EPILOGUE #2
“Eye of the Tiger” blares from the stage, and Maddox and Tessa expel a collective hoot—not about the song—drawing all our eyes to them.
Tessa shows the phone to Sterling and Bernard first, which immediately intrigues me.
Bernard has an expert poker face, but his lips twitch with delight.
Sterling, who has become quite a fixture around here, beams at whatever she’s reading. “When a giant falls from grace, does he cry himself to sleep?”
“Let’s hope,” Tessa says. “But we shouldn’t celebrate until Sylvie gets to cheer.”
Ahh. It’s what I’ve been waiting for. That is a good turn of events.
Flora glances at it, too, the hint of a smile cresting her cheeks, though she wisely doesn’t comment.
She and Sylvie have mended for the most part.
It took a lot of tears and several hard conversations.
It might never be quite what it once was.
Maybe that’s due to Sylvie’s support system being so much larger than it was when they had their falling-out.
But Flora has been incredible with her, so I can’t complain, and Sylvie is far more at peace without that pain.
For the time being, we’re still living in the penthouse.
I left that firmly up to Sylvie, and she loved the idea of being so close to the girls, my brothers, and Remy.
I think game nights and mandatory meals are nearly as important to her as they are to Axel, and seeing my girls loved daily by the people who mean the world to me is an unparalleled treasure.
We transformed Maddox’s old room into a picturesque nursery. It’s brown and pink and ten shades of adorable, but the best part is the Van Gogh on the wall—the very one Sylvie feared had blood splattered on it.
“Oh my goodness,” she shrieked, her amber eyes wide and her arms hugging the cutest baby bump there’d ever been, which I was utterly obsessed with. “You didn’t.”
“It’s not morbid. It’s romantic,” I insisted, and I knew she viewed it as such. “No thievery either. I made a compelling offer to Beatrice Shaeffer via an anonymous third party.”
Above our bed is Heath’s magnum opus—the one he went to prison for. She cried for that one. Happy and healing tears.
She looked between the painting of card players and my vintage card collection and said, “I was in New Orleans because I felt like my dad wanted me to get that mask. I know it sounds weird, but I think he knew we would find each other.”
For someone who hadn’t believed in fate, that was huge.
She may have conceded to our serendipitous meeting when we were in France, confessing that she believed destiny had brought us together, but this was bigger.
I agreed wholeheartedly and promised to surprise her with a new masterpiece for every occasion.
Her gift to me was just as sentimental, if not more. She framed the napkin notes I’d written her at the restaurant in San Francisco and the one from her birthday.
Yep, she’d saved them. Now there is no dispute about how obsessed she was with me.
Since I always keep my word, I also hired an artist to create a huge fleur-de-lis out of several pieces of clothing I’d torn off her body. It’s my personal favorite, and it amuses her.
Just as Maddox and Tessa are about to show us the breaking news, Jax plops down. He appears untethered yet serene. More dreamy-eyed than usual.
“How’d it go?” Axel asks, referring to a side project Jax volunteered to follow up on, as he motions to a wiggling Remy to give us another minute.
The guitarist starts with a brief solo before the rest of the band comes in to join them.
“We all know what a ride being part of the Noire family is,” the lead singer announces into the mic. “There’s nothing like it. How about ‘Life Is a Highway’ to keep this party going?”
Jax snags a piece of nearly too-old crawfish bread. “Got a little messy.”
Ryker cocks his head, concern immediately blanketing him. “Is that why you were late?”
“Nah,” he says between bites. “Cathartic messy. It was quick.”
Maddox senses the story simmering, rubbing his chin. “Then what was the holdup?”
Jax shrugs, peering up at the stage for a few beats. “I was driving … an Uber.”
Sylvie and the other girls can’t keep it together. Even Remy’s face twists in confusion.
Axel abandons his spinning watch, certain he misheard something. “You drove an Uber?”
“Backup career?” I tack on.
Jax laughs, but his brows bounce like his head is somewhere else. “Just something I tried. Only one customer.”
Sylvie reaches across me to gently touch his arm, waiting for him to look at her. “A special customer?”
He’s soft for my girl. I suppose he is for all our girls. But he told me a while after we got home from France that when they were in the sea, he was tormented but so grateful because I had truly found the kind of love that most people only dreamed about.
“She would’ve crawled back to you if I had let her. Bullets flying at her, and all she could think about was not leaving you.”
Jax values loyalty over nearly everything, so she secured a forever place in his favor. Which is why he flits his hazel eyes to her with a boyish smile. “She was blue.”
With that, he takes a stirring Pippa from me, smothering her with kisses and redirecting the conversation. “The story broke.”
Maddox holds up his phone. “We saw it right as you were coming in.”
He sets his phone down, and we all read about Danny Gordon throwing games for the financial benefit of a well-known tycoon, whose name has not yet been released, and the related story of the Stanley Cup finally being recovered, allegedly connected to the same pair.
“That is satisfying.” Sylvie beams, and just like that, I know her past issues with Danny and her sister are finally behind her. She got the last word.
“No one steals from us,” I whisper against her temple.
She nods, seizing my empty lap and curling into me. “Just the opposite. You’re like a genie, fulfilling my every wish. I love you so much.”
“Love you more, Sly. You and Pippa are everything. My heaven.”
Some might wonder why we didn’t move faster since we had the national treasure at our disposal. We all had a lot going on. Mostly good. But things heated up with my sister’s family, and we knew that sitting on this until the timing was right was our best bet.
This was a warning to back off.
Just like E dying in a prison cell several months ago was.
Despite that, the situation is still escalating with KORT and Kratos.
I don’t know the specifics on how KORT is handling the information we stole, but the goal is to avoid a war between the cabals.
In that scenario, everyone will lose something.
This scheme with the Stanley Cup won’t be the end of it though.
Deep pockets have a way of transforming the unfortunate into an illusion.
It’s been a test of wills and stratagem for sure. Only time will tell if we played our cards right.
With the news story behind us, we finally turn our attention to the little man insistent on mastering poker at this late hour.
“All right Rem, a few quick hands.” I pass out the chips. “We’re gonna focus on how to make the blinds—the forced bets you have to make before anything is played—work for you. It’s the same principle I used to win over your Aunt Sylvie.”
He giggles at that, used to my colorful way of teaching. But before I can continue, my attention flicks to the piano riff being played onstage.
“I can’t think of a better lesson for any of us,” the singer says before they begin belting out Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.’ ”
My heart practically stops, and the mystery behind the music and the magic is illuminated. “It’s Mom.”
“Yeah,” Jax agrees, as if he knew that all along.
He rocks Pippa, Maddox’s gray eyes find mine with an understanding built from hundreds of late-night jamming sessions in honor of the woman who filled our childhood with music, and the rest of my family becomes as undone as I am.
Sylvie slides her hand over my cheek and captures my mouth in a family-appropriate but pulse-pounding kiss, infusing my soul with reassurance and the love I can’t breathe without. “Not sorcery. Serendipity.”
I nibble her lower lip, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that the veracity of that statement and what she’d said about her father were spot-on. The supernatural brought us together. She’s my destiny—my wife, my world, my forever.
With my mother’s wisdom crooning in the background and a lump in my throat, I get back to the game.
“As I was saying, Rem, it’s all about progress.
You don’t have to have the cards. You need to read the players and stay in the game.
No matter how your beautiful aunt fared on the previous hand, on the next one, I raised her before the cards were dealt—that’s the preflop.
Until she kept folding, and the jackpot was mine. ”
Snatching my baby girl back to illustrate my point, I pat her diapered bottom and kiss my stunning thief again, more content than I ever dreamed possible. “We fell in love by stealing blinds.”
THE END