Epilogue Part 1
Ryder
One Year Later
Of course she was late to her own show.
It wouldn’t be Violet if she was on time.
“Stop fidgeting. You look like you’re in withdrawal,” Roman mused, standing beside me at the bar with, I shit you not, a glass of milk.
Seriously, he was a badass Bratva heir, and he was drinking a glass of milk rather than the expensive fucking whiskey I’d just bought him. What the fuck was up with this guy?
“Shut up,” I muttered, trying to drown out the block of ice forming in my stomach. The burn of the whiskey didn’t help. If anything, it made it worse. “She’s here.”
I’m pretty sure my heart skipped a beat when she appeared in that soft purple dress, a smudge of paint streaked across her brow.
Greta was fussing over her, muttering as she tried to rub it off with her thumb.
Violet’s hair had been braided neatly down her back, shorter than before but still long enough to wrap around my fist.
“You’re fucking whipped,” Roman chuckled, but I ignored him because Violet turned and met my gaze from across the room.
She looked like chaos wrapped in sunlight.
And I had never seen anything more perfect.
Shame I wanted to snarl like a caveman when her mum stole her attention. Greta and I will never be close, but I could admit she was trying for Violet’s sake. She was still crazy, but now it was the medicated kind of crazy. Not the full-blown, foaming-at-the-mouth variety.
But I didn’t need to give in to my darker instincts, because Violet looked at me.
She even stepped in my direction, but then her friends swarmed her with congratulations, pulling her into hugs and boring conversations.
It was her first solo exhibition, her moment, and she deserved every bit of praise flooding her way even if I wanted to steal her all for myself.
But I didn’t, because I was being good.
Instead, I stood there, watching her glow under the lights and attention, and all I could think was how fucking proud I was of her. And at the same time, I was pretty sure I was going to be sick.
“You’re being dramatic. Do you really think she’ll say no?” Roman said, his shoulder knocking into mine.
Anxiety.
I, Ryder Finn, master thief extraordinaire, had anxiety.
“Remind me why I invited you again?” I groaned, downing the rest of my drink while Bug glared at me from across the room. I gave her a little wave.
“You didn’t invite me, Violet did,” the traitor said, facing me with a smirk. “We’re friends.”
“I’m going to shoot you.”
He scoffed. “You can’t. Your depth perception is fucked.”
I whacked him in the shoulder, which earned me another glare from Bug.
Seriously, after all this time, you’d think she’d have warmed up to me. But no. Apparently betraying her best friend is, like, a lifelong offence and she’ll ‘never forgive me’. Talk about dramatic.
“It’s just point and shoot. I’ll hit you eventually,” I said, much to Roman’s amusement.
Waking up in a hospital bed had been a new experience, especially with Violet glued to my side the second I opened my eye. And yes, I may or may not have milked her attention for everything it was worth.
Manipulation? Absolutely. At least until I got medically cleared to do far more interesting things.
After that, I just went back to manipulating her with orgasms.
I might’ve woken up with a cool new scar and half my vision gone… but I got the girl. Honestly? Felt like a fair trade.
Also, I looked fucking badass. I was as handsome as ever, but now I had one pale eye, and one brown. Distinguished, in a tragic-hero, dangerous-heartthrob kind of way.
Which, by the way, also made me look scary as hell whenever Roman called on me to handle his bitch work.
I still got to do all the things I enjoyed like planning, plotting, and a bit of high-end thievery.
But also, I got to be his council. The devil on his shoulder that talked him into the worst decisions.
We were a… team.
A fucked-up, morally questionable, occasionally explosive team, but a team, nonetheless.
Roman made the calls, and I made sure those calls didn’t blow up in his face… unless we wanted them to. Maxim handled the muscle, the subtle threats, and the not-so-subtle ones.
And together, somehow, we kept his territory from burning down.
Or, uh, burning down too much.
But even with all that, even with the late-night strategy sessions, the adrenaline highs, and Roman pretending he wasn’t deeply attached to me like some grumpy cat… nothing compared to going home at the end of it.
Because home was Violet.
She’d wait for me in our bed, wrapped in one of my shirts, hair messy, likely covered in paint, and she’d give me a single look.
Like she loved me.
I lived for that look.
I lived for her.
And yeah, I’d lost vision in one eye, nearly died, been shot, stabbed, punched, and emotionally terrorised, but somehow?
Somehow, I’d ended up exactly where I was meant to be.
With her.