Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91809 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91809 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
I turned away, walking off.
Wolf rushed to speak. “I did what she said, but I tried to help when I could!”
“Help me?” I cried, pulling up short. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I told you Everleigh’s plan that day in the dean’s office so you could fight back. I warned you the police were here, waiting for them that day.”
I paused, mouth open, but nothing came out.
“I gave Victor CPR when she wanted to leave him for dead,” he said. “I kept him safe at my place so that she wouldn’t try to kill him again. I did everything I could to help. I’m sorry that it wasn’t enough.”
I flicked off him to Victor. “Is it true?” I whispered.
“It’s true. He locked me up in the apartment to stop me running back to you, but he didn’t hurt me. He also told me everything so I’d understand why. Everleigh was out of control.”
“Oh, Victor.” I jumped in his arms, squeezing the life out of him.
Victor grasped my head and kissed me hard—exploding heat, light, and love inside my body. He was here. He was safe. And everything was still so horribly wrong.
“But it doesn’t have to be.” I untangled from Victor but kept him close. “You can undo what you’ve done. Tell the police everything they’ve got on the guys is fake. You made it up.”
“I can make the fake evidence disappear as easily as I made it appear, but I can’t delete the cops’ memories. They found those weapons in the ashes of the Gallery. They’ve got more than enough from that to lock them up.”
I deflated. He was right. The Rogues were in trouble long before Wolf made it worse. They wouldn’t be terrorists. Instead, they’d go down for hoarding illegal weapons and chemicals.
“I knew that. I guess I hoped with Everleigh confessing that she had the guys framed, killed my father, used the T.O.D. as a hit squad, and a million other terrible things, the police see that she’d done so much evil, it wasn’t a stretch to believe she planted all those weapons too.
“But I’ve got nothing. No Everleigh. No confession. No nothing.” I buried my face in Victor’s shoulder. “What do we do? It can’t end this way. We’ve only been together a short time. I wanted forever with you guys.”
“You’ll have it, baby.” Victor’s fingers were soothing on my scalp. “We’ll figure this out. I promise.”
“Hold on.” Wolf stepped forward. “Did you just say you needed a confession?”
“Yes, but it’s too late,” I replied. “Everleigh’s gone. At this point, I’m going to break them out of jail. They’ll be fugitives, but at least we’ll be together.”
“I’m mildly interested in how you’d pull that off,” Wolf supplied, “but I’ve got a better idea.”
Taking out his phone, he tapped the screen, then held it up.
Everleigh’s voice flowed out of the speakers.
My eyes widened the longer I listened.
“I told you,” Wolf said, smirking that smirk I was quickly becoming fond of. “The first time she called, I recorded everything she said to take to the police. You’ve got your confession.”
Epilogue
One Year Later
I dug my toes in the sand, relaxing as the warmth spread up my feet.
True paradise. We’d found it.
“Sinclair.” Wilder dropped down and handed me a piña colada from the beach bar. His six-year-old companion giggled from around his shoulders.
“Uncle Wild,” Liam said. “I want to swim.”
“You don’t know how to swim.”
“That’s not true!”
No one on earth had ever been more outraged at the blatant truth.
I laughed, tickling the little boy under the arm. Shrieking, he squirmed and nearly kicked his uncle in the face.
A year ago, after I sprung my boyfriends from prison, Wolfgang introduced us to the person who changed his life—the one Everleigh used to blackmail him.
Wolfgang had enough enemies gunning for him. The one thing they could never know is he had the biggest weakness of all—a son. Wolf wanted him to have the normal life his mother denied him and Wilder, and it was that realization that woke him up to how awful their childhood was and how badly he’d treated Wilder.
“I rationalized and explained everything I did until I asked myself what I’d do to the person who treated my son like that. The torture I’d put them through hasn’t been invented yet,” Wolf told Wilder that day. “I was wrong, brother. I don’t expect your forgiveness, but I give my apology.”
“Is it weird that we brought this little ankle biter on the honeymoon?”
I smooched Liam’s cheek. “Not weird at all, especially because it’s not a honeymoon. You need a wedding for that.”
“Made sense to cancel.” Victor plopped down on my other side, his drink in hand. “We’re young. Dad finally retired. We’ve got plenty of time to get married. So we ditched the wedding but still went on the trip.”