Epilogue—Bobby
Three Weeks Later
“Have you seen Vinny lately?” Danny asks as he takes a seat between me and Marco, across from Tommy.
While most of the people are dancing to whatever the DJ is playing to make the hundred-some bikers happy, my brothers and I are happy to just sit and watch.
“He’s around. Oh, over there.” Tommy points with his glass to our brother at one of the back tables in the ballroom. Kansas might not have much, but they at least have a big enough place, and fancy enough for Mama’s taste, to host Milly’s wedding.
“Who’s he talking to?” Marco asks as we all blatantly stare.
“No clue. But the guy at the bar doesn’t seem to like it any more than she does, based on the look on her face,” Danny says as he looks behind Tommy to the man at the bar.
Sure enough, a man is glaring daggers at my brother.
The kind of look that usually ends in blood.
He’s wearing his club vest still—helpful as shit, since his name is on it: Atom.
Something I’m sure Danny will look into later.
But that still doesn’t make it clear who the woman is with the long-ass hair that seems to be almost sweeping the ground.
Thankfully, the man has a brain and is using it to keep himself in check, not going over and interrupting what looks to be an intense conversation.
But the second the woman gets up and leaves, Atom follows her out.
I look at Vinny, who’s smirking, glancing at the two who left before looking back, catching my eye.
He grabs his glass of wine and saunters over.
“Something caught your attention? Pretty sure your fiancée won’t be happy about it.” Tommy doesn’t hide his disdain for Vinny’s woman as he drinks his own wine.
“Don’t start spreading rumors you can’t back up, Tommy.” Vinny sighs in annoyance as he takes a seat next to him.
Bianca has become more involved in the last three weeks than anyone wants.
Okay, that might just be my opinion. I find her annoying, but that’s just because I want the best for my brother, and I hold everyone to a high degree.
If they aren’t Willow, they aren’t good.
And since no one is my girl, no one is good enough for my brother.
She’s been very involved for a woman who isn’t even married into the family yet.
And by involved, I mean available and offering opinions.
Then again, Milly actually did agree to a few of the suggestions she gave for the wedding, so I guess she isn’t all bad.
She’s just around more, practically moving herself into Vinny’s home already.
I know they aren’t sleeping together, despite her numerous attempts to seduce him.
Vinny doesn’t have to say a word. You can tell by the way she pouts a bit.
Just a little. Not enough for others to notice, but I do.
So do my brothers. We make a point to notice things others don’t.
It saves lives. She wants Vinny, that’s obvious, but he still holds himself back.
I’m not sure if it’s because he’s still opposed to the idea of the arrangement or that he just doesn’t know her well enough yet.
Thank God she brought her cousin with her. Some woman who seems to take most of the brunt of Bianca’s sexual frustration. I should feel bad about it, but I don’t.
The cousin is a spitfire in her own way. We don’t talk to each other much, but when we do, it’s short and not sweet at all. She seems to think the entire Leone family is beneath her from the way she doesn’t hide her disapproving looks. The only one of us she keeps a stone face around is Mama.
“Where is your fiancée? Thought she would be here by now.” Tommy says with a smirk.
We all came down to Kansas as a group four days ago to help with the wedding, as well as spend more time with our sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law. However, Bianca and her cousin said they would join us for the ceremony only and flew by themselves.
“No clue.” Vinny doesn’t look shaken by the news, nor does he seem to care.
My heart aches for my brother, knowing he’ll never get to experience the happiness love can bring.
“Daddy!” Lily’s typical high cry of warning is all I get a second before she jumps onto my lap.
“Hey, princess. Have I told you how amazing you were today?” Mama let the dream go of Willow being in the wedding, but she was delighted with her bambini being two of four flower girls. The Hounds brought in their two who’ve known Milly’s man almost their entire lives.
She rolls her eyes. “Yes. Like ten billion times.”
The boys join me in laughter at my daughter’s antics.
Daughter. Not one, but two. And I’d burn cities for them.
A lot has changed in three weeks. Time has flown by, but the memories of each day have lasted.
I kept my word, and the night we came home after our Thanksgiving meal with Mama, the girls moved in with me.
Four days later, I asked Willow to marry me.
She only said yes because I asked nicely and let her pick out the ring.
Well, sort of. She chose a modest one, so I tripled the size but kept the style the same.
I apologized for it, of course. Over and over again.
We’ve been living in happiness ever since. The kind of bliss that makes a man paranoid he’ll lose it. And I don’t apologize to any of my girls for the amount of security I have on them at all times because of it.
We might not have set the date yet, much to Mama’s dismay, but we’re happy.
And Willow figured out a way to make Mama happy by saying she didn’t want to steal the magic away from Milly.
That our engagement, while known, will be put on the back burner, as will any talk of a wedding, until after Milly is married.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that Mama has already booked four wedding venues for us to look at the day we get back to New York.
“Did you need something, princess?”
“Yes, Daddy.” Lily started calling me that almost the moment she moved into my home. Ivy took a little longer. I think it helped when I sat them down the day before I asked their mama to marry me and spoke to them about it.
“You want to marry Mommy?” Ivy asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?” Ivy is always the quizzical one of the two, and Lily, for all her energy, stayed silent as her older sister interrogated me to see if I was good enough for their mother.
“Because I love her. And I love you both too. I want to spend the rest of my life making you all happy.”
“Will you make me call you Father?”
That was the only time she ever mentioned anything somewhat related to her father.
A man who Danny confirmed was dead. Along with his wife, but that wasn’t on us.
She took some pills. Wasn’t even pregnant, it turned out.
And her father’s company? It’s struggling.
Bankrupted by Trevor and Jessica, it appears.
We might have no love lost for the family, but I quietly paid for Jessica’s funeral and expenses.
One burden not put on her father, who’s a good man.
I’ve offered him some work. Not much, but enough to keep him running his small business.
Nothing too big or grand like he once had.
Some lessons still have to be taught, even if he wasn’t the one to make the mistakes but sired the one who did.
“I’d never make you call me anything you don’t want to. Love isn’t forced. It’s earned. I’m your friend first and always. Anything else you want me to be is up to you, but you will always have my love and my protection. That will never go away. Ever.”
After that, Ivy has called me just about anything. Bobby at times, Dad at others. It’s not as often, and I’m planning to keep my promise, never forcing it. She might never really call me Dad other than a handful of times in her life, but she’ll feel a father’s love for the rest of her life.
“Can we adopt Marco?”
Choking comes from my second-in-command as he looks over at us from across the table.
“Don’t you think he’s too old?” Tommy asks as he pulls Payton, who wandered closer to my brother, onto his lap.
“No one’s too old for a mommy and a daddy,” Lily protests with a strict headshake.
“How do you know he doesn’t already have one?” Danny asks with a soft smile reserved only for his nieces and nephew.
“He doesn’t smile often. Mommies and daddies make sure you smile.”
The mirth on my brothers’ faces dies as the truth sinks in. Our parents made sure we knew how to smile and live a life full of them. While not all of my brothers give them out freely, they at least know how. Marco does it so seldomly.
“Can’t argue with that,” I say. “I’ll talk to Mommy about it, okay?”
“Okay.” She smiles and wiggles out to play with the other kids.
The Hounds of the Reaper might live in middle-of-nowhere Kansas, but they know how to throw a party.
And with the budget Vinny and Mama gave Milly, they know how to throw a wedding too.
To include an entire kids’ corner for all the little ones who came from the Hounds’ side and the few we brought. Including Milly’s own kid, Ollie.
“So, how about it? Want to call me Daddy?” I wiggle my eyebrows at Marco, who only glares and walks away.
But not too far. He keeps his eyes on me and my family. He’s taken point on all security for all of us—after getting Danny’s approval, of course.
The guy is good at what he does. He was even somehow able to track down the man who stepped on Ivy’s class project.
Not that Ivy knew when some random guy showed up on the street and started begging her to forgive him for what he did. She just shrugged it off, not even noticing Marco’s dark presence behind the man pleading out his sorrows to a seven-year-old.
“Hounds can party,” Tommy says as he looks around, nodding to a few people he knows. I think one of them is the underground fighter he sponsors who flew down from Michigan with her man for this.
“Bikers are always good for a good time,” Vinny says around a sip of his wine.
The family have been staying in the house Vinny bought the last time we were here.
It was a gift he gave to Milly the day she got engaged, but since we arrived, we took it over, and Milly and her man, Bass, took to their own home.
A small, cozy, off-the-grid place. Ollie claims it’s cool.
Something about trains. I don’t really know.
All I care about is my family being happy.
The girls were excited to meet their new cousin, and the Hounds and Leones are officially connected now.
Makes things easier since we both have a wide reach. We might not be partners in anything, but having ties is helpful. You never know when you’ll need another ally.
“Hey, handsome,” Willow says as she slides a hand over my shoulder.
I pull her down onto my lap, surprising her enough that I’m able to get a quick kiss, slipping my tongue into her open mouth when she gasps.
“Hey, gorgeous,” I murmur back when I let her up. One quick kiss is never enough with her. We just stare at each other with smiles on our faces. Something we do a lot, both knowing how lucky we are to have the other in our lives.
And there’s not a single comment from my brothers, letting me know they’re happy for us as well.
“Vinny.” Casper’s sharp voice pulls my attention, as well as half the people in the place, as he marches over to us with Kooper and Flint, their tech guy, on his heels. “Got a sec?”
There was an unspoken agreement that no work would be discussed today. But from the way the president of the Hounds is looking at my brother, that’s about to be null and void.
Something is wrong. Very wrong.
“Of course.” Vinny stands, as well as Danny, and the five of them walk out the side door.
“What do you think that was about?” Payton asks.
Tommy shrugs. “We’ll find out soon, I’m sure.”
No sooner does he speak than Vinny comes storming back in.
I rise, letting Willow stand on her own feet, as does Tommy. “What is it?” I ask, ready to take on whatever fight has come to our doorstep.
“Bianca has been taken. And so has her cousin.”
I ask the simplest of questions. “Who are we going to war with?”
To be continued…