trembling erratically.
“Dom? What is it?” I ask, peering around his arm.
A man is standing at the edge of the lawn, just beyond the picket fence. He’s thin, with haunted eyes and a face that’s both familiar and strange. He’s dressed in a worn jacket and jeans, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a year.
“Raymond?” I breathe, the name a whisper on my lips.
The world tilts, like someone has shifted it an inch to the left and forgotten to put it back. My heart stutters, then slams so hard against my ribs it hurts. For a second, I’m certain I’ve finally cracked—that grief has finished its slow, patient work and started giving me ghosts.
Because Uncle Raymond is standing ten feet in front of me.
Alive.
Not a memory. Not a photograph worn soft at the edges.
Not the version of him I replayed in my head during sleepless nights, wondering if he’d been afraid at the end.
He’s solid. Real. Older, maybe thinner, with more gray at his temples, but unmistakably him.
He’s shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, like he doesn’t know what to do with them. Like he’s bracing for impact.
I can’t breathe.
“You’re dead,” I whisper, and the words come out broken, more plea than accusation. “I buried you.”
My vision blurs. I taste salt. My knees threaten to give out under the weight of more than a year’s worth of mourning crashing into a single moment.
Hope flares so violently, it’s painful, like my chest is splitting open to make room for it.
He’s alive. He’s here. The universe didn’t take everything after all.
Hope is a dangerous thing. It flares so fast it hurts, hot and blinding, lighting up every dark corner where I stuffed my grief and locked it away. My chest tightens like it’s trying to hold my heart together by force alone.
My legs move before I decide to. I’m closer now, close enough to see the lines around his eyes, the exhaustion etched into his face. Close enough to smell him, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. Alive. Breathing.
The relief hits first. Pure, crushing relief. I want to sob. I want to laugh. I want to press my face into his chest and feel his heartbeat under my ear just to prove to myself it exists.
Then the fury arrives.
It’s sharp and sudden, slicing clean through the hope, leaving it bleeding.
“You let me think you were dead.” My voice shakes, and I hate that it does. “You let me bury you.”
He opens his mouth, probably to explain, probably to justify whatever nightmare logic convinced him this was necessary, and something inside me snaps.
“I mourned you,” I say, louder now. My chest burns. “I broke over you. Do you have any idea what that does to someone?”
Tears blur my vision, but I don’t let them fall. I won’t give him that. I won’t let him think this is just relief and forgiveness wrapped in a hug.
“I hoped they were wrong,” I whisper, the anger trembling now, fragile around the edges. “Every day. I hoped they made a mistake. And then I hated myself for hoping, because dead is dead and hope makes it hurt worse.”
He looks wrecked. Good.
I should walk away. I should turn my back and protect the part of me he already broke once.
But he’s alive. And despite everything—despite the rage, the betrayal, the ache that still hasn’t settled—I feel that same dangerous hope curling in my chest again.
I believed him dead.
And now he’s standing in front of me, forcing me to grieve and hope and rage all over again, all at once.
Dom moves behind me and places a hand on my shoulder, reminding me he’s here, he has me.
I can’t pull my gaze away from Raymond.
“Ellie,” he says, his voice raspy. He looks like he’s aged a decade. “I… I’m sorry. I had to see you. I had to apologize. I used some old sources. Tracked you down. I needed to see for myself that you were okay.”
The words hang in the air. “You escaped?” I deduce, my mind reeling. “During the attack?”
He nods, his gaze dropping to the ground. “I got out. I’ve been in hiding ever since. It wasn’t safe. Aria had eyes everywhere. But now, with most of her high-profile members either dead or in prison, I thought it might be safe enough to come out.”
A thousand questions claw their way up my throat. “I have so many questions, and I don’t know where to start. What happened back at the mansion? How did you find the flash drive? Why did you allow me to believe you were dead?”
He shakily runs his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair, his gaze flicking over my shoulder. I don’t need to look to know my other lovers have arrived.
“POP took me with your boys, but I managed to break free before they could lock me up. I stumbled upon Aria’s study.
It took me over an hour to rip it apart, but I found the flash drive behind the painting.
You know the one? Of her great-whatever-grandpa?
” He doesn’t wait for me to respond, though I can picture the painting in my head.
“I managed to give the flash drive to one of my contacts, and then I…left. I left and I hid, because I knew I would be in deep shit if anyone found me. I broke a lot of fucking laws, Ellie. The FBI may have forgiven you six, but me? They wouldn’t have been so generous. ”
My knees tremble, my legs threatening to give out.
“I want to know… I need to know…” This question has been nagging at me for a while now, but I thought I would never be able to ask it.
Everyone who had the answer was either dead or imprisoned.
But now… “Why didn’t my parents just fucking leave?
God, they knew about POP and Aria? Why didn’t they take me and Fischer and run? Why?!”
We would’ve saved ourselves so much pain if they had. My parents… They would still be alive. My brother wouldn’t have had to join POP to protect me. And my guys… We would still be together in this fairy tale reality, of that I have no doubt. There’s no other alternative.
Raymond looks up, and the raw guilt in his eyes is staggering.
“They didn’t know,” he says, his voice strained.
“Not the whole truth. They knew Aria was…intense. That her ambitions were getting dark. But they never understood the depth of the depravity she had reached. They thought they could talk her down, that they could reason with her. They stayed because they were family, and they hoped, one day, they could reconcile with the woman she used to be.”
It’s a plausible, heartbreaking story, and my heart twists in my chest.
God, I have so many questions, and I feel as if they’re spilling out of me in rapid-fire succession with no rhyme or reason.
“And you? Why were you kept out of my life? Why didn’t I know you?”
A bitter, self-deprecating smile touches his lips.
“Because I’m a fuckup, Ellie. I fell out with my family—my parents and your father—when I joined the FBI.
They had wanted me to take over the family business, but I chose to forge my own path.
But I couldn’t stand the Bureau’s rules, their expectations, so I left them too.
Things were…tense. I only came back when I heard about your parents’ deaths.
But by then, Fischer had already adopted you, and POP had their hooks in you deep. It was too late.”
My heart aches for the fractured family I never knew. But there’s something else, a darkness in his expression that tells me the worst is yet to come.
“There’s something else,” he says, confirming my fear. “Something I have to tell you. Aria didn’t kill your parents, Ellie.”
My blood runs cold. “What? That’s impossible. You said—”
“I lied,” he cuts me off, his voice cracking. “I don’t want to tell you the truth, but we can’t move on unless I do. I’m… I’m drowning in this guilt. Fuck!” He rakes his fingers through his hair once more, his hand trembling, and then blurts out, “I killed them.”
The world stops. The sound of the birds, the distant hum of a lawnmower, Dom’s sharp intake of breath behind me—it all fades into a dull, roaring silence. I can only hear the frantic, panicked beating of my own heart.
“It was an accident,” he rushes on, his words tumbling over each other.
“I swear to God. I was trying to kill her. I got intel that she was going to be on the road that night. I got my information wrong. The car I hit with mine…it was theirs. Not hers.” He’s crying now, silent tears tracking down his weathered face.
“I’ve been living with that guilt every single day since.
It’s why I stayed away. It’s why I could never face you. ”
I stare at him, at the man who just confessed to murdering my parents. The man who I’d mourned as another victim.
A white-hot, blinding rage surges through me, so potent it makes me dizzy. It’s tangled with a sick, gut-wrenching sorrow. He lied. He let me believe Aria was the sole monster of my origin story, all while hiding his own part.
“I want a relationship with you, Ellie,” he pleads, taking a step forward. “I want to be the family you lost.”
“No,” I say, my voice shaking with a fury that feels alien and powerful. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to drop this atomic bomb on my life and ask for forgiveness. You killed them. You lied to me. Leave.”
His face crumples, but he nods, as if he expected nothing less. “I understand. I’ll… I’ll leave you alone.” He turns and walks away, a solitary, broken figure disappearing down the street.
I stand there until he’s gone, the rage slowly cooling into a hollow, aching emptiness.
I turn, and Dom is there, his arms open.
I collapse into them, the sobs finally tearing free from my chest. The others gather around me, a wall of warm, solid strength.
Beckett’s hand is on my back, Zane is murmuring in my ear, Ryker is scanning the street, and Landon is holding my hand, his grip a silent promise.
They don’t ask questions. They don’t offer platitudes. They just hold me, their presence a shield against the crushing weight of a truth I never saw coming. And in their arms, I let myself break, knowing they would be there to piece me back together.