Chapter 49 #2
Kirk Creed stands, slipping a business card from his jacket pocket and lays it beside the envelope.
“I’ll leave you with everything. Once you’ve had a chance to review, feel free to call me.
I’ll help facilitate the transfers, trust access, and all the necessary filings.
” He pulls one more piece of paper from inside his jacket and places it before me with a pen.
“If you’ll just sign on the tabbed lines that I’ve delivered these documents, I’ll be on my way.
” After Vanna and I sign and date them, Creed offers a polite nod and lets himself out, quietly shutting the door behind him.
Vanna doesn’t reach for the envelope, so I do.
It smells like smoke and incense, like Legion is standing in the room with us.
I turn it over in my hand, once…twice. It’s somehow heavier than I expected it to be.
As if it’s actually filled with his regret.
Inside are the last words he will ever say to us.
The final card played by a man who tried to break us…
Vanna moves closer to me, her forehead resting against my shoulder, and I press a kiss to her hair.
“Are you ready for this?” I ask.
“No,” she whispers. “But open it anyway.”
I break the pentacle seal and slip the letter from within.
It’s wrapped around another stack of hundreds.
At least a couple thousand, but I place the money aside to unfold the handwritten letter.
He must have written it shortly before leaving his cut at the Twisted Throttle and showing up at the farmstand the day I nearly beat the life out of him.
“I can’t read it,” Vanna whimpers, wiping her eyes before leaning against me once again. “I can’t see through the tears.”
I curl my arm around her, holding her close, and clear my throat. As my eyes scan over his written words, I can hear them in his familiar, gravelly voice…
“To the two people I’ve wronged most, and the only woman I’ve ever truly loved… If I can’t be the man you forgive, at least allow me to be the man who gives you back what I once tried to destroy.
If you’re reading this, it means I’m gone.
Doesn’t matter how, only that I tried to go out doing one right thing.
There’s no redemption for what I’ve done.
I betrayed trust. I crossed lines. I hurt people I claimed to care about, all because I couldn’t let go of something that was never mine.
I called it love, but it was need. Obsession under the guise of something purer.
You were never mine to take. I see that now, and I’m sorry.
But there are things I need you both to know.
Things I wasn’t able to admit even to myself, until now.
Dean Keegan, I hated how much I actually respected you.
You were everything I wasn’t. You built a life I didn’t believe could exist — Solid, honest, a home full of love, and a crew you lead with integrity, who follow not because they fear you, but because they admire you.
I envied you with everything in me. But I know you’re the kind of man who’d ride into hell to bring a kid home.
And given the chance, you would have saved me, too.
For all I’ve done to you, I am truly sorry.
Vanna, your love changed the very composition of my soul.
You saved me with your trust, and I shattered it.
I’ll regret that until my last breath, and probably after.
I hope the Ametrine Cauldron brings you some of the happiness I stole from your life.
I’ve left your son a trust, your husband’s club a legacy I hope he can turn into something better than the ruins I created.
You don’t owe me forgiveness. You never did.
But if there’s anything left in your heart, remember me for this one last act.
And as for Ace, the boy who looked up at me with your eyes, tell him to look to the stars.
To wish upon them the way his mother does.
Tell him the north star never moves, no matter how lost you get.
And tell him Legends never die… Legion.”
I place the letter on the table, and we sit in a moment of silence before her trembling hands reach for it. Without reading it again, she folds it up and slips it back inside the envelope, holding it in her lap.
Outside, the kids’ laughter spills in from the backyard along with the distant snap and crackle of early fireworks somewhere up the street. But in here, it’s still silent. Just her, me, and the echo of a man’s last attempt to make something right.
Vanna gets up and slips the envelope into the kitchen drawer gently, like it’s something sacred. She lifts the brass Zippo from within, smiling sadly at it before placing it on top of the envelope and shutting the drawer.
“I don’t know what to do with this,” she says softly, turning to look at me with tear-filled eyes.
“The guilt. The grief. It’s all tangled up in here,” she whimpers, placing her hand over her heart.
“I love you, Dean. I know you know that…but Legion…the way things ended with him… I hate that it hurts so much.”
I get up and reach for her.
She clings to me.
“Then don’t try to untangle it… Just let it be what it is. You’re allowed to grieve, doll. It doesn’t tarnish our love. Loving me doesn’t mean you have to pretend he didn’t matter to you. Grief is complicated. Love is, too.”
And closure doesn’t always come in words, I suppose. Sometimes it comes in silence, in sacrifice, in a last will and testament sitting on a table. Sometimes it looks like forgiveness, even when no one says the words out loud.
“I love you and Ace more than anything in this world.” She wipes her eyes and peers up at me with a fragile smile. The kind that says she isn’t okay yet, but will be, because she has us and she always will.
“Come on, doll,” I say, taking her hand in mine once again.
When we step out onto the back porch, the warm breath of summer curls around us.
Smoke from the grill drifts through the air in a mixture of charcoal and burgers.
All of our people are here. Our family .
The one we built out of broken parts and second chances.
Leather cuts draped over lawn chairs. Boots in the grass.
Kids squealing and dripping wet, being chased down by prospects with towels, attempting to wrangle them for dinner being set on the table.
“I’m glad Ace doesn’t remember the worst of it,” Vanna says, standing close enough I can feel the rise and fall of her breath. Her gaze follows Ace like she’s memorizing every second.
“He doesn’t. But he’ll remember this,” I assure her. “Family meals. Backyard fireworks. Games and laughter. All of us, together.”
She leans closer against me, peering up at me with something softer in her eyes now. “Thank you,” she whispers. “For not making me bury it all…”
“Legion might have crossed every line…but in the end, he gave everything to draw one that mattered,” I admit.
“Legion mattered,” she says. “But you’re my home, Dean. Thank you for loving me in all the ways I’ve needed to be loved.”
“My life’s mission, doll.” I lift her hand and press a kiss against her fingers, smiling at the way her wedding rings catch the light of the setting sun.
“We’ve been to hell and back a few times.
Love is what got us through the fire, loyalty keeps us standing strong, and together, we’ll keep building something worth fighting for. ”
And for the first time in a long while, the silence between us feels like peace.
The Saviors MC Series continues
with the next installment, Viking.