Epilogue
PHOENIX
Zeus is the first traitor.
I’m stretched across Conrad’s bed with the morning leaking around the curtains when a warm, ridiculous tongue drags over my ankle. I squeak. Atticus lifts his head from my pussy like a man whose calculus has been interrupted.
“Absolutely not,” he tells Zeus, scandalized. “You are ruining my breakfast.”
Zeus wags, deeply unbothered, and goes in for a second swipe. I start to laugh—the breathless kind that shakes the mattress—and Atticus scrubs a hand over his face like he can’t believe he has to negotiate with fate and a mutt.
Maverick strolls in without knocking, hair damp, towel slung low on his hips and a grin sharp enough to cut ribbon. “If you’re surrendering,” he says to Atticus, “I’ll relieve you. Can’t have our girl left unfinished.”
“Out,” Atticus says primly, but he’s already sliding up to kiss me quiet, laughter dissolving under the kind of attention that makes time forget its job.
Maverick’s towel hits the floor. He plants a knee on the mattress and skims his knuckles down my cheek, all soft show-off.
“Tell me if you want me to stop, Firebird.”
I don’t.
They take their time, that’s the worst and best of it—Maverick with his easy, sun-warmed sweetness and Atticus with that focus that feels like being studied and worshiped at the same time.
I’m held between them, breath catching, every part of me answered, my name a litany neither one of them seems willing to stop saying.
When I start to come apart, they don’t let me go. They carry me there and back again until I’m boneless and laughing against the pillowcase, fingers tangled in sheets I don’t remember pulling loose.
Atticus is all quiet devastation; he doesn’t ask for space so much as create it, and my body answers him like it always has. He holds my chin. Makes me meet his eyes. Takes, but only what I give. When I shiver, he murmurs good girl like it’s a private language between us and no one else.
I’m in the center of the world.
“Move,” Storm says from the doorway, voice low as a blade being unsheathed.
Maverick kisses my knee like a benediction and yields his spot, even with his heavy cock still standing at attention.
Atticus kisses my wrist and yields his, too—no sulking, no argument, just that shared look that means we know what she needs.
Storm climbs on the bed, his knee brushing mine. He doesn’t touch more than that.
“Color?” he asks, voice low enough that it feels like it’s inside my chest instead of my ears.
“Green,” I say. It comes out steady. I’m proud of that.
Atticus exhales, something like tension bleeding off him. Maverick’s smile tilts wicked.
Storm doesn’t move yet. He looks at me like we’re alone.
“Even with them here?” he asks.
“Especially with them here,” I answer. My pulse stutters. “I want you. I want them to see I’m not scared of wanting you.”
Something dark and soft flickers in his eyes. “Okay, Bird,” he murmurs. “Then we’ll give them a show.”
Maverick lets out a low whistle. “Don’t mind me,” he says. “Front row seats to the best thing that’s ever happened to this bed.”
“Shut up,” Atticus mutters, but he doesn’t look away.
Storm shifts closer, slow enough that I could bail at any point. His hand finds my jaw, thumb grazing the corner of my mouth. The touch is so careful it almost breaks me.
“Stop me when you need to,” he says. “Not when you think you should.”
Then he kisses me.
It’s not a soft kiss. It’s a claim. It’s everything we haven’t done yet and everything we almost lost, poured into the press of his mouth and the way his fingers tighten at my throat—not choking, just holding, just there.
Heat punches through me. My hands find his shoulders, sliding over hard muscle, pulling him closer before I can second-guess it. The rest of the room narrows to peripheral blur and sound—Atticus’s breath catching, Maverick muttering a reverent “holy shit” under his breath.
Storm angles his mouth, deepens the kiss. When I open for him, his quiet groan brushes my tongue.
“Still green?” he asks against my lips.
“Neon,” I whisper. “Just move.”
He smiles, wrecked and slow, and obliges.
He eases me onto my back and comes over me, braced on his forearms so he doesn’t crush me. I’m acutely aware of Atticus at my side, close enough that our arms touch, and Maverick hovering near my knees, watching like he’s memorizing every second.
Storm kisses a path down my throat, over my collarbone, each scrape of his mouth drawing a new sound out of me. My back arches. When his fingers dance over the tips of my nipples, the whimper that escapes shocks me.
“More.” I breathe. “More, please.”
“Remember you asked for it.” He grunts and then I’m screaming as his entire length is pushing into my core at once.
The climb is fast and brutal and perfect.
Every thrust has his balls slapping against my skin and something he’s doing with his hips is dragging the tip of his cock against that spot inside me.
When my orgasm breaks, it tears through me, bright and overwhelming, and I cling to Storm like he’s the only fixed point in a sky that just came unpinned.
I hear my own voice, high and raw, and his, wrecked in my ear.
Atticus’s grip tightens around my hand. Maverick curses softly, almost reverently.
We ride it out together—Storm above me, Atticus at my side, Maverick at the edge of the bed, all of them holding me in place while the tremors work their way out of my body.
When I finally blink my eyes open, Storm’s forehead is resting against mine, breath gusting hot and uneven. Atticus is watching us like his entire nervous system just rebooted. Maverick looks like someone just handed him proof of miracles.
I’m loose and floaty and wrecked in the way that means safe more than anything else. Zeus has given up and is starfished on the rug, content to supervise from a respectful distance now that the humans are speaking in full sentences again.
Conrad has been patient the way only Conrad can be—an exercise in restraint and hunger, jaw tight, eyes darker than the room. He doesn’t make a speech. He just gathers me up against his chest and kisses my forehead like a vow.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do. It steadies me.
“I love you,” he tells me, not like a confession, like a law. “Always.” His hand slides to the back of my neck, not to cage, to anchor. He glances at the others, then back at me. “I’ll share you with them. No one else.” The words land in me with the weight of a crown. “You are ours.”
“Say it,” Storm murmurs at my ear, softer than a threat, harder than a plea.
Atticus’s fingers lace with mine. Maverick nuzzles my shoulder, a smile against my skin.
I could play. Tease. Make them earn it again and again. I don’t. I’m done pretending I don’t know what I want.
“I belong with you,” I say, voice low but steady. “All of you. I’m not leaving. I love you.”
Conrad’s eyes close for a heartbeat, something savage and relieved moving through him. “Again.”
I don’t mind giving it; I like how they look when I do. “I belong with you,” I repeat, and then: “I choose you. Every day.”
“Good girl,” Storm says, satisfied.
Atticus exhales like he’s finally solved a proof. Maverick presses a kiss to my temple and whispers, “Queen of hearts,” like he just named a drink he’ll serve me forever.
We end up in a tangle—knees and hands and gratified smiles, the kind of mess that looks like home. Zeus thumps his tail once, then goes back to sleep, confident he has personally overseen the harmony of the realm.
Later, when the room is quiet and the day leans toward the kind of gold this city does best, I stand at the window with Conrad at my back, Atticus’s arm around my waist, Storm warm at my side, Maverick’s chin on my shoulder.
The river moves like it always has. The Wynn glitters.
Somewhere below us, staff change shifts on a schedule I wrote.
I think about the container. About metal walls and a lock and the way a girl can teach herself to breathe through steel. I think about the lobby yesterday—how the staff lifted their chins and I was allowed to write my own ending.
“Princess.” Conrad says quietly. “I have to talk to you about Collier.”
The name still lands like a dropped wrench. My chest tightens on reflex. Atticus’s arm firms around my waist, a small adjustment that says he felt the way my body went sharp. Storm’s hand finds the small of my back. Maverick stops breathing against my shoulder.
I keep my eyes on the river. “Okay,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. That feels like cheating.
Conrad’s breath warms the back of my neck. “I went through Masterson senior’s systems,” he says. He doesn’t call him Father anymore. “All of them. Personal, corporate, offshore. Everything he thought was clean.”
Of course he did.
“I found the transfers he made to the Broker,” Conrad goes on. “The shell companies. The payments that line up to the manifests for the ship they put you on. Every receipt for what he did to you and who he paid to help.”
“Did it explain why?” My voice is thin.
Conrad’s expression tightens, and he and Atticus exchange a look.
“Tell me.”
“After the DNA results came back, Collier received instructions to dispose of you. Masterson did not want anything that would prove your existence, apparently.”
My fingers curl over Atticus’s forearm. He doesn’t flinch. Maverick swears under his breath, a soft, furious word against my skin. Storm goes very, very still.
I’m not surprised, and yet it hurts. Having two fathers so willing to sell me down the river.
“Conrad,” I whisper. “What did you do with it?”
“I packaged it,” he says. “Every document. Every account. Every message where he called you an asset.” His voice roughens. “I built a trail even Rafe can’t talk circles around. And then I handed it to the FBI.”
The room tilts. Not like panic. Like something big just shifted under the foundation.
“When did they get him?” I ask.
He swallows. I feel it in the way his chest moves against my spine.
“They arrested him this morning. Federal custody. Multiple counts tied to trafficking and kidnapping. Conspiracy. Fraud. Murder. Conspiracy to commit murder. They’re still adding charges but it’s gonna be a long list of felonies he can’t get out of. ”
The Titan-Wynn glitters beneath us. Somewhere on the other side of the city, the man who thought he owned my story is in a cage with fluorescent lights and no river view.
“Bail?” Atticus asks, all business.
“Denied,” Conrad says. “Judge called him a flight risk and a danger to potential witnesses. His passport’s pulled. His accounts are frozen. He’s not walking out of that building tonight. Or any night that matters.”
The last part is for me.
My knees go weak in a way that has nothing to do with fear. Atticus feels it first and pulls me closer, his arm a band at my waist. Storm’s hand spreads over my ribs like he’s holding the pieces in. Maverick’s fingers lace with mine where they hang at my side.
“Say it straight,” I manage, because I need them to tell me the truth, simply. “Is he done?”
Conrad doesn’t rush the answer. “He can still talk,” he says.
“He can still make trouble for himself. Maybe for the people who enabled him. But as far as you go?” His voice drops to something rough and steady.
“Yes. Phoenix, he’s done. He will never touch you again.
He will never buy or sell anyone again.”
Something in my chest that has been clenched since the container finally…lets go.
I didn’t know I was crying until a tear hits the inside of Atticus’s wrist. He makes a soft sound and pretends not to notice. Maverick presses his mouth to my shoulder, a shaky kiss, like he’s blessing the news. Storm leans his weight into my side, solid and unmovable.
“What if he gets out,” I say, because the fear has been rehearsing that line for months.
“Then we’ll handle it,” Storm answers. “But that’s not the story today.”
“Today,” Conrad says, voice low at my ear, “you’re safe from him. Legally. Logistically. Completely. He can scream my name in court all he wants. He can drag the Masteron legacy through fire. He doesn’t get to hurt you ever again.”
A laugh bubbles up in my throat, wild and broken and a little vicious. I let it out.
“He’s going to hate that,” I say.
Conrad’s smile ghosts against my hair. “He already does.”
I watch the river move. People down there have no idea a monster just got locked in a different kind of box. Somewhere in a windowless room, the Broker is learning what it feels like when the doors close and someone else controls the locks.
I breathe in. Out. The air tastes different. Lighter. Like the city finally shifted its weight off my shoulders.
“Okay,” I say. “Then we start from here.”
“You’re smiling,” Atticus says, sounding pleased to catalog it.
“Dangerous,” Storm adds.
Maverick laughs against my skin. “God, I love it when she plots.”
Conrad brushes his mouth over my shoulder. “Our wild card.”
“Your queen,” I correct him gently.
“Our queen,” he amends, and none of them argue.
The city waits. The day waits. I don’t bother. I press my palm to the glass, leave a print that will fade, and feel four hands settle over mine, a promise layered over a promise.
Let them come. Let them try.
I broke out of a box meant to hold me. Now I rule the house, and I make the rules.