Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75599 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“I love you, Aria Linetti,” I growl. “And I want to steal you away to paradise, keep you there forever, marry you, and live my whole life with you in my arms. If that even sounds a little okay to you, then I’d love if you—”
“I love you too,” she gasps, hugging me so tight and leaning up to crush her lips to mine. “I don’t even know you, and I know this is insane, but I love you.”
Fire roars through me as I hold her in my arms and kiss her like she’s mine.
Because she is—now, and forever.
We get on that flight, we leave our old lives behind, and I know it’s going to be okay. Of course it is—I’ve got twenty million cash in a suitcase, a brand new life ahead of me, and the woman I love in my arms.
Epilogue
Jack
“You out already, Jack?”
I glance up at Etienne, and he chuckles at the look on my face.
“I’m joking, get home to that wife of yours, I feel like I’ve been looking at you for two days straight.”
I chuckle and nod my chin at him. “Yeah, well, I’m sick of looking at you too, buddy. And for fuck’s sake, take a shower.”
Etienne laughs and flips me off as I turn to head out into the bright midday afternoon sun. I sigh as the warmth washes over me, and even as bedraggled and bleary-eyed as I am, I can’t help but grin.
It really is paradise here.
Etienne is with Just Cause—a Frenchman and one of the construction managers I’m helping with laying out the project. We break ground on the new clinic in a month, and there’s a shitload of stuff to check off the lists before we do. But we’ll be ready, I know it. See I’m no doctor, so this is my part to shine—the money, for one, but also putting in the muscle and grunt work. Once these four walls and a roof are up, and once we take on the patients who need this place, it’ll be Aria’s turn to be away from home all night putting in the sweat.
And goddamn am I already proud of my wife for the work she’s going to do here.
We’ve been in Vietnam a month now—a month of paradise, of endless time in bed together, and of just living life for the very first time. I think it’s both of us who feel that way, too. Back before, in my old life, I was stuck in a loop—an endless cycle of something I didn’t have my heart in anymore. Or if I ever had it in at all. Working for the mob was ripping me apart inside. Doing their dirty work and shedding blood for them was going to break me if I stayed.
Aria might not have been nearly as low and as on the verge of snapping as me, but she was in the same boat about being stuck. Guess we bumped into each other at the perfect time.
When we first landed here, it was touch and go. The FBI got involved with the Lombardo family back home, and with me missing, they got real interested in having a little chat. Or, you know, putting me behind bars. Vietnam won’t extradite, but with the goddamn FBI breathing down their necks and the US ambassador and State Department getting involved, it did get hairy there for a second.
But Etienne and the rest of the Just Cause crew had my back, big time. They got their lawyers involved, and they made damn sure we were able to stay. Yeah, I mean, the nineteen-million-dollar investment didn’t exactly hurt things in that department, but hey, it is what it is.
I’m a new man—no longer a killer, no longer a spiller of blood. Now, I’m going to right—or at least try to right—some of the pain I’ve put into this world. And if that means backbreaking pre-construction work, sweating my ass off, and spending a night away from my wife? Well, then that’s what it takes.
Right, yeah, Aria and I got married, the second damn day we were here. It’d have been the first, but I had to actually propose first, on the beach outside the cabana we’re renting until our house is built. And after she said yes? Well, the next twelve hours were spent in bed screwing each other’s damn brains out, so technically, it was the second day here when we got married.
And speaking of screwing each other’s brains out…
I growl hungrily as I head down to the white sand, turn left, and start jogging. Our cabana isn’t far from the job site, and even when it’s hot as fuck outside, I like a good run to get my blood moving. In less than fifteen minutes, I’m rounding the last little beachhead and laying eyes on our temporary home. I get closer, and my cock is already hardening as I spot her, standing out on our little porch in a bikini, wrapped in a sarong.