Epilogue
Sloane, one month later
The dress is vintage. Nineteen fifties. Ivory lace over satin with a sweetheart neckline and a full skirt that swishes when I turn, the fabric whispering against my calves like it’s telling me secrets of the future.
I found it in a consignment shop in Bucktown three weeks ago, crammed between a moth-eaten fur coat and a bridesmaid's dress the color of a bruised peach.
It was love at first sight. I knew the moment I touched the lace that this was it. Some things you just know. The dress. The man. The moment your life splits into before and after.
I stand in front of the full-length mirror in Onyx's bedroom at The Foundry, surrounded by the faint scent of the rooftop garden drifting through the open windows above. Kon offered the space before Massimo could ask, and Onyx threatened bodily harm if we held the wedding anywhere else.
I'm about to marry the man I love for real this time and my heart can't decide if it's pounding or flying.
I lift the hem of my dress. Red heels. Obviously. Check. But it all started with one shoe and a wish. And now my dream is coming true.
I turn back to the vanity and grab my favorite lipstick. A couple of swipes of the cherry red and I’m all done.
I cap the tube, press my lips together, and study the woman in the mirror.
Victory rolls pinned to perfection. Liner sharp.
Lashes dark. I don’t need the armor of the rockabilly aesthetic any more.
Now, I’m free to enjoy the glam of a pin-up girl.
The girl who built this look as a fortress at fifteen is wearing it today as a crown.
"If you cry before you walk out that door, I will personally murder you and ruin this eyeliner myself.
" Onyx appears behind me in the mirror, her blue eyes already glistening, a tissue clutched in her fist. Her maid of honor dress is midnight blue, fitted, elegant.
She looks stunning and furious about the fact that she's already emotional.
"Me? You're the one crying."
"I am not crying. I have allergies."
"You don't have allergies."
"I developed them today. Specifically for this occasion." She presses the tissue under her eyes and blinks rapidly. "Shut up."
Katriana hands me my bouquet through the doorway, a loose bundle of white peonies and trailing greenery that smells like a garden after rain. "From Kon's rooftop," she whispers with a smile. "Onyx's idea."
I look at Onyx. She shrugs, but her chin wobbles and she presses the tissue harder against her eyes. "He grows them. I thought they should be shared with our family. Don't make it a thing or I will blubber through this whole thing."
It's a thing. It's the biggest thing. But I let her have the denial because her mascara is already in danger of streaking down her face.
“Maybe now you’ll take my advice and go for the waterproof version.”
I throw her a wink and that gets her to smile.
“Given the amount of weddings we’ve already had and if the pattern holds, I think she’s right.”
Persia joins us and straightens my train.
“Agreed.” I add.
Ilona adjusts a pin in my hair that I didn't know was crooked.
The wives move around me with the quiet efficiency of women who have done this before, who have stood in rooms like this and helped someone they love prepare for a moment that changes everything.
I look at their faces in the mirror, Persia's warmth, Katriana's steadiness, Ilona's calm precision, Onyx's barely contained emotional implosion, and my chest fills with something I didn't have three months ago.
Family. Not the one I was born into. The one that found me.
"Ready?" Persia asks.
"If I say no, can we postpone and order pizza instead? I want to cherish this moment forever."
Persia looks half tempted to take me up on it but says, "When Massimo comes looking for you we might have some explaining to do. And then he’ll throw you over his shoulder."
"That might be fun."
“Sloane!”
Onyx bumps my shoulder. “Okay, fine. I’m ready. Let’s do this before the flowers wilt.”
The rooftop of the foundry stretches wide and open beneath a Chicago sky that decided to cooperate for once.
Clear blue fades to gold at the edges where the sun is starting its descent toward the horizon.
White chairs line a center aisle scattered with petals that catch the breeze and tumble across the weathered cement.
Iron railings frame the edges and the city skyline rises beyond them, glass and steel and light, but up here it feels separate from all of it.
Private. Protected. The way The Foundry has always felt for the people lucky enough to be invited inside.
Harrison waits for me at the entrance to the aisle.
He looks different. The gray is still there, the weight loss, the lines that guilt carved into his face over the past months.
But his suit is pressed. His tie is straight.
His shoes are polished and his hands are steady at his sides and when he sees me his chin drops and his eyes fill and he presses his lips together so hard the color leaves them.
Forgiving my father is a choice I make every morning.
Some days it's easier than others. He swore to me he never touched the women.
Never purchased them and never participated beyond sitting in those rooms and watching.
And as disgusting as that is, I went through his financial records myself.
Every account. Every transaction. I couldn't find a single payment to Lorenzo or anyone connected to the Society for the purchase of another human being.
Knowing what was happening and doing nothing is still an offense, and he knows it.
He's cooperating with the Genesis men now, handing over names, dates, locations of every event he attended.
When I asked why they weren't taking it to the feds, Harlon's answer was simple.
The men and women of Society 69 will fall by their hand. Blood in blood out.
I can live with that.
"Sloane." My name comes out broken from my father’s mouth. He clears his throat and tries again. "You look like your mother."
My chest tightens. I haven't heard him mention my mother in years. The comparison hits a place I wasn't guarding and I feel the moisture press against my lashes before I can stop it.
"Don't make me cry. This eyeliner took twenty minutes."
He offers his arm. I look at it. His sleeve, his hand, the wrist where his watch sits, the fingers that signed a contract that traded me for his ambition.
I take his arm.
His voice cracks. “I’m honored and I will spend the rest of my life earning your trust again.”
"You're here, Dad," I say quietly, lacing my hand through the crook of his elbow. "That's enough for now."
He nods. Swallows. His arm tightens against mine and we walk.
The aisle is short. Thirty steps, maybe.
But each one carries the weight of every moment that led me here.
Step one, the birthday cupcake. Step two, the wrong number.
Step three, the wish room with its red velvet and Massimo's voice behind me.
Step ten, the contract on my kitchen counter.
Step fifteen, the guards bleeding in the parking lot.
Step twenty, the restaurant where the truth detonated.
Step twenty-five, the concrete floor where I stood over Lorenzo with steady hands.
Step thirty, where Massimo and I discovered the strength of love.
I look up to find Massimo standing at the end of the aisle.
The collar of his white shirt is open at the throat, exposing the base of the viper tattoo that curls up his neck. His dark hair is pushed back from his forehead. His loving gaze finds mine and doesn't let go.
He's not moving. He's not smiling. He's not doing any of the things grooms do in movies where they grin and fidget and tear up on cue.
He's standing perfectly still with his hands at his sides and his chest rising and falling with breaths that are too deep and too controlled, and the expression on his face is one I've never seen before.
It's the expression of a man who has spent his entire life finding the right words for every situation and has finally encountered a moment where language doesn't exist.
Massimo Santoro, the Syndicate's legal counsel, the man who can dismantle a contract with a sentence and reassemble it with a comma, is standing at the end of an aisle with his mouth slightly open and absolutely nothing coming out of it.
I almost laugh. Almost. But the look on his face steals the sound from my throat because it's not funny. It's the most serious his face has ever been and the most vulnerable and the most beautiful and I grip my father's arm tighter because my knees are doing something unreliable.
Harrison places my hand in Massimo's. The transfer is gentle, deliberate, the gesture of a man handing over something precious that he knows he failed to protect.
Massimo's fingers close around mine and they're trembling. His fingers. Trembling. I’ve never known the man to tremble, but today is the first for many things.
"Hi, stranger," I whisper with a smile. “Ready to make this legit?”
He swallows. His jaw works. His eyes glisten.
"Now and always." His words carry the weight of all the love I see glimmering in his eyes.
The ceremony is a blur of words I'll remember later when I'm lying in his arms replaying the evening in my head the way I replay everything.
Kon stands behind Massimo, silent and massive, his dark hair tied back, his expression carrying the closest thing to softness I've ever seen on his face.
His eyes find Onyx across the aisle and hold.
She meets his gaze without turning her head, just her eyes shifting to his, and I watch something pass between them that doesn't need hands or words or proximity.