Epilogue
One Week Later
Tyr
“I’ve told you a dozen times, I don’t remember anything after that fucking mutant ate off half my face. He tried ripping my throat out and ultimately nicked my jugular. I nearly bled out.” Red Flag’s voice sounded like he gargled with gravel, thanks to the damage Pirahna did to his vocal cords.
But that damage was nothing compared to what had been done to his face.
A sigh sounded before movement came toward the open hospital room door. “Well, Mr. Vidal, I’m leaving my card here in case your memory returns. The person who did this to you is a well-known criminal by the name of Pirahna, and you’re not his only victim. He can’t be allowed to be out there with an unsuspecting populace, Mr. Vidal. He’s an animal, and his handler, Hades Colgrave, is even worse. Neither of them have anyplace left to go, so that makes them doubly dangerous. If you can think of anything that would help us capture them, you’d be doing this city a service.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t remember, Detective. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get my beauty sleep. As you can see, I now need all the beauty sleep I can get.”
I looked at the paperwork on a chart outside the door.
Thor Vidal.
Shit, that was hilarious.
The detective in the room walked out, and I smothered a sigh. Detective Justin Gomez wasn’t bad as LEOs went, though he had a bad habit of being more tenacious than a pit bull. Thankfully I’d detected a hint of resignation as he spoke to my cousin, and that was a great sign for us. For a week now we’d circled the wagons after Ginger’s unforgettable birthday party. Most of it had been smooth sailing, but explaining how we came across Red Flag in the parking lot with his face all fucked up had been dicey. Couldn’t have been helped, though. Ginger had insisted on getting him medical help even though the bastard had kidnapped her from her own party. My first instinct had been to just let him die. Fruit of the poisoned tree and all that.
But Ginger had sworn he’d be a stand-up guy and clearly, after hearing him with the detective, it was obvious Red Flag was ready to finally start making some good choices. He was on his very last chance with me, but I had hope the Colgrave brain would eventually start kicking in.
Detective Gomez paused in putting a beanie on when he saw me. The first week in November had turned bitterly cold, and though the first snowflake had yet to fall, the city of Chicago could feel it coming. Pretty soon the world would turn white and the bikes would be put up for another season.
“Mr. Colgrave, fancy meeting you here. I’ve been hoping to have a word with you—”
“Then you know the routine, Detective. Call my lawyer to make an appointment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to catch my friend before he gets too deep into dreamy-land.” With a dismissive nod, I moved into the hospital room and firmly shut the door behind me.
“Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any worse,” Red muttered the moment he saw me, giving me the evil eye from his inclined hospital bed. “What the hell do you want?”
“Hello to you too, Cuz.” I pulled up a chair, plopped my ass down and made myself look at him without flinching. As much as I hated to admit it, Red Flag had once had all the Colgrave good looks going for him, from the light eyes to the squared-off jaw and chiseled Norse bone structure.
That was all gone now.
The right side of his face wasn’t too bad, but the left side—most of which was still covered in heavy white bandages—would have driven a lesser man mad. Bite marks punctured the ridge of his eyebrow. Stitches could be seen at his hairline and under his eye before disappearing under the bandages. A corner of his mouth drooped thanks to more stitches, and his bottom lip was bruised black because it had to be sewn back on after it was nearly ripped off.
I still couldn’t imagine the pain and horror of it.
His neck was also heavily bandaged. The doctors had told Ginger that it was a miracle he could talk at all, considering all the damage Pirahna had done trying to rip his throat out.
All of which could have been avoided if the dumb shit had just left Ginger alone. As far as I was concerned, Red getting attacked by Pirahna was just Karma doing her thing for daring to put Ginger in danger.
“So.” Leisurely I rested my ankle on my knee and relaxed back in the chair. “Thor Vidal. Really?”
“Fuck you and fuck that stupid name,” he said so immediately I had to laugh. Yep, my cousin was definitely on the mend. “I am so done with all of you pricks with god names. Makes you think you’re an actual god.”
“What are you bitching about? You’re one of us, Thor .”
“As soon as I’m strong enough, you and I are going to tangle assholes again, and this time you’re not going to be saved by some delivery boy screeching out freaky-frack .”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time. And what the hell is a freaky-frack anyway?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He seemed to deflate back against the pillow, his outburst clearly taking its toll. “What are you doing here besides raising my blood pressure?”
“Just taking care of some business before you head home.”
The evil eye returned, with interest. “Are you trying to kick me out of Chicago?”
“I’d be cool with you staying at least through the holidays, especially since my brother and sister want to meet you. But Ginger said you wanted to head back to Texas.” I waited for him to say something, and when he didn’t I leaned forward. “Did you fall asleep with your eyes open?”
“No, you weirdo, I just didn’t expect this conversation to go in that direction.”
“What direction?”
“Normal. Civilized. Family shit.”
Ah. I saw where this was going. “Uncle H spent years brainwashing Ginger into believing I was the bad guy. Guess he pulled the same shit with you.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get in a twist about it. It didn’t take. For either of us.”
I supposed I should take that as a win. “Speaking of family, I wanted to let you know I had a lawyer contact the Coroner’s Office to put a hold on Olive’s remains. She was my cousin, and Ginger liked her. She was loved and respected by you, her brother. Our final farewells to her should be done properly, with people who gave a damn she lived. Do you know where she’s from? Where her family is?”
Red Flag’s face was terrible, and not just because of his wounds. “I already got in touch with her mom down in Indianapolis. She didn’t seem to give a shit. Hades saw Olive as a dud. She had no one who cared about her except me.”
Pain shifted in my chest. “We’ll take good care of her, then.”
“You killed her, you know. When you sent that psycho bitch back to the Chicago Gravediggers, you killed her.”
“I know.” I held his gaze when it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. The weight of his accusation mingled with my guilt, nearly buckling me in two. But the very least he deserved was for me to not look away from the horror I dealt out when I sent Yoyo back. “Olive was an innocent kid. My cousin. My flesh and blood. Someone who should’ve been protected by me. Loved and cherished by me. And I let her down.”
Red Flag sat back against the pillows, clearly surprised, but I wasn’t finished.
“I’m not going to lie to you, if I had to do it all over again, I’d still do it. Maybe a bit differently, but I’d still do it, because I was trying to end a war. It just fucking sucks that Olive, the gentlest of us all, was left in the line of fire. That’s on me. I will carry her death with me for the rest of my life.”
“Good.” He tried scowling, but it fell apart almost immediately with a rough sigh. “No, goddamn it, that’s not good, you asshole. She was deliberately brought into a warzone without being told about it, and that’s not on you. Hades dragged her to Chicago, because he wanted to use her.”
I frowned. “Use her for what?”
“Some bullshit Hades cooked up. Remember that trouble with Olive’s car? It was all staged so that I could come swooping in to save the day and cross paths with Ginger.”
“To what end?”
“Dumb old geezer wanted to see if I could make you jealous by hitting on Ginger. I know,” he added, throwing his arms out in exasperation when I just stared at him. “He said he wasn’t sure if Ginger could still be exploited as a weakness for you, so that was his grand plan with Olive and me. There you were, making plans to nuke us with Yoyo, while Hades was over there plotting reenactments of Gossip Girl .”
“That might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said faintly, sick at heart over all the lives lost. Then I shook my head and tried to stow away all that insane crap my uncle churned up, promising myself I’d deal with it later. “I’ve got some other business to square away with you.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“You should know that officially, no one saw you, Hades, or Pirahna at Ginger’s birthday party. Our surveillance cameras across the street don’t cover the entire strip mall, so whatever happened to you wasn’t caught on tape. We’ve turned all that stuff over to LEO, but they’re not going to see anything of note.”
He started to raise a brow, only to wince in pain. “They’re not going to see the deaths of a pointy-toothed cannibal and a decrepit megalomaniac who took credit for all your success?”
My jaw dropped. “You were conscious enough to hear that?”
“Dude, it was almost enough to make me rise like fucking Lazarus to beat down that two-faced sonofabitch myself. Away from you, my old man would go on and on about how petty and scheming you were because you were oh, so jealous he was the one sitting on a throne that you thought you were entitled to. But to your face, he had to admit what a great leader you are, if only so he could take credit for making you that way.” He shook his head, looking disgusted. “What a fucking piece of work he was.”
“Was, as in past tense. Let’s count our blessings that we don’t have to deal with him anymore.”
He shot a careful glance at the door before leaning forward. “Are you sure about that? What happened to Pirahna and Hades?”
“That’s nothing for you to worry about. Pirahna’s never going to be seen or heard from again, and Hades… well, he’ll turn up soon enough.”
Red Flag frowned. “Why have him turn up at all, Tyr? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’ve got a great big lake just east of here. Lots of things can go missing forever in a lake that big.”
Heh. This guy was growing on me. “Hades needs to be declared legally dead so that his estate can go into probate. He owned a lot of real estate in this city—some of it extremely valuable. I’d say in the four to five million range. And that’s just the shit I know about.”
“Of course.” He eye-rolled, then winced again. “The money. It’s all about the Benjamins, isn’t it?”
“Hey, don’t knock it, pal. You’re Hades’s last living heir. That means you’re the one who’s going to inherit.”
That got his attention. “ What ?”
“I don’t want it. I want nothing to do with anything that Hades had, and neither do my siblings. It’s all yours. It’s your birthright, Thor.”
“I can’t wait to beat the shit out of you.”
Since there was no heat in his words, I chuckled and pushed to my feet. Ginger was probably waiting for me outside, so I needed to wrap things up. “Got any plans once you get sprung from this joint?”
“Well, now that I’m a soon-to-be-millionaire, I’m thinking I’ll head out to all those plastic surgeons in California to see what they can do for my face. And then I might head back home to Texas to see what kind of trouble I can find there.”
Considering he was a Colgrave, the trouble would probably find him. “I’ve got a feeling you won’t have to work too hard on that.”
“What about you? The war’s over now. What are you going to do?”
Instantly my thoughts homed in on Ginger. “I think I’m going to get married. How’s that for crazy?”
“I think you’d be crazy not to. While I was lying there slowly bleeding out, all I could do was watch Pirahna approach Ginger. Jesus, I’ve never felt so fucking helpless in my life. And then… something happened.”
“What?” I prodded when he paused.
“I don’t know, man, maybe it was all the blood loss, but… I swear, it was like Ginger was glowing . Right before she killed that crazy fucker, it was as though the gods looked down at her, liked what they saw, and for just a second they made her a… a goddess, or something. I know that sounds nuts—”
“No, it doesn’t.” I couldn’t explain how Ginger had needed to view herself as a pretend-goddess just to survive her childhood, because in my mind she’d achieved full-blown goddess status a long time ago. I opened my mouth to tell him what he’d seen was accurate when my text chime went off, and when I looked down at Ginger’s text, my blood ran cold.
“Don’t freak out, but I’ve been admitted to the ER down on the first floor. I’m fine, but please come and hold my hand.”
I ran out the door with Red Flag yelling in alarm after me.
*