I lean my head against Blake’s shoulder with a small sigh.
I don't really like the fact that we need to work with the cartel at all after everything, but that’s the deal Sauvage made for our lives. At least they took care of Andy’s body. His death hasn’t been linked to us at all, and all this is better than being married to Marcus.
He hasn’t been seen since the morning Lu and her cousin carted him away in a white van. His black Camaro was found badly damaged halfway down a ravine just off the main road through the State Forest a few weeks ago. A body was found inside, which turned out to be him, but it had to be identified with dental records because it had been there awhile.
I've questioned Lu about him a couple times, but she just looks at me blankly, like she doesn't even know who I'm talking about. Shade says I should stop asking her and I’ve conceded that it's probably best that I don't know what she actually did.
Shade heard from someone in his old circles that Elizabeth Banderville is living her best life now, and she goes to every party with a massive smile on her face, dancing the nights away with a perpetual Champagne flute in her hand. I’m glad it worked out for her. She did try to help me, after all.
When we're finished our wine, and the hour is late, we go down into the cabin.
'Have you had an email from the lawyers yet?' Shade asks me as he gives me a neck and shoulder massage.
I stretch under his hands. 'Not yet, but it'll be this week, I think.'
I look down at the rock on my left hand. When I was finally able to prove to Fussell & Meyer who I was, I found that even I couldn't get the money left to me by my mom’s parents if I wasn't married.
It’s a dumb rule for the modern era, but there was no way around it, so I had to get hitched. Shade, as my stepbrother, was obviously not possible for legal reasons and both Blake and Mav argued for a week over which one of them should propose to me. In the end, we flipped a coin and Mav won.
We did a small courthouse service with his brother and Lu and our guys as witnesses. And, later that same day, me and the others had our own private ceremony where they all said the same promises to me, and I to them.
My wedding band has three different colored diamondsin it and is shaped like three rings twisted together, and each of my guys wears a matching counterpart.
The money was mine within hours of providing the marriage certificate to Fussell & Meyer, all eight-hundred million of it, it turns out.
When I heard the figure, my head swam. I hadn’t expected it to be anywhere near that much, but I already knew exactly what I was going to do with it first. After paying Sauvage back the six million he paid Mariana Reyes to keep us alive, I bought out Blake's father's debt from the cartel.
He was free of them in time to graduate from Richmond U with honors, like the rest of us did. Professor Applegate gave us our diplomas as his final act before he left the university and has since taken a job at a prestigious school in Switzerland. He recommended the four of us for his post grad program there, so in September, that’s where we’ll be going.
We’re renting a house and Stevens has decided he wants to run it for us, saying he spent too long in the US and would rather go back to Europe for a while.
I was going to bail Shade and his businesses out of the financial trouble caused by his father, but he told me he didn't want me to. He doesn’t want any of it to survive. A clean break, he said.
I've kept up with the news of what's going on with The Heath. Turns out, Stoke had way more skeletons in his closet than anyone knew. He had ties to the peerage, and to criminal organizations. There were also old accusations of medical negligence and malpractice that could never be proven until The Heath was raided. He’s been jailed for life, and many of the Blanks, I’ve heard, too.
Under the dumpsters, three bodies were found in total.They haven't been identified yet due to not having any dental records, but they believe that at least two were patients of Stokes. He has never admitted anything, though. So far, three people in the UK Government resigned over the scandal of The Heath.
The current residents were taken to other institutions, psychiatric facilities not made for people like us. Considering that all of us were at The Heath because our families didn’t want us, or couldn’t deal with us, I've decided to start my own place just outside of London. It won’t be a clinic. It’ll be a home. A nice one.
I've put up enough cash for three years, and I've already begun securing donations for the running of it. Everything in the building is new and state of the art. There will never be any corrections or punishments, and there will be programs to provide education and assistance to those who want to learn to live independently. I’m also building several apartments on site for those who want them.
Everyone who was ever a resident of The Heath has an automatic place there. Fifty of them are coming, including Colin and William. My dream of helping is finally becoming a reality.
Shade’s skillful hands keep up their movements until I can barely sit up.
I open my eyes and find my guys watching me.
‘Strip for us,’ Mav says, eyes traveling over my yellow sundress that’s been giving them glimpses of my body whenever the breeze picked up on deck all day.
I chose it on purpose.
Giving him an indulgent grin, I get to my feet slowly, glad today’s plan to make them crazy is paying off.
‘I don’t think that was part of the gift,’ I say coyly, but,feeling a lot more confident now than I used to, I do a little shimmy, letting the dress fall to the floor.
The boat pitches a bit and I stumble, breaking into laughter as I almost fall over very un-sexily. I crawl onto the bed between Blake's legs.
His arms envelop me, and I feel Mav and Shade behind me. I hear the rustling of them taking off their clothes, and I look over my shoulder to watch them, but Blake turns my head back his way and pulls me closer to kiss me.
