“You coming in?” she asks. I shake my head slowly.
“Booth meeting.”
She nods.
The decision we made a few weeks ago flashes briefly in my mind.
Kids were never in the cards for us. Not because we couldn’t. Because we didn’t want to. Ashlynn would make an amazing mother, and if she wanted children, I would have given her as many as she wanted without question.
But the life we built?
It’s ours.
Just us.
I took care of the rest with a quick visit to Jerry’s office and a bag of frozen peas a month back. Best decision I’ve made since marrying her.
“What?” she asks, arching a brow when she catches me watching her again.
“Nothing,” I say, pushing off the Camaro. Then I hook a finger under her chin and kiss her slowly.
“Just thinking how lucky I am,” I whisper when I pull back.
She rolls her eyes, but the faint smile on her lips gives her away.
“Go,” she says, nudging me toward the driver’s side. “Before Mav starts calling.”
I slide into the Camaro and fire up the engine. She folds her arms on the door and leans in the window, giving me another quick kiss.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, doll. More than anything.”
She smiles then walks in front of the hood, and back toward the building. By the time I pull away from the curb, she’s already back in front of the building, talking to the lead contractor again.
Exactly where she belongs.
Watching her there for a second, I realize something.
She didn't just survive what they did to her. She took it, and turned it into something better.
Fifteen minutes later I’m back in the security booth at Perdition.
The files pulled from Jack’s office turned out to be a lot bigger than we expected.
Jack kept records of everything. Names. Accounts. Deals he never wanted the feds to find. Some of it we already knew about–dirty money, bribes, politicians who’d sell their soul for the right price.
But other things were harder to stomach.
Missing people.
Women who vanished after passing through Steele-owned properties.
In the files he had for Melissa’s foundation, not only did we get all of the information he had on Ashlynn and her parents, but more children they had wiped cleanly from the system. Elias and Slater have been digging through them for weeks, hoping to track down as many as they can.
Dozens of names. Kids who disappeared like they never existed.
Turns out, Jack Steele wasn’t the only monster in the room.
