Epilogue
ALMOST THREE MONTHS LATER
ALLEGRA
“Wow, I guess Kennedy was right.” I stare up in awe at the second Hawke Hotel tower just across the street from the original building. One week short of the three-month mark from the day of the infamous Sunday dinner when the argument took place, and they’re almost ready to open. “She called the three-month opening date.”
Coen stands next to me, hands tucked into his pockets, giving me a half grin. “Don’t tell her that. The last thing Kennedy needs is her ego stroked more.”
Bishop glances over her shoulder. “Shit.”
“What don’t I need?”
Kennedy rushes the last few steps across the street in her high heels with Cass right behind her and joins Coen, me, and Bishop in front of the building, watching the lighting company put the finishing touches on the signage.
Her sharp gaze zeroes in on it, our half-overheard comment apparently forgotten. “You know, if that hadn’t been on back order, we could have opened a week ago.”
Cass wraps his arm around her from behind and tugs her back against him, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You still won, cherie . One week wouldn’t have mattered either way.”
She huffs. “But I would’ve felt better about it having won by more.”
I roll my eyes and turn to Coen. “Seems everyone in your family has that competitive gene.”
“You just figuring that out now?” He grins and pulls me against him, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “I would have thought you had us pegged as sore losers from the start.”
“Ugg.” Bishop watches with an annoyed twist to her lips. “God, look at you guys, all sappy and hanging on each other.”
I look over Coen’s shoulder at her, giving her a knowing grin. “You know you’ll be the same way when you finally find someone who can put up with you.”
Her mouth falls open in mock offense. “Ouch. Hey, Coen, have I ever told you I really like this one?”
He squeezes me. “I do, too. Should I keep her?”
Bishop pretends to consider it, running her thumb across her chin. “Maybe. We’ll have to see how things pan out…”
It’s all said in jest, but immediately, that vise that always seems to live around my chest starts to tighten, and I pull out of Coen’s hold to walk back toward the car.
“Hey, where are you going?” He chases after me and grabs me by the wrist, halting my retreat. “Why are you running off?”
“I told you. I’m doing the one o’clock class with Wren.”
“Right…” He rubs the back of his neck and glances back at Bishop, then at me. “Let me just?—”
Bishop throws up her hands. “I’ll go with her as long as you’re going straight back to the hotel and will have someone on you.”
He scowls, annoyed that we continue to need fucking babysitters. But the truth is, the longer Dad goes without contacting me, without making any sort of move directly against the Hawkes, the more it starts to feel like he’s building to something bigger, something far worse than anything he would’ve planned prior to me defecting.
So, continued twenty-four-hour bodyguards for everyone, heightened security at the clubs, restaurants, and hotel…
A massive expense.
A massive inconvenience.
A bigger danger.
And it’s all my fault.
My gut churns, and I press my hand against it to prevent myself from gagging, like I found myself doing several times over the last few days.
Coen’s gaze immediately drops to follow the movement. “Are you okay?”
I swallow back the bile rising in my throat and nod. “Yeah, just…I don’t know. Why hasn’t he called?”
“I don’t know.” Coen glances back at Kennedy and Cass, who seem to be in a heated discussion with one of the members of the crew about something on the sign. “I thought by now, he surely would’ve asked me to play in one of his tournaments.”
Me too.
We’ve managed to track down at least two of the casinos in his control, and they’ve both hosted games since we last met with him, yet he never contacted Coen—or me.
None of it makes sense.
He was so thrilled to have Coen by the balls, to be able to control a Hawke so thoroughly. Yet, he hasn’t used that advantage.
He presses his lips together and shakes his head. “He probably hasn’t called because he doesn’t trust me anymore. Not after what happened.”
It feels like we have the same conversation every couple of weeks.
We go days and days pretending like it’s normal to have Bishop, Saint, or one of the other armed guards following us around day after day, from the moment we step out of our condo until the moment we step back inside it.
But it isn’t.
It’s far from it.
“Should I call him?”
“What?” He closes the distance between us, gently pinning me back against the car. “Why would you even suggest anything like that?”
I sigh.
“Do you miss him?”
The accusation in his question makes me flinch.
He grips my chin and lifts my face, so I’m forced to meet his eyes. “Do you?”
I can’t lie to Coen.
I promised I never would again, and I haven’t, not since that night I came clean. “I do, a little bit. I know you don’t understand it because you don’t know him the same way I do. He’s not the same man to you, but he’s still my father. If yours just disappeared out of your life, how would you feel?”
As soon as I say the words, I wish I could take them back.
That darkness that always seems to haunt him whenever his father’s injuries come up crosses his eyes again.
“I’m sorry, Coen. I didn’t mean?—”
He sighs. “I know you didn’t.”
My father was responsible for what happened to his.
At the time it occurred, I didn’t know about the shooting at the Grind. I didn’t know anything except that the Hawkes were a family Dad wanted to take down because of what happened to his brother, because he wanted control of all of New Orleans and they seemed to be standing in the way, with too much leverage, too much power.
But now I know them.
All thirty-plus.
Even the little one on the way, growing in Wren’s belly, who has already started to kick every time I do a class and talk to her, almost like he recognizes my voice already.
These people have become my family as much as Dad ever was, but it doesn’t mean I can just forget him or the way I feel about him.
“Don’t apologize for loving your father, Allegra.” He releases his grip on me to run his hand through his hair and glance back at Bishop, who’s trying to break up the argument. “Don’t call him, please. Let sleeping dogs lie, all right? He’ll come up for air eventually. Gabe, Saint, and Luca have put everything they have into monitoring all the sources across the Gulf Coast who are looking for him. But he’s not in town. He’s not here. So, we should count our blessings.”
“Until we run out of them.”
“We won’t.”
I press my hands to his chest. “I really wish you would stop making those types of promises to me.”
He grins. “I thought you liked my promises.”
“Oh, those kind, I definitely do.” I push up onto my toes to kiss him. “And you can make me one when we get home, but I have to run to my class.” I pull my head back from his. “Bishop?”
She turns toward her name and sees me wave her over. After issuing a final chastisement to Kennedy and Cass, she then jogs to where we wait. “You ready to go?”
I nod, and Coen steps back reluctantly, letting me open the car door and slide inside.
Bishop takes the passenger seat and then rolls down her window to yell out at him, “Hey, Coen?”
He turns back. “What?”
“Seriously, straight to the hotel with Kennedy and Cass until somebody is on you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”
He waves a dismissive hand, but I know he’s not going to fight the order.
None of us will.
Not until things are resolved, which is starting to feel more and more like it might be never.
Bishop rolls up her window, and I start the car and pull away from the curb.
She eyes me as we head toward the gym and Pilates studio. “Are you okay today? You seem a little off.”
I nod. “I am. Just have a lot on my mind.”
“Your dad?”
It isn’t a hard guess to make, considering Satriano is at the forefront of every Hawke mind and has been for months. The more time passes, the harder it becomes to forget his veiled threats or all the plans he had that I know he won’t just abandon.
I glance over at Bishop and nod before returning my attention to the street. “I just feel so guilty, I guess, for completely cutting him out.”
“Sometimes you have to cut away the cancer, if you want the healthy cells to survive, right?”
“Are you comparing my father to a cancer?”
She shrugs. “Isn’t that what he is to you? You thought he was totally benign, right? And to you , he was. But to the rest of us, he has grown like an out-of-control tumor that one day will snuff us out.”
Not an analogy I’ve ever considered.
But it makes more sense than I’d ever really like to admit.
“Jesus, I guess he is…”
“You would tell us, right? If he contacted you?”
The light turns red in front of us, and I slam on the brakes and turn to her. “Of course I would. Why would you even ask me that?”
She holds up her hands defensively. “Because it’s my job to protect the Hawkes, and that includes you now.”
For that split second, I thought she was accusing me of something. That the trust and friendship I believed we had built over the last several months was all an act so she could keep an eye on me the same way I did Coen.
But there’s no deception in her words.
Only stark, sincere affection and commitment to her job.
It’s the kind of no-strings-attached love that I only get when I’m with the Hawkes, that they offered me so freely while Dad’s love felt like a noose threatening to tighten.
That love from Coen and the rest of the family is what has kept me going when there were days I wanted to crawl into bed and never get out. When I wanted to go to a dark place, they kept me in the light.
But it leaves me wondering what Dad has to keep him sustained, to force him not to give in to the darkest parts of him now that he doesn’t have my love—and what he might be capable of now that he’s lost it and me.
* * *