He hands Dredyn a burner phone. “This has one number programmed. Mine. Use it only for emergencies, and I mean real emergencies—life or death. Assume every call is monitored.”
“How will we know what’s happening? With the Syndicate, with Edmund and the stranger?”
“I’ll send updates through secure channels. Nothing traceable. You’ll know what you need to know.”
CJ checks his watch.
“Two hours and forty-five minutes. I suggest you rest while you can. It’s a long flight.”
He leaves through the same back door the doctor used.
And then it’s just the four of us.
Dredyn sits at the kitchen table, head in his hands. Jasper leans against the counter, eyes distant.
And I’m standing in the middle of a safe house, about to board a plane to exile, with three men who killed for me.
“Come here,” I say softly.
Dredyn and Jasper both look up.
“Come here. Both of you.”
They move to me and I pull them both into an embrace. “We made it; we’re alive. That’s what matters.”
“One out of three,” Dredyn says against my hair. “We failed.”
“We survived. That’s not failure, that’s victory.”
“Is it? I killed my father, Mara. Shot him in the head while he was on his knees. I can still see his eyes, still hear the sound. That’s not victory. That’s… I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s freedom. It’s justice. It’s the price of choosing us over him.”
I pull back to look at him, at both of them.
“You did what needed doing—what no one else was brave enough to do. And now we get to live. Really live. Not under the Syndicate’s control, not in fear, not as someone else’s assets. We get to be free.”
“On a remote island, hiding from the most powerful criminal organization in the country,”Jasper signs.
“On a tropical island, building a life together,” I correct.
He almost smiles.
“We should rest. We’ve got two hours, then we fly. Then… Well, we’ll figure it out from there,” Dredyn says.
We check on Talon who’s still sleeping, then we collapse on a couch together, too exhausted to make it to actual beds.
Jasper’s on my left, Dredyn on my right, and Talon is recovering in the next room.
But all of us are alive—together, free.
And for now, that’s enough.
I close my eyes and let exhaustion take me.
When I wake, it’ll be time to leave everything behind.
But right now, in this moment, we’re safe.
