Epilogue #2
Liam starts clapping. Sean joins in. The sound feels wrong in the quiet cemetery, but also perfect. Life asserting itself in a place of death.
My mother remains where she is, but I catch her wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Mum,” I say, stepping away from Logan. “Thank you for coming.”
She nods, her throat working. “I need to say something.”
Everyone goes quiet.
“I’m sorry, Nuala.”
The apology hangs in the cold air between us. I don’t know what to do with it. Part of me wants to reject it, to throw nearly three decades of resentment in her face. But another part—the part that’s learned about survival and sacrifice—understands.
“You kept me alive,” I say finally. “When it would have been easier to take his money and make me disappear, you kept me. That has to count for something.”
She nods, tears streaming down her face, then she looks at Logan properly for the first time. “You’re a good man,” she says.
Logan laughs, a bitter sound. “I’m really not.”
“You are to her. That’s all that matters.”
Logan’s arm wraps around my waist, pulling me back against his chest. “She’s my world. Anyone who threatens her threatens me.”
Connor checks his watch. “We should move this celebration somewhere warmer before the bride gets hypothermia.”
“One more minute,” I say.
I turn to face Chris’s headstone again. Logan’s arms remain around me, his chin resting on top of my head.
“Thank you for taking care of him while you could,” I whisper to the granite marker. “I’ve got this now.”
Logan’s arms tighten. I feel his chest hitch against my back.
“She knows,” he murmurs. “Wherever she is, she knows. And she’s probably laughing at how fucked up this all is.”
“Laughing and approving,” I say with a small smile. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“No,” he agrees. “They’re not.”
We stand there for another moment, the cold seeping through my dress, the grass damp beneath my feet. Then Logan scoops me up without warning, cradling me against his chest.
“Logan!” I squeak. “Put me down!”
“Absolutely not. You’re freezing, and we have a reception to get to.”
Logan carries me toward the vehicles. The others follow, my mother hanging back slightly but still present. Still here.
“This is insane,” I say against Logan’s neck.
“This is our life,” he corrects. “Get used to it, Mrs. O’Neill.”
Mrs. O’Neill. The name settles over me like a cloak. Heavy with history, violence, and power. But also, protection. Belonging. Love.
“I could get used to that,” I admit.
“Good.” He deposits me in the SUV, sliding in beside me. “Because you’re stuck with it now. With me. With all of this.”
“And you are stuck with me.”
“I can live with that.”
Logan
The convoy pulls away from the cemetery. Through the rear window, I watch Chris’s headstone disappear among the others.
A fist squeezes my chest. Chris would’ve loved this circus. She would’ve laughed herself sick watching me get married in a graveyard to a woman I’ve known for a few weeks. She would’ve approved.
“Do you think she’s at peace?” Nuala asks quietly.
I follow her gaze to where the headstone vanished. “I think she’s wherever people go when they leave this shitshow. And I think she’s glad I found you.”
“Even though I come with enough baggage to fill a cargo ship?”
“Especially because of that.” I pull her closer, my lips brushing her temple.
The scent of her hair grounds me. “Perfect people are boring. I married a woman who held a gun to my uncle’s face.
Who shot at her cousin. Who stood in a shipping container and watched her biological father die without flinching after making it clear to him what a prick he was. ”
“I flinched a little,” she admits.
“You stood your ground. That’s what matters.”
Chris’s last words play on repeat in my skull. Go find a woman who knows how much you’re worth. I have done that and more.
Nuala doesn’t break. She bends, adapts, thrives.
The estate appears ahead, the gates already open.
“How many people are here?” Nuala asks as we pull up to the front entrance.
“Connor’s definition of a small gathering is about fifty people,” I say dryly. “Most of them are family or associates. No one who’ll ask uncomfortable questions.”
“Like why we got married so quickly?”
“Exactly like that.”
The door opens. I circle the Rolls and help Nuala out. The possessive urge hasn’t dimmed since I slid that ring on her finger. If anything, it’s intensified.
She’s mine now. Legally. Spiritually. Every way that matters.
“Shoes are in the foyer,” Lisa says, joining us from the back of the SUV that has also carried Nuala’s mum, Liam, and Sean here.
Inside, the mansion is transformed. White flowers everywhere. Soft music playing. Tables laden with food that makes my stomach growl. I haven’t eaten since this morning. Too nervous. Too wired on adrenaline and the need to bind Nuala to me before she changed her mind.
A woman approaches with Champagne. I take two glasses and hand one to Nuala.
“To surviving,” I say, raising my glass.
“To thriving,” she counters.
The white dress clings to her curves. The silk is nearly translucent in the right light. Every man in this room can see what’s mine, and the primitive part of my brain wants to drape my jacket over her shoulders and hide her from their eyes.
I don’t. She’s not mine to hide. She’s mine to display. To show off. To prove that Logan O’Neill landed a woman who could bring him to his knees.
Nuala’s mother hovers near the entrance.
She looks out of place among the designer suits and polished shoes.
Nuala excuses herself and crosses to her.
I watch them from a distance, tracking the body language.
The awkward space between them. The years of damage that can’t be erased with a single apology.
But they’re trying. That’s more than most get.
Connor appears at my elbow. “You look happy, boy.”
“I am.”
“Good.” He sips his whiskey. “She’s good for you. Grounds you.”
“She saves me,” I correct. “Every day.”
Connor claps my shoulder. “You did good. Now try not to fuck it up.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Nuala returns to my side. Her presence settles something restless in my chest. I wrap my arm around her waist, needing the contact. Needing to feel her against me. Alive. Mine.
Connor calls for attention. The room quiets. He raises his glass.
“To Logan and Nuala. May their marriage be long, their enemies short-lived, and their secrets well-kept.”
“Hear, hear!” the room responds.
I pull Nuala close, crushing my mouth to hers. The kiss is possessive. Claiming. I don’t give a fuck that fifty people are watching. Let them see. Let them know that this woman is the only thing in this world I’d die for.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” she whispers.
“Say it again.”
“I love you, Logan O’Neill. My husband. My protector. My psychotic ex-priest with a god complex.”
I laugh because she’s not wrong. “And you’re my salvation. My reason. Mine.”
The party continues around us, but I’m locked in this moment. In her eyes. In the way she looks at me like I hung the fucking moon instead of being a killer who abandoned God.
I think about the man I was. Kneeling in empty churches. Praying to a God who didn’t answer. Watching Chris waste away while I begged for a miracle that never came.
That man was drowning.
This man is breathing for the first time in years.
“Dance with me,” I say, pulling her toward the cleared space Connor designated as a dance floor.
I pull Nuala against my chest, one hand on the small of her back, the other engulfing hers. We sway more than dance. I’m shit at this, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She fits against me like she was designed for this purpose. To soften my edges. To give me something worth protecting.
“This is perfect,” she says.
“Yeah,” I agree, resting my chin on top of her head. “It really fucking is.”
I stopped praying the day Chris died.
I started living the day I met Nuala.
“I know exactly what you’re worth,” Nuala says, tilting her head back to look at me. “Everything.”
“Right back at you, Mrs. O’Neill.”
Mrs. O’Neill. My wife. The woman who walked into hell with me and came out holding my hand.
The music plays. The party continues. But in this moment, with Nuala in my arms and Chris’s blessing echoing in my soul, I finally understand what redemption feels like.
It doesn’t come from prayer or penance. It comes from finding someone who sees the monster and loves it anyway. Someone who stands in the darkness and lights a fucking match.
Nuala is my match. My light. My reason for walking away from God and into the chaos.
And I’d do it all again—every sin, every bullet, every drop of blood—if it meant ending up here. In this moment. With her.
In our world, love isn’t order.
It’s chaos.