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Now Hale Ironworks has a Devil’s Peak workshop, I’ve got eight employees depending on me, a farmhouse that needs six months of work, a fiancée wearing my ring, and a seventy-year-old woman at the library who’s declared me a public nuisance.

Devil’s Peak still calls me the Rebel.

I just finally found something worth staying for.

Epilogue Two

Clara

five years later

“Fuck.”

The children’s section of Devil’s Peak Public Library goes silent.

I close my eyes.

Across the room, Mrs. Patterson gasps.

“Rosie.”

My four-year-old daughter looks up from the tower of blocks that just collapsed.

“What?”

“Where did you hear that word?”

Rosie points across the library. “Daddy.”

Of course.

Ryder leans against the circulation desk wearing black jeans, motorcycle boots and absolutely no remorse.

“Snitch.”

“Daddy says fuck a lot,” Rosie announces.

“Accurate.”

“Ryder.”

“What? Lying is wrong.”

Mrs. Patterson makes the same disgusted sound she’s been making at him for five years.

He grins at her.

She walks away.

She’ll give Rosie a cookie before we leave.

She always does.

Ryder crosses the room and crouches beside our daughter.

At forty, there’s a little gray at his temples.

Otherwise, not much has changed.