Epilogue
And somehow, the three evil beasts who locked me in the tower turned out to be the knights in shining armor after all.
Well, maybe more like knights in black, tailor-fit, non-shiny armor, but you get what I mean.
You’d have thought crashing a helicopter into a building in midtown Manhattan, getting into a gun fight, and then throwing a man off said building would land you in a world of trouble. And you’d be correct — that is, unless you worked under the table for the US Government. And let me say, friends in high places are a very good thing to have if you plan on doing any of those things.
Especially the helicopter part.
Whoever Ash, Erik, and Oliver’s “friends” were, they made the whole thing disappear. Completely. The crash was deemed an accident, and the gunfight and dead thugs swept under the rug. Ryan’s death was declared a suicide in the papers, but the message had been sent.
And it was heard.
The night on that penthouse roof changed a lot. It’s funny to think of there being “good” criminals and “bad” criminals, but the fact of it is, there are both. After that night, the bad ones — including Johnson Cunningham and the rest of his goons — sort of disappeared.
The Auction House has reopened — back to its original concept, and with its original clientele — both the women who choose to be there and the men who take them home. It’s still a funny concept to me, but then, it’s not a scene I or my men have anything to do with anymore.
Not since we decided four was a pretty solid number.
My mother never heard the real story, because honestly, there was no need to freak her out. I did come clean about the fact that I was moving in with three rich, powerful men, and I even leveled with her about the nature of that relationship. Eyebrows were raised, and pearls were clutched, but at the end of the day, she was just happy that I was happy. It certainly didn’t hurt that when she met them, Ash, Oliver, and Erik were the most freaking charming versions of themselves I’d ever seen.
Andrea was another story. Andrea got the whole story because she’d been dragged into it.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Ryan’s people had her when I’d called. They’d kicked down the door to our apartment earlier that very day, dragged her away, and waited for me to call. They’d had the chopper and the men on standby, and made her at gunpoint talk me into stepping outside, where they could grab me. Luckily, we’d found her right after Ryan went over the edge that night, pounding on a closet door a floor below. She was a wreck, of course, and she’d thrown her arms around me as we’d both let the tears come.
“I’m so sorry! About all of it!”
She felt the whole thing was her fault, of course, what with setting me up with Blaine’s friend. But Ash, Oliver, and Erik set her straight soon enough, helping me to calm her, and to let her know about the divide in the scene. As it turns out, Blaine really was a good guy, and out of the Auction House scene enough that he had no idea what kind of guy Ryan really was. My three men actually knew him, at least peripherally, and I think them vouching for him being one of the good ones went a long way with Andrea.
He’s since stopped paying her for dates and asked her to marry him, and their wedding is next month.
And the month after that?
Well, the month after that I get to figure out how to throw a wedding with one bride and three grooms without causing the scandal of the century.
I know the saying is “three is crowd,” and you know what? That’s actually true. But who’s to say a crowd is a bad thing? A crowd is a group, or a tribe, or a club. A crowd can be connected, and bound together. And our crowd?
Well, our crowd is a family, and that’s something I’m never giving up, no matter what they say.
Besides, let ‘em talk.
…We’ll just have to go out of our way to give them something to talk about.
The End.