Epilogue
Risky
I was tired.
Sick to death of watching terrible people be rewarded just because they had the good fortune of being wealthy and powerful. It got to where it felt like my world consisted of nothing but greed and manipulation. It became harder and harder to paste on a disaffected smile and pretend I was indifferent to the depths of horror and harm humanity was capable of. I was the best at my job because I was numb and unsurprised by the majority of misdeeds my boss sent me to clean up for her clients.
I’d started off life being abandoned like I was trash. A beginning like that didn’t leave much room for a positive outlook toward pretty much anyone. Including the woman who had saved me and taken me home and raised me. I always felt like I was more of a project to her than a person. She had given me the skills I needed to survive and thrive in her world, but I was mostly clueless about how to behave with normal people in regular society.
I would’ve remained feral all my life if I hadn’t stopped in Blue River for a job and come across the rustic lodge and the kind older couple who ran it.
They took me in and sheltered me in the middle of a snowstorm, no questions asked. They fed me and kept me warm and made me feel like I was part of their family. Like I was a grandson, returning from a long trip, who’d been missed. It was the first time in my life I understood what comfort and care felt like.
It shattered my perception of the relationship I’d always had with my boss. I knew she cared about me, but I was an asset to her. My value was in what I could do for her, not who I was as a person. If I stopped performing up to her standards or impeded whatever it was she needed to accomplish, she would get rid of me without a second thought. I was a tool, and no one needed to keep a hammer with a broken handle around.
That little pit stop on the mountain made me realize I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing forever. I still owed my boss for saving me as a child, but that loyalty wasn’t infinite.
While I stayed at the lodge, I noticed the family pictures they had hidden around the large building. Most of them were from when the lodge had been constructed and outdoorsy stuff, like the family skiing or fishing in the river at the bottom of the valley. The personal touch made it feel less like a resort and more like I was visiting long-lost relatives. The older couple was posing with a younger girl in all of them, and she progressively grew up with each frame. By the time she was college-aged, she was stunning with a hint of wildness about her. If I was a feral, stray dog, she was a sleek black cat. I found myself trying to locate her in all the images on the walls.
Long after I left and returned to a life filled with deception, blood, and secrets, I would recall the image of the girl who had looked so soft and defiant at the same time. I promised myself when it was time to walk away from my job, I would return to Blue River and see if it was as idyllic as I remembered. And with any luck, I might run into the young woman who lingered in my mind. I silently hoped she inherited the effortless kindness her grandparents were full of. If everything fell into place, I’d relocate where I wanted to retire. Even if the woman from the pictures didn’t live up to the fantasy I’d built around her in my head, whatever life I made for myself in Blue River was bound to be the opposite of all the other places I’d lived and traveled while taking care of clients for my boss.
I was ready for quiet and calm. I longed to stop lying about who I was and what I was capable of. I wanted to spend some time figuring out how to be normal and nonthreatening.
When the boss told me she was ready to retire and hand the business down to her daughter, I was elated. I finally had an out. I owed a lot to the woman who had saved me, and nothing to the woman who had manipulated me into her bed. I’d never wanted to get involved with the boss’s family, and I was forever resentful that I felt like I hadn’t been given a choice when it came to hooking up with her kid when she decided she wanted me.
I knew walking away wasn’t going to be easy, but I foolishly believed a lifetime of dedicated service, with zero internal leaks or complaints about the tasks given, would buy me a buffer. I forgot I owed everything and deserved nothing because I was just an employee.
Even knowing trouble was going to find me eventually, I still took myself back to the mountain with nothing more than the clothes on my back. I told myself I could handle anything that came my way. It was arrogant. But one didn’t last long in my line of work without an abundance of self-confidence.
Imagine my surprise when, the day I arrived in the tiny town, postretirement, and started hitchhiking up the mountain, the first person I encountered was the woman from the pictures in the resort. She was different in 3D. It was easy to tell life hadn’t gone easy on her in the years between my visits to paradise. She still came across as a haughty, standoffish cat, but the potential kindness that had led me back was evident when she asked me if I needed a ride and offered me a job without knowing a goddamn thing about me. I told one last lie—I was handy and could help her get the lodge ready to reopen in exchange for a place to stay. Lucky didn’t even ask for references or credentials at first. She took me in and made me feel like I belonged when I so clearly did not, just like her grandparents had. I told myself I would do whatever was necessary to put the light back in her eyes and make her feel like she wasn’t facing an unseen enemy on her own.
Maybe it was love at first sight. If I were more familiar with what being in love felt like, there would be no maybe about it. All I knew was that she’d stayed with me through all the terrible things I’d done, and I knew I needed to be a better man if I ever wanted to be with her.
It wasn’t long before I noticed Lucky was a very good woman with astronomically bad luck and terrible taste in people. It frustrated me to no end that I’d spent a lifetime witnessing bad people have nothing but good fortune while she was constantly struggling. It wasn’t fair. I promised myself I would stick around and help her balance the scales. Conveniently forgetting my neck was in a guillotine and the blade might fall at any minute.
I should’ve left the night the power went out and the first person sent to take me out showed up on the mountain. Dropping a body in the river and hoping that would be the end of it was ridiculously foolish. Just because my boss had let me go didn’t mean her daughter was ready to. Especially since I’d moved on to a new job and a new woman without batting an eye. Of course she was going to take that shit personally.
I instantly regretted pulling Lucky into the mire that was the loose ends of my old life. She acted strong, but I could tell she was fragile and ready to break from one wrong move. After she nearly fell off the deck, I decided I should pack my bags and get out of her life before something happened that I couldn’t prevent. I didn’t anticipate the sabotage or Lucky getting caught between two rocks intent on grinding her to dust. If I left, no one would protect her, and there was no guarantee my former flame would leave her be. I decided as long as I kept her alive, nothing else mattered. I could figure out the rest after the lodge was back on track. All I knew was she’d been hurt enough, and I wanted to protect her.
I knew her friend was behind all the suspicious incidents aimed at harming the business. She was the only one who had stayed in the cabin besides me, and the virus planted on the computer was amateur and easy to track back to the times she had logged in to the lobby computer. I wanted Lucky to figure it out on her own so she could learn that just because someone appeared to be on your team on the surface, they might have hidden motives. She was so used to keeping people close who didn’t mind the mishaps that followed her everywhere that she had lowered her guard and let the enemy in through the front door.
It took some time to figure out how to be the man I wanted to be as well as the man Lucky needed. Some of my old habits slipped through, and I couldn’t cut ties to my past as cleanly as I wanted.
The day Lucky got into the accident, I was terrified. I hadn’t been that scared since I had been a little boy, left behind by my mother. I knew I couldn’t continue to let things unravel and leave my past rampage unchecked. I called my former boss and let her know if she couldn’t rein in her daughter, I was going to. It was a declaration of war. I knew I was making an enemy of someone I used to consider my mentor. As much as I appreciated what she’d done for me, I liked the man Lucky had honed me into much more.
Before my boss had an opportunity to intervene, the lodge went up in flames, and all my secrets were laid bare. I thought I’d lost everything before I had the chance to fight for it.
The boss showing up and smoothing things over with Lucky took me by surprise. So did her offer to fund her future. I would die before letting someone as innocent and pure-minded as Lucky get tangled up in a family that dealt in the worst the world offered. But I appreciated that she’d convinced Lucky I was a changed man and tipped the scales in my favor.
There was no letting go of her after she accepted me fully.
I loved her in ways I hadn’t known I was capable of. All I wanted was to spend the rest of my life by her side. It felt like I was getting an entirely new lease on life because of her, and then someone unrelated to my dark history had nearly killed her when my back was turned.
I’d never felt so ineffective or helpless.
It became clear I would never be completely free from past misdeeds because I needed to make whoever wanted to hurt Lucky pay from now until eternity. I didn’t care about the price. I didn’t even mind that I needed to call it even with the woman I hated with the fire of a thousand suns since I owed her for saving Lucky’s life. Who knew why she had saved Lucky instead of shooting her? But I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. As long as she left me and Lucky alone in the future, I was happy to switch from being a stray dog to a sleeping one.
My plan was to help Lucky build whatever she envisioned. I knew she wasn’t going to leave the mountain. Her heart and soul were bound to this place, and since mine were bound to her, I put down roots that were impossible to pull out.
My only purpose now was to make sure Lucky went from a woman stuck with the title of Ms. Fortune to a woman enjoying life as Mrs. Risk.
The End