Epilogue
Three months later
My phone started ringing just as Nico stepped out of his trunks and strode into the impossibly blue sea. I let it ring for a few seconds while I admired him. Three months together hadn’t made the sight of his naked body any less alluring. If anything, I’d only grown more addicted to it.
He glanced back over his shoulder, his expression knowing. “Your phone’s ringing.”
I scooped it off the towel and answered at the last second without bothering to check who was calling.
“So I guess you weren’t kidding when you said you weren’t coming home?” Hannah said instead of offering a greeting.
I looked around. White sand. Palm trees. A cloudless blue sky. Warm water lapping at the shore. A few feet to my left sat a luxurious private beach hut equipped with everything we could ever need. It was the Caribbean rather than the Maldives, but I certainly wasn’t complaining.
“I wasn’t kidding.”
“Not ever?” There was a hint of sadness in Hannah’s voice.
“I doubt it.”
She sighed. “If only I could meet my Prince Charming, but they seem in short supply at the hospital.”
“I wouldn’t describe Nico as Prince Charming. More like the Prince of Darkness. I basically went to Hell and ended up with Lucifer.” I couldn’t really blame Hannah for the silence that followed. “I’m joking.”
“Are you?”
“Mostly,” I admitted.
“Just reassure me that he treats you well.”
“He does.” I decided not to add that most of the treating well happened outside the bedroom. Unless she’d become surprisingly open-minded about kinky sex, I doubted she’d understand.
She sighed again. “I wasn’t sure it would last.”
“Neither was I,” I admitted. “But here we are.”
“Your stuff is still here.”
I grimaced. “I know.”
“I packed it all up. I just don’t know what to do with it now. I can keep the personal stuff for you, but everything else is kind of in the way.”
“Sell it,” I said. “Give it away. Do whatever you want with it.”
Hannah laughed. “Oh, how things change when your boyfriend is loaded.”
I wasn’t about to deny it. Nico’s assurances that he wouldn’t run out of money had turned out to be a massive understatement.
He had millions stashed away, which made something of a mockery of his claim that he’d never intended to leave Wonderland.
“You can bring my personal stuff when you come and visit.”
Hannah snorted. “Right. You never stay in one place long enough. Besides, I couldn’t afford it.”
“I’ll have you know we’ve been here for a couple of weeks, and we’re planning to stay at least a few more days. Besides, I can send you a first-class ticket.”
“And how would your boyfriend feel about you having a visitor?”
That was an interesting question. I went back to ogling Nico while I considered it. “Fine,” I said eventually. “As long as you don’t want to fuck me.”
Hannah made a retching sound. “I’d rather become a nun.”
I turned as Nico’s phone started ringing somewhere inside the hut. “One minute,” I said to her. “Nico! Your phone.”
He turned, treating me to a full-frontal view as he strode back toward the shore. When he walked past, I reached out and trailed my fingers down his tanned, muscular thigh, seawater cool against my fingertips.
Hannah and I chatted for a few more minutes, though I only gave her half my attention. The rest stayed fixed on the muted conversation taking place inside the hut. I couldn’t make out the words, but something in Nico’s tone told me it was a conversation that carried some weight.
He was already hanging up when I ended the call with Hannah and stepped inside. “Problem?” I asked.
“Get dressed,” he said. “We’re going for dinner.”
Nico did dinner the way he did everything else: in style. I’d be lying if I said it had taken long to get used to the finer things in life. I raised my champagne glass, refusing to lower it until Nico finally sighed and mirrored the gesture.
“What are we toasting?” he asked.
“Here’s to Wonderland…” I said.
His brows drew together, and I held up a hand before he could interrupt.
“Wait. The worst time of my life—and also the best.”
“The best?”
“And, of course,” I narrated to an invisible audience, “he’s going to make me say it.”
He tilted his head and waited.
I sighed, but said it anyway. “The best because I wouldn’t have met you if I hadn’t gone there.”
“Not quite true,” he said. “We met before that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ah, yes. The warning, where you were all dark, brooding, and mysterious. You should’ve grown a mustache so you could twirl it menacingly.
” I leaned forward, curiosity getting the better of me, when we rarely talked about anything to do with Wonderland.
“Did you really think I’d listen? Be honest.”
Nico took a sip of his champagne. “I thought you might.” Before I could scoff, he added. “I didn’t know you then.”
“Anyway,” I said, “it doesn’t change the fact that if I hadn’t stumbled into that pit of vipers like a complete moron, we’d never have seen each other again. So my point still stands.”
Nico laughed. “Do you really believe that? Do you honestly think I wouldn’t have found a way for our paths to cross?”
I frowned, surprised by both his honesty and the picture he’d painted. I’d never even considered the possibility that he might seek me out. “It wouldn’t have been the same.”
“No,” he agreed. “It wouldn’t.”
The waiter arrived to take our order, leaving a comfortable lull in the conversation.
“What was that phone call about?“ I asked once we were alone again.
Nico met my gaze without looking away. “News from abroad.”
“Good news or bad?”
He laughed softly. “I’d call it good. Other people might disagree.”
I homed in on the slight tap of Nico’s fingers against the tabletop. By now, I knew him well enough to recognize it as a sign that he didn’t want to talk about whatever was on his mind, which only made me more curious.
“I’m trying to figure out,” I said, “why you don’t want to tell me.”
He shrugged. After a long pause, he took out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and slid it across the table. A newspaper article filled the display. It took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. “Someone attacked Kellan Hart?”
Nico nodded. “He died in the early hours of this morning.”
I slid the phone back to him and leaned back in my chair, barely noticing the waiter setting our starters in front of us as I sorted through my thoughts.
You were supposed to feel bad when someone died.
But this was Kellan Hart—the man who would’ve enslaved and abused me without a second thought if he’d gotten his way.
Relief was all I felt. Relief... and maybe a little happiness.
I got halfway through my starter without tasting any of it before I realized Nico was way too quiet. I studied him, trying to work out what I’d missed. The answer came to me shortly after he finished eating and pushed his plate aside. “You had something to do with it.”
His silence was an answer all of its own.
“Why? You said it would’ve happened, anyway. Why bring it forward?”
Nico didn’t respond. Instead, he held my gaze, clearly expecting me to figure it out for myself.
I thought it through. “He’d sent people after you. It was kill or be killed.”
Nico shook his head. “Worse.”
I frowned. “What could be worse?”
“He was looking for you.”
The words landed like a physical blow, knocking the breath out of me. I masked my discomfort by taking a long swallow of champagne. “Me? What did I do?”
“You can understand his thinking,” Nico said. “You were the catalyst for everything that happened to him afterward. If I’d never met you, I would’ve had no reason to bring his house of cards crashing down. He’d still be living his best life in Wonderland, doing whatever the hell he pleased.”
“When?” I asked. “When did you find out?”
“About a month ago.”
“And you never told me.” Remembering we were in a public restaurant, I lowered my voice. “You didn’t think I might want to know?”
“It would’ve made you paranoid.”
“Damn right it would’ve. With good reason.” I drained the rest of my champagne. Nico immediately reached for the bottle to refill my glass. I drank half of that too before setting it down a little harder than necessary.
“So you killed him for me?” I whispered.
“I didn’t kill him. I had him killed.”
“Is there a difference?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Nico shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose that’s for you to decide.
” He reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out two pieces of paper.
After moving my half-eaten starter aside—the waiter, apparently sensing there was drama unfolding, had wisely kept his distance—he laid them both neatly in front of me.
I picked up the plane ticket first. It was a one-way flight to London, leaving in two days. “What the fuck is this?”
“A choice,” Nico said.
I set the ticket down and picked up the check instead, nearly choking when I saw the amount. “You want to give me a million pounds?”
“It seems fair. You could do anything you wanted with it. Start a business. Run a charity. Invest it. Do nothing and live off the interest.”
My head was spinning. “So let me get this straight. You have a man killed because he wants to kill me. Then you expect me to get on a plane and go home like none of this ever happened.”
“I don’t expect you to do anything,” Nico said evenly. “Like I said, I’m giving you a choice.”
I didn’t even need to think about it. I picked up the plane ticket and tore it into tiny pieces.
Yes, finding out he’d arranged Kellan’s death was a shock.
But I’d get over it. Maybe the version of me who’d existed before Wonderland would’ve been horrified that someone had killed to keep him safe.
The man I’d become afterward was a lot harder to shock.
“That’s what I think of your plan,” I said, letting the scraps fall like confetti. “You’ll have to try a lot harder than that if you want to get rid of me.”
I reached for the check, intending to tear it up as well, but Nico placed his hand over mine before I could. “Keep it,” he said.
I shrugged. “If you insist.”
We cut dinner short, neither of us particularly interested in eating anymore. We stopped on the beach before heading back to the hut, the only light coming from the moon reflecting off the ocean.
“What about Queenie and Henry?” I asked. “Will you have them killed too?”
“If they cause us problems.”
Not him.
Us.
It was strange how much warmth that single word filled me with. Nico reached for my hand, threading our fingers together. The gesture caught me off guard. He wasn’t exactly the hand-holding type.
It felt as though I’d passed some kind of test tonight. I’d finally stopped searching for the good man hidden beneath the surface and accepted that Nico was exactly who he claimed to be. More importantly, I’d accepted that it didn’t matter to me nearly as much as it probably should have.
“Tell me you love me,” I demanded.
“I love you,” Nico said obediently, with only the faintest suggestion of an eye roll in his voice.
“I love you too. And not for your money.”
“Of course not,” he replied smoothly. “You’re a millionaire.”
“Oh, yeah.” I’d completely forgotten about the folded piece of paper tucked into my shirt pocket. “I need a bank.”
“Later.”
Nico was already pulling me toward the hut. I knew perfectly well he wouldn’t let me leave the bed for at least a few hours, and there would almost certainly be restraints involved somewhere along the way.
I wouldn’t put up much of a fight unless he wanted me to.
My life had changed in ways I could never have imagined just a few months ago, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
Nico might not be a good man, but that didn’t stop him from being perfect for me.
And that would keep us safe whatever life threw at us next, whether it was vengeful former employers or something far more ordinary.