Epilogue
KIERA
Six weeks later.
“Still no word from your brother?” Sean asked.
I set my brush in the paint tray and looked down at Sean. He was holding the base of my ladder while I stood at the top, touching up the trim in my freshly spackled and repainted living room.
“I don’t think I’m supposed to hear from him,” I said. “That’s kind of the point.”
My brother had turned State’s witness and, in return for his testimony against the Cavallaros, his charges had all been dismissed.
Fortunately, when talking to the FBI, Braden had done me the first solid in his entire adult life and kept my name out of the whole mess.
Now, he was in witness protection. I didn’t know if I’d ever get word from him again.
“Still…it would be nice to know…something,” Sean said.
“We do know something,” I reminded him. “We know a lot about the case.”
This was true. After my brother gave the FBI the name of Lou Ritter, aka Bleu de Chanel Bodega Man, Ritter sang like a canary, and the indictment against Salvatore Cavallaro, the head of the Cavallaro family, came quickly. The Complaint was now available online for anyone to read.
Allegedly, the pearl-handled gun belonged to Cavallaro, who’d used it to kill Agent Van Dyke.
Vince Messina later convinced his cousin Turi, Cavallaro’s son and apparently not the brightest bulb in the family, that he could win his father’s favor by adding the incriminating gun to a job they’d already hired my brother to do and that my brother could make the gun disappear forever.
The complaint was a little vague as to how Messina had wound up with the gun, but Sean and I surmised that since he knew about the delivery, he’d followed me to the bodega and stolen the bag for himself.
It was alleged that Messina planned to use the gun to blackmail or leverage some kind of favor from his uncle.
But when Cavallaro discovered the betrayal, he’d made it look like Messina had killed himself, suggesting, once the ballistics came back, that the gun had belonged to Messina all along and that he’d been the one to shoot Agent Van Dyke.
Or at least, Cavallaro had tried to make it look that way.
Interestingly, Chandler Moss’s name didn’t show up in the criminal complaint.
And Evan Rogan, Elli’s brother, hadn’t even come up in the investigation, at least, as far as we knew. So maybe there’d never been a connection. Maybe that bodega was where all kinds of money exchanged hands.
For Elli’s sake, I hoped that turned out to be the case, though Sean was still suspicious. He was convinced that story was left unfinished.
“I meant,” Sean said, “it would be nice to know something about how your brother’s doing.”
I tipped my head to the side. “Since when do you care about Braden?”
He shrugged. “I don’t. I care about you and how you’re feeling about the whole thing.”
“Honestly?” I slowly descended the ladder. “I don’t know how I’m feeling.”
“Yeah, you do. You don’t need to sugarcoat things for me.”
When I reached the second-to-last step on the ladder, Sean pulled me off, turning me in his strong arms to face him.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and kissed him once on the lips.
“I feel…” I searched for the right word. “Relieved.”
“Relieved?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“What did you think I was going to say?”
“I don’t know. Worried? Maybe a little mad. You have the right to be.”
I shook my head. “Braden’s probably in the safest place he’s ever been, and I don’t think he’ll be looking for more trouble. At least for a while.”
“I suppose that’s good,” Sean agreed. “That’ll also mean no more trouble for you.”
“None of his making anyway.” There was always Loretta.
“That’s right,” Sean said. “We could always make a little trouble of our own.”
I got his meaning right away, and it made my clit pulse.
“I got some good news this morning,” I said, knowing we had all afternoon to make some trouble.
“I could stand some good news,” Sean said, nuzzling my neck.
“Another one of my clients is putting me on contract.”
He lifted his head. “What does that mean?”
“It means no more random deliveries from them. I’ll get a box at the beginning of each month. Five items. I do ten posts. One unboxing, five fashion shots, three action videos, and one giveaway.”
“It also means another dependable paycheck,” he correctly surmised.
“That, too.”
“Congratulations.” He kissed the sensitive skin where my neck met my shoulder.
“I was worried,” I said, my words coming out a little breathy. “I haven’t been as active online this past month.”
“You’ve had a good excuse.” Sean walked me to the kitchen and set me on the counter beside my new petal-pink toaster.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “but none of my brands knew it. I’m glad they stuck with me.”
“Who wouldn’t want to stick with you?” Sean bent and removed one of my tennis shoes, then the other.
“Seriously? I’ve got a list of names twenty-six years long.”
Sean peeled off my socks. “None of those people matter anymore.”
“You’re right.” A shiver rippled through me. “They don’t. Not after I netted my nymph.”
“You netted me?” Sean asked, sounding incredulous. “It felt more like the other way around.”
“Nope. I’m the winner here,” I assured him.
“Hmmm,” Sean murmured, then straightened from his crouch and looked me in the eye, his irises warming to a deep forest green. “And your girls will stick with you.”
“Yeah.” I knew that was true. I was a winner in more ways than one.
“The guys, too,” Sean added.
“They’re all good guys.”
His gaze slid to the side of my head. “Did you know you got paint in your hair?”
“No.” I grabbed the section of hair he was looking at and pulled it to the front. “Where?”
“Right here.” He scraped his fingernails down a few strands, but the dried paint was tenacious. “I think we’ll have to wash it out.”
The insinuation that a shower was in our future made my stomach flutter.
“I’ve got some good news of my own,” he said, working at the buttons on the front of my shirt.
I held perfectly still, my skin already tingling in anticipation of his touch. “What’s that?”
“The Spriggans are number one in the Central Division.”
“I already knew that. You’re three games ahead of the Chicago Changelings.”
“Okay, smarty,” he said, clearly pleased that I was keeping up with his season. “Here’s something you don’t know.”
“I’m listening,” I murmured.
He got to the last button and pushed my shirt back roughly over my shoulders.
“My mother made another appearance.”
“What?” That yanked me out of my lust-filled fog. “Did she talk to you?”
When Sean didn’t answer immediately—his attention was on my breasts—I grabbed both of his wrists and shook them.
Sean’s gaze jerked up from my breasts, and his expression slipped from dark and hungry to regret. He obviously hadn’t expected this change in conversation to take me out of the moment, but—hello?—this was big news.
“Well…no,” he admitted. “She didn’t talk to me, but she appeared. And that’s more than she’s ever done before. With me anyway.”
“Where was she?” I asked.
“In an oak tree. Right at the southwest corner of the cabin.”
I squeezed his wrists even harder. “How did she look?”
“Well…there was just the faint outline of her. But if I had to guess… She looked…judgmental. Maybe a little disappointed. Is there a word for that?”
“Disapproving?” I asked as excitement bubbled up inside of me.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s it. She looked disapproving.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling.
Sean must have misread my expression as concern. “It’s okay,” he said. “I didn’t even care. At this point, I’ll take what I can get from her.”
At that, I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it.
“What?” he asked.
“The southwest corner of the cabin?”
“Yeah,” he said, drawing his eyebrows together. “Why?”
“The corner where you parked your motorcycle for the winter?”
“Yeah, it—”
I grinned as I watched his realization slowly dawn.
“She doesn’t like my bike,” he said in awed wonder.
“She’s your mother,” I reminded him. “And not the kind of mom who spent summers on the back of her old man’s Harley. Of course, she doesn’t like your bike.”
“She’s worried about me,” Sean said, still sounding a bit befuddled.
I put my arms around Sean’s neck. “She told me as much when I was stuck in that lake. She didn’t rescue me for my sake. She did it for yours.”
“I’ve just been so mad,” he said. “At her. At myself.”
“You’re not responsible for her choices.”
“I know that.”
“Maybe…” I kissed him once. “If she knew you weren’t mad at her—or at yourself—she’d show herself more often.”
“Maybe.”
“When you saw her, did you try to talk to her? Wish her a Merry Christmas maybe?”
“No. Honestly, I was too shocked.”
“Next time, then.” I kissed him again, letting this one linger.
“Mmm,” he said against my lips while reaching behind me to unhook my bra.
Goose bumps skittered along my arms. “You know who else needs to talk to someone?”
“Who?” Sean pinched the front of my bra, deftly pulled it away from my body, and deposited it unceremoniously on the floor.
“Amy.”
Sean gave me a suspicious look. “Who does she need to talk to?”
I gave my head a little shake of incredulity. “Rafe, obviously. We all noticed him putting in the effort with her.”
“Yeah, well,” Sean said, bending to my breast. “I think that came to an end several weeks ago.”
“What?” I asked. “Why?”
“She clearly wasn’t interested.” He sucked a nipple into his mouth and drew hard and deep.
I slapped his shoulder. “She’s shy!”
“I get that.” Sean straightened, then slung each of my legs around his hips again. He picked me up, turned toward the hallway, and started walking.
“So does Rafe,” he continued. “Which is why he never expected her to come to him, even after he made his intentions clear. But she never once responded. Sometimes she actively ran in the opposite direction.”
“Rafe can be intimidating.” I tightened my thighs around Sean’s hips, feeling his hardness beneath his jeans, his movements making him rub against my quickly swelling sex.
“Hell hounds aren’t great with rejection,” he said.
“A soft heart surrounded by teeth and claws and glowing red eyes?”
“Exactly.”
“Hmmm.”
“Don’t worry about it too much,” Sean said as we reached the bathroom. “If it had been meant to be, it would have happened for them.”
“He shouldn’t give up on her.”
Sean set me on my feet and my bare breasts tingled as they brushed down the front of his body.
“That’s for them to figure out,” he said. “It’s none of our business.”
“It kind of feels like our business.”
I worked at his fly, then shoved his jeans down over his fine ass. His long, thick, hard cock sprang free. (Seriously, that earlier tree-branch comparison had not been a joke.)
“Only because,” Sean said, “you want to take care of everyone, but that’s not your job.”
“I could take care of you,” I said, sliding my hand down over his shaft.
His lips twitched. “You could do that. After we get the paint out of your hair.”
Then he reached into the shower and turned on the tap.
The end…