“It’s about time you begged for something, you no-good bastard.”
Lee Grady. The man who was supposed to be dead. A fucking ghost in a cemetery. He stood over me with a gun in his hand.
I went to move my wife, but he shook his head, pointing the gun at her. “She’s going first. After what I just heard, she’s worth more than what you stole from me. You’ll live long enough, after I finish the job Susan couldn’t, to see the life drain from her before it drains from you. Very poetic. Your old man might’ve even been proud you went out this way.”
A whistle sounded. Like a bird. Singing. Or talking to another one. It came and then went when another roll of thunder drowned it out. It came back, closer this time.
I could see Grady in the light of the flashlight Raff left behind, but he couldn’t see who else was out there.
Grady aimed his gun toward the left, toward where the noise was coming from, his eyes narrowing. “Who’s there?” he shouted.
Nothing but the downpour of rain answered him, and then the whistle, which came and went again. My old man might’ve had a simple stone, but big statues surrounded him. Whoever it was seemed to be moving between them, letting Grady know he wasn’t alone.
Grady pulled the trigger on his gun. A flash of light, and then the blast rang and seemed to echo in the night. He must’ve hit a stone, because I heard it crack.
“Who’s there?” he shouted again, ready to pull the trigger once more. Before he did, though, a man appeared out of the darkness and put one bullet in his head and two in his chest. He lay at my feet, his eyes still open, rain pooling in his unseeing eyes.
When the man showed his face in the light, I cleared my throat. “It wasn’t her. I forced her into it. Take her.” I tried to lift her, but my arms felt like they were weighed down with lead. “She needs help.”
“I know you forced her,” Scott Stone said, kneeling to feel the pulse in her neck. “But I also know she’s not the kind of woman to be forced into anything. She fell in love with you.” He sighed. “Get me my job back and I’ll get help. You’ve said it enough. We can’t exist without each other.”
“Done,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if the word actually left my mouth.
“I’m not sure about you, Kelly.” He sighed again. “But I need something to live for besides myself.”
“The fucking truth,” I said, holding on to her tighter. If she didn’t survive this, neither would I.
A second later, it seemed, people were running through the rain with lights, coming toward us. Too soon for him to have just called someone.
I heard Scott Stone say something about how he had been following me after I clipped the car. He’d lost me at some point, but then figured out where I’d been going. I heard Mac. I heard Rocco. I heard him say they left the Hummer for me in case I wanted to go after Raff when I was healed. The Hummer had been tracked.
I heard Tito Sala cursing in Italian at all of them.
Pulling my wife even closer to my chest, I said two words that I never remembered coming out of my mouth before. “Thank you.” Then I closed my eyes.
35
Keely
7 months later
The evening sun poured in through the windows of the library, highlighting all of the stories on the many shelves.
I tugged at the pendant around my neck, studying all of the crevices with a narrowed eye. Some were still stained with blood.
His and mine.
Two bodies that shared one heart.
Love is never easy, because true love, the kind I made vows to, meant that the days would be long, the years short, and not all of them good. One thing I knew for certain, though. It would be worth it.
It already was.
No matter how hard our road became, I would always make the choice to walk beside Cash Kelly and our family in love.
It took me time to get to that point. It wasn’t easy to heal after what Raff had done to me. He had beaten me senseless. Beat me until I’d passed out from the pain. He had broken bones and torn muscles.
The one he almost killed—my heart—still beat. He left me bruised and tattered, and he left my husband the same way, but he was still here. And so was I.
