90. Kiera
KIERA
Our chat in the board room had been long and hard. It was going to take a lot of digging through Zeus’ rubble to find our path forward. But I was confident that with my lovers by my side, we could redeem my father’s vision for what the company could be.
We couldn’t plan forever, though. And there were some questions that only time would answer.
By the time we stepped out of Zeus’ offices, it was nearly sunset. And it was finally starting to hit me — our mission was over. We’d survived, and now… we had to wait.
As we approached the bikes, gearing up for the ride back to the motel, something about it all didn’t feel right. A feeling that Spencer apparently clocked on my face.
“What’s wrong, Bunny?”
“I don’t know…” I bit my lip. “I don’t feel ready to go to the motel.”
“I get that. It’s been a long day. Kind of weird for it to just be… over.” She leaned back against her Suzuki, eyeing me thoughtfully. “Where else would you want to go?”
“Home,” I frowned, frustrated by how childish the word felt on my tongue. I had been there when the mansion burnt down, I knew that there would be little more than rubble left.
But I hadn’t seen the aftermath, and somewhere in my mind, the house still stood tall, the only safe haven I’d ever know.
Spencer crossed her arms. “I don’t know if that’s a great idea Kier… the place is in really rough shape.”
But before I could relent, Leo appeared behind me, setting a hand on my shoulder. “If you need the closure, we’ll go.”
“Are you sure?” I looked back at her. “If it’s too much, I don’t want to be an—”
“You’re never an inconvenience to us,” Spencer cut in. “If you think you’re ready, just say the word.”
And just like that, Dom, Leo, and I were riding back to the ruins of her mansion. Spencer would loop by the motel, switch to her Jaguar, and load up Lady and the kids. God, had I missed them while I was locked away.
Excitement buzzed in my chest as we rode, but there was a wariness too. Whatever we were about to see wouldn’t be easy, or Spencer wouldn’t have been so worried about me.
And as we pulled up to the front gate, I saw exactly what she’d meant. The wrought iron fence that once protected us from Isaac was swinging on its hinges — the firetrucks had done quite a number on them as they rushed to save the house.
Most of the landscaping was still intact, but the house itself… well, there was hardly a house to speak of.
The grand stone steps and columns outside still stood like a soot-covered skeleton.
But most of the walls — with exception to the exterior stone frame — had turned to ash and rubble.
The surviving window sills sparkled with shards of blown out glass, and chunks of support beams crushed the places where our kitchen, our pool, and our living room had once been.
The bedrooms were gone, the gym was gone — if the garage had survived, it was so buried in rubble that I was certain there would be damage. Every memento, every gift we’d shared, every drawing I’d done was completely burnt.
But those material losses were nothing compared to the sense of safety that we’d lost. That house had held me through some of my highest highs and my lowest lows. It brought me Dom and Spencer and Leo. And now… it was a pile of dust.
As we sat on our bikes in front of the wreckage, Dom pulled off her helmet with a sigh. “He just had to ruin it…”
She dismounted, pacing toward the house and sifting through the rubble with her foot.
“Looking for something?” Leo called, pulling off her own helmet.
Dom shook her head. “No, but I’d bet that they were…”
It took me a second to piece together the allusion. She thought Isaac’s men had been here afterward, picking through the rubble for something.
“What would they want?” I asked, swinging my leg over the Gray Ghost.
“I don’t know… maybe they thought we had more hard copies of the files?”
But as she toed at the piles of soot, I had a feeling that she wasn’t feeling suspicious as much as she was feeling violated. However attached to this house I was, this had been her home for most of her life. She’d put so much work into reclaiming the space, and for what?
Pacing around the ruins, I tried to get a closer look at just how much damage had been done.
Not all parts of the mansion had burned equally, probably due to its size.
The worst of the burning had probably happened closer to the source of fire on the first floor, which meant that the farther you got from the main living areas, the less destruction there was.
I shifted my eyes over the damage, trying to trace the fire’s path. And as I landed on the one part of the house that seemed mostly untouched, I had no choice but to laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Presiding over gray, smokey ruins, my childhood bedroom floated like a piece straight from a dollhouse. One of its outer walls had crumbled, but other than that, it looked pristine, like the smoke wouldn’t dare intrude.
“Older build, more stone,” Leo scoffed as she followed by gaze. “The one part of the house that hadn’t been renovated.”
“I don’t even know what to do with that,” I shook my head. “That has to be a joke.”
Nothing about this was really funny, though.
Before my laughter could turn into crying, the crunch of tires in the driveway drew my attention: Spencer, in her light blue Jaguar, hauling two kids and a very excited dog.
“Lady,” I called out, running to meet her. But there was no need. The car had hardly stopped before she leapt out of the vehicle and sprinted across the lawn. In two seconds flat, she’d leapt into my arms, knocking me flat on my back as she licked my face.
“Okay, girl, easy.” Leo muttered, hauling her off of my chest and into my lap.
I wrapped my arms tight around the dog’s neck, burying my face into her fur. “God, I’ve missed you.”
And while I held her, Caleb and Abi rushed over to Dom and Leo, greeting them with big hugs of their own.
After her initial excitement faded, Lady began sniffing at the bruises on my wrists. While I’d escaped captivity without any serious harm, the restraints had left their mark on my skin.
“It’s okay,” I cooed, stroking her big furrowed brow. “I’m okay now that we’re all together again.”
I said hi to Abi and Caleb next — apparently, my time away had earned me a big hug from each of them. But while the rest of us tried to take comfort in one another’s company, Dom surveyed the damage along the foundation of the house.
“You okay, Princess?” Leo asked, putting her arm around me.
“Yeah,” I shook my head. “Just processing I think.”
“I’m sorry about your castle,” she frowned.
“It’s okay,” I shrugged. At that moment, I mostly felt bad for Dom. All of those memories, all of those years of restoration, down the drain in an instant. “I just don’t know what we do now.”
A brief, heavy silence fell over everyone. There was a lot to celebrate: we had survived, we had done exactly what we promised to do. And yet so much was lost.
But in a moment when she had every right to feel despondent, every excuse to give in and throw a fit, Dom surprised me yet again. She didn’t choose to be selfish or defeatist. She knew that her family needed her, and she chose to step up.
As she turned to face us, I saw something new sparkling in those crystal blue eyes: not just determination, but hope. She rolled back her shoulders and held her head high. “We do what we always do. We rebuild, one stone at a time.”
Thank you for reading Road to Redemption, book 3 of the Valemont Violence series!