Epilogue
Storm
For our second anniversary present, I couldn’t wait to hand her what I had been working on.
I’d told her it was club business.
But that wasn’t the case.
I just knew that if I told her, it was club business that she wouldn’t pry. Nor would she ask any questions.
But… I hated lying to her.
So thankfully, after this morning, I wouldn’t be lying to her anymore.
Striding into our bedroom, after I took Krys to school, and got Trevor up, I sat down beside my woman, and said, “Do me a favor?”
She looked up at me, breathless, love shining brightly for me in those emerald, green eyes of hers, and then she asked breathily, “What?”
“When I get up, grab your phone, and your earbuds, put them in, and then open your email and look for something from
“Why?”
“Just do it,” I told her, then pressed a kiss on the top of her nose and headed to the kitchen to make the same breakfast she’s asked for every year on our anniversary.
Lena
I didn’t do what he asked me to do right away.
No, I shamelessly watched his bare back, and his perfect ass as he walked to the kitchen.
My man.
All mine.
Once I sighed at the memory of where his hands had been a few minutes ago and the feel of them, I did as he asked me.
I put my earbuds in my ears, and then I unlocked my phone, then when I heard the little tone that said my earbuds were connected to my phone, I pulled up my email.
Fifth from the top, there was the email he had been talking about.
When I opened it, I had no clue what was going on, but this man of mine was definitely intrigued.
Once I downloaded the file, let it load, and then hit play, my eyes went wide.
There was my man’s voice. My man doing the audio of my favorite books.
As a matter of fact, it was the same book I was reading when I met him for the first time.
Storm
Fifteen Years Later
My woman told me that she wanted to have my property patch on her back. My ring on her finger. My last name. My babies. And she wanted to grow old with me.
As I looked around at our family, I knew I had met every single one of her wants without abandonment.
Trevor was smiling down at the girl who held his heart in the palm of her hand.
Lena already had a bullet with her name on it should she break Trevor’s heart.
Krys was laughing up at Hugo, a badass tattoo artist who made even Clutch’s designs look mediocre. And that was saying something about the man’s technique.
I needed to make sure the gun we used for no traces was clean and ready.
Maren was laughing with Cason’s son. Oh, my sweet Maren.
As Trevor came into the world three weeks early and without a fuss, our sweet Maren didn’t.
She didn’t want to leave the warm cocoon she was in.
I still remember the labor and delivery like it was yesterday, just like I did with Raine and Trevor.
Raine was forty-one weeks and a day when she elected to be induced.
And that induction took longer than necessary.
Twenty-three hours of labor as a matter of fact.
And seeing the pain my woman was in, I had decided right then and there that we were done. Officially done. We had four kids, and they were amazing. We didn’t need any more.
So, while my woman was resting after giving birth to Maren, I was making an appointment to have a vasectomy.
My woman had to go through all of that, it was the least I could do.
And since my woman was my woman, the best woman of all, she had her tubes tied a few months later.
“You're it for me, Vance. If something happened to you, I wouldn’t move on. And no way in hell would I ever carry another man’s baby.”
And over the past fifteen years, everything I have done has been for my family.
Before I met Lena, all I lived for was my daughter and my club.
But that small, pint-sized five-foot-one framed woman held so much inside her that I still don’t feel like I’ve reached the bottom of her heart yet.
But I’m going to keep digging until I make it there.
She is the epitome of what the word Empower means.
And I love the fuck out of her.