BONUS EPILOGUE ONE
Levi
THREE MONTHS LATER
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
I don’t feel the need to reassure Taewon for the fiftieth time since I walked out. So I don’t respond.
Instead, I keep walking through the hall toward the exit. The officer who escorted me earlier is following us a few steps behind.
This was never something I thought I’d ever want to do. And I hadn’t driven an hour and half out of city limits just to back out.
After the arrests happened, I was told about every single time my mother requested to add me to her approved list for collect calls.
But that stopped after a few weeks of me ignoring them.
I don’t know if she stopped, or my lawyers just gave up on getting a positive outcome.
Cece suggested that I should perhaps confront my mother if she’s that desperate to connect.
But not at the cost of my sanity. So I’d been mulling over that for the past few weeks.
Odette Astor, according to the initial investigation, was not coming out to be the mastermind in all this. She was simply another name to be used to distribute and diversify their failure points.
She was reduced to the ink of her signature on papers that were never meant to see the light of day. Now they were being blasted to the investigative panel.
The second the cold, brisk air hits my face, I relax. I couldn’t stand the smells beyond that outer foyer. It felt like a hospital had somehow collided with a slaughterhouse.
Well, my mother seemed to have adjusted poorly. Which I found equal parts hilarious and incredibly anticlimactic. Especially since she was still so much like the Odette Astor who was slapped with the cuffs on her wrists that day in the conference room.
I don’t even know how she had eye makeup on, but she did. Her eyelids darkened up, albeit haphazardly. But the wrinkles straining her face told a different story.
I had no idea how to start the conversation. So I decided to wait for her to do it.
But when I sat across from the thick pane of reinforced glass, I regretted ever walking into this federal prison.
Nothing—absolutely nothing—had changed.
Same calculated manipulation.
Same counterfeit concern.
Same woman who only ever knew how to love through control.
Her first words to me had been—
“I heard you got voted back in, son. I couldn’t believe it when they told me you resigned. But I knew you wouldn’t abandon the legacy we built for you.”
Of fucking course.
Not How are you?
Not even Are you happy?
Just the tainted mess they left for me to clean up.
The conversation only spiraled from there.
Every explanation she offered was another excuse.
Every excuse conveniently shifted the blame somewhere else.
She might’ve been a blind participant of my father’s embezzlement scheme, but she was still a willing one. She had still signed papers, approved transfers. Looked away whenever it benefited the Astor name.
But I wasn’t here to argue about her financial crimes. Hell, now that this train wreck of a conversation was over, I couldn’t even remember why I came.
Did I really think she’d apologize?
Did I believe Odette Astor possessed enough self-awareness to genuinely regret anything she’d done?
I know the answer now.
She doesn’t.
But I still tried.
God help me, I tried.
??????
“I need you to understand what you did to me.”
She merely frowned. “What do you mean—did to you? I’ve always protected you.”
“No.” My voice stayed remarkably calm. “You isolated me. You monitored every friendship I ever had. You—”
A dismissive wave of her hand. “I kept people from taking advantage of you. I was being vigilant.”
“I was ten.”
Silence. After that, every question was given no weight or answer.
“You called parents to stop sleepovers.”
No response.
“You bribed teachers to report back to you.”
She rolled her eyes.
“You hired investigators to follow my classmates.”
A belligerent shrug. She looked genuinely confused by my frustration. Like none of it sounded unreasonable to her.
I laughed. “What about the universities?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What universities?”
“The rejection letters.”
Still nothing. Okay.
“The Canadian universities that never accepted me because you’d already called in favors before I even applied.”
That gave me a tiny flicker. But not of guilt, of recognition instead.
“I wanted you at Stanford,” she said, sounding genuinely bewildered.
My jaw tightened so hard it hurt.
Christ.
“You drove away Iris, and then created the marriage clause.”
“And? You got Celestine because of it, didn’t you?” she replied as though she’d solved a mathematical equation. “I heard you’re very happy together.”
“I almost lost Cece because of it.”
She said nothing. The silence stretched between us until I asked the only question I still had left.
“Why have me?”
She blinked, startled. Her face softening slightly.
“If you couldn’t be a fucking mother… why have me at all?”
For the first time, she looked almost offended. “Of course, I’m your mother. But I’m an Astor first. As was your father.” Her gaze settled on me with an eager smile. “And so are you.”
For a long moment, I simply looked at her. Nothing I said today mattered. Nothing ever would. There was no revelation waiting for her. No apology hidden beneath decades of narcissism.
You couldn’t fight a conceited, self-unaware fool. And here I thought I’d need to mourn the loss of my parents. I barely had them to begin with.
So I slowly rose from my chair.
She frowned. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll visit again.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an expectation like I was simply leaving her dinner table. Classic.
“No.”
She stared, looking genuinely baffled.
“I’m not just an Astor, Odette.”
I took a step back, nearly turning. “And I’m definitely no longer your son.”
??????
“Oh, I’m telling you, Cece!”
I hear Eloise Wentworth’s unmistakable voice before I even step into the Wentworth estate living room. She’s midway through another animated story, laughing so hard that she has to wipe at the corners of her eyes.
It’s only been a couple of months, but Cece has started visiting her parents more often since they attempted to make amends.
I know Samuel genuinely regretted standing by while everything unraveled.
Eloise, though…
She surprised the hell out of both of us.
A little over a month after the nightclub incident—right after I was voted back in as President—she showed up at our doorstep.
Ironically, it happened on the day I was helping Cece move out of my apartment.
On her insistence.
And very much to my misfortune.
Looking back now, though, I know she was right. Starting over properly, dating each other without a clause looming over us, had been exactly what we needed.
Still, neither of us expected her mother to arrive.
We’d both frozen beside my private garage as Eloise climbed out of the car.
She’d burst into tears the moment she saw Cece standing there with that carefully blank expression she’d perfected over the years.
Then she’d completely fallen apart after Cece flatly asked—
“Do you need anything?”
Four simple words.
That was all it took.
It was difficult to understand Eloise through the sobs and apologies, but Cece somehow heard every one of them.
Apparently, she and Samuel had spent weeks learning everything they could about bipolar disorder.
And somewhere along the way, they’d stumbled across the same painful realizations I once had.
Thankfully, the diagnosis hadn’t changed Cece in their eyes. It had simply given a name to years of struggles they’d failed to see.
That wasn’t even the hardest part.
Eloise admitted, through tears, that she’d begun reading about avoidant attachment theory, too.
She’d quietly accepted responsibility for the years of emotional neglect she’d convinced herself had simply been “good parenting of a hyper-independent child.”
Whether Cece’s avoidant attachment could truly be traced back to that wasn’t something anyone could answer with certainty.
But it was something Cece now discussed regularly with her therapist.
Since that day, things had been… different.
She still declined invitations whenever she wasn’t up for them. The difference was that her parents finally respected the answer. And to her surprise, every family dinner now came with weeks of notice instead of days.
Every invitation included an easy out.
No guilt.
No manipulation.
Just a simple, We’d love to have you if you’re feeling up to it.
Trust wasn’t something rebuilt overnight.
God knew Cece and I had learned that ourselves.
But she was trying.
And I couldn’t have been prouder of her for that.
I smile as I watch her head tip back in genuine laughter at whatever ridiculous thing her mother has just said. I hope Eloise understands just how monumental that laugh really is.
I clear my throat as I step farther inside.
Cece looks over immediately.
Her entire face softens.
Without a word, I cross the room and cup her cheek before pressing a gentle kiss to her lips.
“Hey, baby.”
“Hi,” she murmurs against my mouth.
I steal one more quick kiss before finally looking up.
“Mrs. Wentworth.”
“Levi!” Eloise smiles warmly. “Glad you’re back.”
“Mr. Wentworth.”
Samuel nods back with an easy smile, his attention drifting fondly toward his wife and daughter before returning to me.
“Good to see you, son.”
Cece lightly hooks her fingers around mine.
“You okay?” she asks so quietly that only I hear it. “Should we go home and talk?”
Home.
She still calls my apartment home.
One day, Levi.
One day.
I smile before leaning down to kiss the tip of her scrunched nose. “I’m okay, baby.”
I squeeze her arm gently. And she immediately answers by wrapping both arms around my waist and burying herself against me.
I can’t help laughing softly, my voice muffled by her hair.
“I’m okay,” I whisper. “I promise.”
She lingers for another second before leaning back to study my face.
Whatever she’s looking for, she finds it. Because the tiny crease between her brows disappears.
Why wouldn’t I be okay?
The woman I love is standing in my arms.
Her parents are finally learning to love her the way she has always deserved.
Life has a funny way of putting things into perspective.
“So, Levi,” Eloise says, folding her arms with a teasing smile, “I’m hoping you haven’t accidentally put laundry detergent pods in your dishwasher this time?”
A groan escapes me before I can stop it.
“Mrs. Wentworth…”
“Oh, he did it one better. He flooded the apartment because—“ Cece says innocently. “Well, you tell her.”
“It was because you got that—that dishwasher liquid. How am I supposed to know the difference when they’re both liquids?!”
“You read the label, babe,” Cece deadpans.
Ah, fuck.