Epilogue
Friends
Tiffany
The sound of beeping pulls me out of a hazy sleep. The first thing I do before opening my eyes is to take account of my body. My limbs feel heavy, like they weigh a hundred pounds each. My throat is scratchy and my mouth is dry. But I don’t feel any pain, unlike before. Unlike….
My eyes pop open. I’m in a hospital room. I try to move, but that was a bad idea. Sharp pain shoots through my head.
“Whoa, take it easy.” I smell his familiar scent before I see his face. Nico takes a seat beside me. There is a dark bruise on his cheek, and his top lip is cut. I attempt to lift my arm to touch his face, but I can’t move it.
“No,” he says, gently touching my arm. “Your shoulder is dislocated. They have you in a sling.”
“Your face.” I finally get my incredibly dry mouth to make a sound.
He grins. “Yeah, I’m not much of a pretty boy now.”
Despite the circumstances, I laugh.
“How long have I been here?” I do remember coming too once before and being in this hospital, but it’s so blurry I don’t even know if it’s real. Judging by the darkened bruise on Nico’s face, I had to have been here at least a day or two.
“A day and a half. Not too long. How’re you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been run over.” I try to sit up but wince. Nico helps adjust me in the bed so I’m not lying down. Once I’m situated, he takes his place back on the edge of my bed.
“You suffered a broken leg, a concussion, two fractured ribs and a dislocated shoulder. Not to mention the drowning.” The way his jaw tenses when he mentions the drowning tells me that was hard for him. I barely remember the fall into the water.
“How’s Jake?”
I wasn’t the only one who was in that car that awful day.
The grin falls from Nico’s face. “He’s stable, but still has a long recovery ahead of him.”
I shut my eyes, fighting tears. Jake has become like family to me. I couldn’t even begin to think of him losing his life. And to think, it all stemmed from my fake client. Just the mention of them had me opening my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say, as I think back over everything that happened.
“Why are you apologizing?”
“Because of me, you lost everything. I should’ve fought harder or tried to get away.”
He’s shaking his head. He grabs my unbandaged arm and brings it to his lips.
“You think I care about that money? Angel, I would’ve given my sister my life to keep you safe. Hell, I’d give up the rights to my hotels to have you right here with me. That decision was easy for me.” He looks down and then back up at me.
“When I got out of that hellhole, my only goal was to rebuild everything my uncle stole from me. I surpassed that long ago. But you know what I figured out about revenge? It’s never filling. No matter how satisfying it is, it can never nourish you.
“It wasn’t until I laid eyes on you that night at the club that I felt fulfilled for the first time.
When you said I do on our wedding day and when you gave birth to my son, those are the things I found that gave me the most satisfaction.
Baby, I will walk through this world penniless before I ever take a step without you. ”
This. This is why I fell in love with this man.
Nico has shown me, even in the beginning, that he has always cherished me.
Even the way he went about getting me tells me I am important to him.
He’s shown me how much he values me in every way that he knows how.
I don’t know why I ever questioned this man.
“I love you,” I admit with a watery gaze.
He presses his lips to mine in a gentle kiss. There is no pressure or tongue, just my lips gently touching his. He exhales against my mouth before leaning his forehead to mine.
“I love you so fucking much.” He breathes the words out.
“I want you to know that we’ll be okay,” I say, leaning back so I can look into his eyes. “I’ll start taking more clients, and we can sell the house. We don’t need that big of a home. And I can….”
His laughter cuts me off. Nico laughs as if I’ve just told a hilarious joke. He sits back on the bed, still holding my hand.
“What’s so funny?”
He shakes his head. “Tiff, we’re not broke.”
“I mean, I know that.” I shrug.
I’m assuming he still had all his assets and net worth, but let’s not act like she didn’t clear his bank account.
“But she still took a lot of money.”
He waves me off. “As of twenty minutes ago, every dime I gave her is now back in my bank account. Plus the measly hundred thousand she already had.”
Now I’m confused, my face is scrunched up to show it. “I don’t understand.”
He grins. “I have a damn good memory and the best hacker in the world on my payroll. All I had to do was remember the routing and account numbers of their bank account. He cleared that shit out in five seconds.”
I don’t know why I didn’t think he wouldn’t have a plan in place.
“You knew all along you would get your money back?”
“No.” He shrugs. “When I gave her that money, I wasn’t thinking about getting it back. At the time, I didn’t know the idiots would allow me to see their bank account either. The moment the doctor told me you would survive, my mind started calculating.”
Although some of that day is hazy, I remember his sister warning him about double-crossing her.
“What if she tells the Horseman what she knows?”
This time, the smile that spreads over his face is almost devilish.
He brings my hand up to his lips and places a kiss on the back of it. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve got friends in high places.”
Marissa
Taking a sip of my frozen pina colada, I replace my shades on my face. Being rich is a beautiful thing. When I first got that call from the guy who called himself the Horseman, I thought he was full of shit. It was Benjamin that told me I should hear him out.
The Horseman told me about my brother’s precious wife. He said if I wanted to get back at my brother, I should go through his wife. I never really wanted revenge from Nicholas. The kid really did nothing wrong. But I did want his money.
That’s when I came up with the plan. We had just added Ezra to our team.
He’d just pulled off an art heist when he stole that recluse painter’s work.
I thought it was a stupid plan when he first told me about it, but then he sold that first painting and I was on board.
I knew the best way to get to Tiffany was to go through her job.
But I had to be smart. Nicholas could never see me. So I had to have someone to be the face of the group. Ezra as Bankman was perfect.
Sure, it got off track a few times when Ezra thought he was bigger than the program. He really wanted Tiffany. He damn near lost his life over it twice. Thankfully, I was able to salvage the relationship and roll him back in. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it.
But finally, I had everything I was owed.
“I was built for this life.”
I glance over at Benjamin lying beside me on the lounge chair. We both knew it was smart to get the hell out of the country the moment we got free. Fake IDs and forged passports got us to the beautiful island of Bora Bora.
“Too bad Ezra couldn’t make it,” I say jokingly.
Benjamin turns to me before laughing. Ezra was just a casualty of war. He’d only been with us for two years, it wasn’t like we were missing anything.
“Maybe we should buy ourselves a little island,” he says, looking over the top of his sunglasses at me.
A clearing of a throat has both me and Benjamin turning to the three men standing over us. One of the guys is dressed in a casual suit. The other two, I can tell are security.
“Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Daniels,” the suit guy says using our fake names. “There seems to be a mistake.”
Benjamin sits up, yanking off his shades. “What kind of mistake?”
“The card you gave me has declined. We need you to leave the premises.”
I scoff. “Check that again. Trust me, there is no way that card declined.”
“We ran it multiple times. Each time it came back as insufficient funds.”
I turn to Benjamin with a scowl. There is no way. Benjie pulls out his phone and quickly starts browsing through it.
“What the fuck?” he shouts, turning the phone around to me. Where there were once so many numbers in our account that it looked like a phone number, there are now only zeroes. That asshole even took the money I had left over from our last scam.
“You have two hours to clear off the property, or we will call the authorities,” suit guy says.
Benjamin and I quickly gather our things from the side of the pool. The security guards watch us wearily. All the nosy faces around us whisper and sneer as we are humiliated.
“This is bullshit,” Benji growls as we walk back to our private villa.
“I thought you said once the money went through there would be no way he could take it out?”
Benjamin was always in charge of the technical stuff. I came up with the plans.
“It wasn’t. I don’t know what happened.”
I was livid. Nicholas thought he had won, but he was about to regret the day he ever fucked with me.
“He thinks he’s got away. Next time, I’m putting a bullet in that bitch’s head. Or better yet, I’ll snatch his fucking kid and sell him on the black market to the first pervert that wants him.”
I was definitely going back to finish the job. Nicholas can kiss his son goodbye.
Benjamin and I walk into the villa and shut the door.
“Grab our things,” Benjie says. “I’m going to figure out what the hell happened to our money.”
The whirring of what sounds like a drill going in the kitchen has both of us turning in that direction.
“What the hell was that?”
I shrug.
We both headed into the kitchen. I pause when I find a very large in height and build, blonde-haired man standing behind the kitchen counter.
His head is down, and he’s pulling a bunch of power tools out of a black duffle.
When he looks up at me, I gasp. The man has the most beautiful seafoam green eyes I’ve ever seen.
“Who the fuck are you?” Benji asks.
Before the scary guy could answer, the creaking of a door opening had both of us turning to the newcomer. This guy is just as tall as the first guy and has the same green eyes, but he’s not nearly as terrifying.
“Little brother, when we get back, we have to bring the family out to this place. It’s beautiful.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Summer and the kids are my family, not yours.” The giant sounds bored as he pulls a large saw out of the duffle and places it on the counter.
The other guy scoffs. “I’m going to tell Summer you are excluding me again. Do you need her to have the talk with you?”
Big guy rolls his eyes and then returns his attention to us. Benjamin and I both have been silently watching the two converse.
“Who…. who are you?” I ask the question that neither of them has yet to answer.
“We,” the new guy smirks, pointing to himself and the scary giant. “Are a gift from your brother.”
Something tells me this is not a gift I want.
“Sit down,” the giant says, pointing to the two kitchen chairs he has placed in the center of the room. “I need to feed.”