Bonus Scene
RAFE’S POV AFTER DESCENT
The clock ticked toward midnight, counting down to the start of a new year. I hummed that goddamn song they always blasted after the ball dropped, even though it made my ears bleed.
New year, new hope.
The irony wasn’t lost on me, because Zach would find neither. The final chapter of his destructive, pathetic life would end before sunrise.
Alex was sound asleep upstairs, curled around a body pillow as our baby grew inside her womb. I’d fucked her into a deep sleep, and as soon as I took care of the loose end in the cellar, I’d wake her and make sure the first moments of January belonged to us.
Renewal required endings.
I grounded myself in the decision I’d already made. This wasn’t rage or revenge or even vengeance. Zach’s actions had made his demise a fucking necessity. Alex, our child, even sanity itself—all of it demanded safety in his death.
Filling my lungs with a steady breath, I pushed the cellar door open and stood on the threshold.
The staircase faded into darkness, inviting me into the jaws of the depraved space I’d rebuilt after the fire.
For the past several months, Zach had tainted that sacred place with his whining and pleading and outbursts of rage.
His mere existence.
To someone like Zachariah De Luca, compassion meant weakness. Alex had let him go once already, and we both paid for it dearly when he crashed our honeymoon.
No more.
No more chances, no more stalling, no more time.
I flipped on the light, and a sickly glow spilled into the cavern of Zach’s prison. Winter had its claws in the foundation, slipping through the cracks and wrapping around my ankles as I took the first step.
Alex had ventured down here two days ago when she thought I was too wrapped up in plans to notice—as if I wouldn’t feel the difference in the key hanging around my neck. She’d swapped it for one she’d found, probably in a junk drawer in the kitchen.
My little thief.
My stubborn woman.
She’d wanted to talk to him one last time, to look him in the eye and witness for herself what he’d become. To say goodbye to the monster who’d once been her brother.
My boots thudded on the last step, and as I made my way to the bars separating us, Zach lifted his head. For a beat, I saw the man I used to consider my best friend. The fighter I once knew who sparred with me as we taught and learned from each other.
Months of captivity had stripped him of dignity, reducing him to something thin and twitchy. Sunken cheeks. Trembling hands. A lifeless hue to his skin. Calculation was all that remained, still burning hot behind cold hazel eyes.
He pushed off the cot and staggered closer, curling his fingers around the bars. Absolute silence engulfed us. For several weighty moments, we glared at each other.
His voice broke through the static first. “Is this a special visit?”
“Not that you’d know, but it’s New Year’s Eve.” I glanced at my watch. “Three minutes until midnight.”
Zach huffed out a dry laugh. “Of course it is. Gotta take pride in perfect timing, huh?” He glanced toward the stairs. “Does she know you’re down here?”
“She’s asleep.”
“So it’s just you and me.”
“And me,” Jax said, already descending the stairs behind me.
Zach looked between us, jaw rigid. “You think killing me will fix her?” He tapped two fingers against his temple. “You can’t erase what’s up here.”
I moved in, close enough for him to feel it. “It’s already done. You don’t exist in her world. Soon, you won’t exist at all.”
“She came down here yesterday, so don’t tell me I don’t exist.”
“That was two days ago,” I said, knowing the realization that he couldn’t even keep track of time would dig under his skin. “She needed closure, and now she has it.”
Silence pressed in again, heavier this time, utterly indifferent to Zach’s approaching end. With a hard swallow, he steeled his voice. “My father won’t let this go.”
“Your father will take the fall for it. We can’t get him for killing Alex’s mother, but we can make sure the blame for you lands exactly where it should. In the end, you’re dead and he’s the one in a cell.”
Zach stared at me, breath shallow now. “You think you’re untouchable.”
“Untouchable?” My mind flashed back to all the times the guards in prison forced themselves on me. To the tunnel and the remembered taste of Alex’s terror. To her screams. Zach’s actions were irreversible, leaving marks on both of us. “No, I’m not untouchable, but you are out of time.”
Zach didn’t flinch as I unlocked his cage, though he couldn’t quite hide the tremor in his arms as he crossed them over his chest. “Two on one doesn’t seem fair to me.”
“Was it fair when you used my son as leverage? When you raped Alex in our bed? Was that fair?”
“She wanted it. She just won’t admit it to you.”
My fist twitched, held in check only by the plan. Zach rolled his shoulders as if muscle memory could save him, cold eyes darting between me, Jax, and the space between us.
“So this is it,” he said, stepping forward on his own, clinging to his fraying bravado.
I let him come. He struck fast—too fast for a man who’d spent months in a cage—his shoulder slamming into me as he fought for an opening.
Jax was on him immediately, syringe already moving. The needle hit his neck, and Zach stumbled, momentum dying mid-step. We guided him down, letting his weight hit the floor.
“Damn, dude went down fast,” Jax muttered, nudging Zach with the toe of his boot.
“Be thankful for small favors.”
We hauled Zach’s limp body up the stairs, through the cabin, and out into the chill of midnight before dumping him into the boat.
Jax stood back and wiped his hands on his jeans, looking downriver toward Portland. “Once they find him, it won’t even be a question where the line points.”
We’d made sure of it.
Abbott De Luca was predictable to the point of arrogance. He lived by routine, trusted the same patterns, made the same assumptions day after day. And Alex knew his blind spots, but more importantly, she knew where he kept his pistol.
The poetic justice of Zach’s end leading straight back to his father was just a bonus. A fitting close for a family built on buried sins.
Just a couple more hours, a trek into the woods, and it would be done. Zach deserved a death far more savage, but violence left traces I wasn’t willing to risk.
One shot to the head would have to do.
For a monster like Zach, it was a necessary act of restraint.
For Alex and me, it was the gift of a brand new year.
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