I went back to Denver and saw the progress.
LA to see how much better things were there. Yes, there were still problems with the vampire coven there, but it was… They weren’t holding demons like sex slaves.
I went around to the safe houses and felt the amount of rescued demons.
Other newer clubs that were finished or had been worked on in the past years.
The new headquarters of Heavenly Properties that would give a lot more jobs—security and income to people.
The house of mine that my friends were now safe in.
Even the club we’d had problems with in Jackson that was now back on the right track.
Mason was thriving in his new role and the twins were thrilled at the possibilities ahead for them. They were a lot like me where the day-in and day-out routines burnt them out instead of being comforting.
There was a lot they really loved—as I did—but being stuck as the one locked in was too taxing when you felt too much. Exactly how I felt.
Which was why undercover was where I thrived.
I looked over the updated lists of assets we were not locked in on. Yes, there were still too many headaches, but instead of looking at those, I saw the possibilities. Fine, we’d fumbled the ball—badly even—but the game wasn’t over and we had thousands andthousandsof properties to do a lot with.
So much to be grateful for.
Which was what I was filled with when I went to talk to Sam. I told her the truth that I couldn’t be impartial, but I wanted her to hear it from me that I thought she was worth saving as long as she was willing to pay the price of her crimes. If she would pay her debt then I would advocate for her.
Her answer was instant.
Yes.
Even if we took her head in the end, she wanted to pay her debt to this world because she’d started out with the best of intentions and it upset her that she’d lost her way. She didn’t kill to be the bad guy.
She’d killed because she thought there was no other way and wanted to take monsters out as long as she was damned.
That wasn’t the truth, but good on her for wanting to set the scales right. Truly.
I was settled hearing that. We could all have second chances as long as we were willing to work for them and our mistakes weren’t rooted in evil.
Didn’t that seem like a better world than the one we were currently living in?
I realized I was settled in a lot more than that after taking the time to really take stock. I had so many people in my life who truly cared about me.
Now that I’d let them in, I could see it.
And more than just friends. Lovers. It might have started with Dylan, but I had the twins, Aidan, and Mason. Maybe one day I would thank Dylan for the push even if we ended badly.
Maybe.
I could hope to grow that much?
Realizing how much was going better—how far I’d come personally in even the past year—put me in a really good mood for the weekend. The choreography was done and so much was in motion. I had a meeting with Ricco and the supes of Rome now that construction was really going.
There was some back and forth with the development and I wanted our security to hammer out a few things first. Nothing bad, but it was a bad area originally, so that meant more security. Then we could finalize which shops we were allowing in and the final deals. We had a lot mapped out but weren’t to the interior specifics yet.
Should we have maybe done that first?
Sure, but we also needed to be flexible in case one shop failed and another could take its place. That was just smart business and why malls had done so well for so long.
Déjà vu hit me hard when I stepped through the portal and immediately felt pain. My self-preservation told me to step right back through, but Ricco wasn’t just an ally anymore. I cared about the cat and his people.
