Finally.
Grabbing my Ruger from my lap, I stand up. There isn’t enough time for them to react before the sound of the single shot explodes through the office.
Emerson screams as the bullet slams into his shoulder, sending him crashing backward to the floor below.
Chaos erupts instantly. The few Owed who managed to snag a visitor’s chair scrape them in their hurry to get away from the writhing man. Others break out into a cacophony of noise. Bas peers down at Emerson, flashing my a thumbs up when he sees that I did exactly what we three had planned: if anyone gave Adrian shit, I’d make an example of them. That way they know better than to start themselves, plus I’ve positioned myself as his enforcer/bodyguard/bulldog and it only cost me a single bullet.
As I lower the gun, I meet the eyes of every man in the room.
“Look. You don’t have to like him. You don’t have to respect him, either, until he earns it. But youwillobey him. Because if you don’t? You’ll answer to me. I did what I had to for Jack because he made me.”
I pause, giving them a moment for that to sink in.
The murders. The threats. Theblood…
“But for Adrian?” My mouth curves slightly. “It’ll be a pleasure to have his back and do whatever I have to to guard it. Long live the King—and, for all your sakes, it better be a long fucking time.”
Then, as they all watch, I step aside as Adrian moves to take the seat I just vacated.
And, just like that, Dallas Collins is no longer the King of the Order of the Owed.
Thank fucking God.
EPILOGUE
LUCY
THREE MONTHS LATER
It’s Christmas Eve in Harmony Heights, and it’s snowing.
When I was a little girl, I loved the snow. The excitement, the expectation, the hope that there would be enough of the white stuff on the ground that I could have a day off from school. We had our first flurry at the beginning of the month, and the childish excitement that flooded through me was second only to the relief that I can remember what those early days were like.
It’s been four months since my accident. I still don’t have my full memory back, but each day brings a little more of who Lucy Wright was. Like, I can remember how I did a dance to an old Britney Spears song during my fifth grade talent show, though I’ve continued to block anything to do with the man I was married to for half a decade. I remember making Christmas cookies—chocolate chip, naturally—with my mom before she divorced my dad and disappeared, but anything surrounding Tony Wright is as hazy as those lost years.
I do remember how much I love the Christmas season, whether I have good, bad, or missing memories when it comes to the holiday. I know this isn’t the first one I’ve spent with Dallas—we had one short Christmas in the year-and-a-half we were together—but pulling up those memories is like trying to catch a fish with my bare hands. I can see it, I can grab at it, but they’re usually too wiggly for me to hold onto.
That’s okay. Dallas spent the last few weeks giving me the perfect holiday season. Now that he’s stepped down from being the King, settling into his role as Adrian’s fiercest enforcer/bodyguard, he’s had more time to spend with me, and no reason to come up with excuses to abandon his ‘duties’. That meant he was there to help me string up lights in every one of the penthouse’s windows, and last week, he figured out how to get a seven-foot-tall Douglas fir up to the top floor so we could decorate it together.
We still live in the Fortress. Adrian and Dallas swapped offices after a much smaller remaining group of high-ranking Owed members agreed to let Dallas pass his figurative crown over to Adrian. However, when Dallas offered to move out of the penthouse so that Adrian and Loni could take it over, Adrian refused. He and Loni—and their adorable fluffballs, Peaches and Cream—enjoyed the privacy of their home, and as Adrian pointed out, for good or for bad, the penthouse apartment has always been Dallas’s.
Like me, he struggles with his memories. Only, in Dallas’s case, he remembers too much. The ghost of his father might’ve lurked in the King’s office a floor below, but up here? It’s Reese Collins who is everywhere he looks. He loathed his father, but he loved his mother, and this was her home.
And now it’sourhome.
I’m standing at the window in the living room, watching the snow fall. It’s not the soft, flurrying kind, barely there, hardly awisp on the wind. Oh, no. These are big suckers. The heavy sort of snowfall, the thick flakes tumbling from the sky like they’re trying to bury all of Harmony Heights in white.
And, to my surprise, while I feel that same excitement young Lucy did—because it’s snowing this morning and it’s Christmas Eve which means tomorrow isChristmas—there’s one thing Idon’tfeel.
Fear.
Trepidation.
Anxiety…
For the first weeks, I avoided windows and heights. Do you blame me? Even without the memories of what happened that night, I knew I fell. I got lucky, too. If I had a different room in the Stanton, if I hadn’t hit the door covering on the way down from the fourth floor room, breaking my fall, I might’ve died. I know now that was his intent. He wanted me dead, and a fuzzy memory is an okay price to pay to have a second chance with the man who loved me so much, he didn’t just avenge me. Over the last five years, he never gave up on me.
He never forgot me, even if for a while there, I forgothim.
