“Hey, Ares, how are you doi…” Hades trails off when I don’t respond. I can hear him moving quickly to my side. His hand lands on my good arm, shaking me slightly.
“Ares?”
I don’t respond. I keep my eyes shut, practically biting my tongue off to keep quiet.
Hades shakes me again. “Ares!”
I still don’t move.
“ARES!”
Panic erupts in his voice.
“NURSE!!” He roars. “NUR—!”
I snort. He whirls back, his face white with terror. Then his eyes suddenly narrow as it clicks.
“You absolute fucking shithead,” he snarls as I grin at him. “No. No way, man,” he glares at me. “No, fuck you, that’s not cool, that’ not even one bit fucking funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny.”
He glares daggers at me. “You’re an asshole.”
“Okay, maybe. Sorry. Too bad, you don’t get the throne after all.”
He rolls his eyes. “If it’s ever me sitting at the top, we’re all fucked anyway, so just shoot me.” He snickers. “Maybe just don’t do it through your own fucking body this time, you goddamn psycho. What were you thinking?”
“You mean that’s not how you’re supposed to do it?”
“As if that would matter to you.”
I grin at him. He just shakes his head and grins back.
It’s been two weeks since I first woke up. That first week, I was at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. They say it was pretty touch and go for a while. First, when they brought me in with a hole through my chest and I had lost just shy of half my blood. Then, when I woke up and demanded to see Neve, which ended up with me ripping my stitches out, causing a massive internal hemorrhage and royally pissing off the team of doctors who’d spent nineteen hours in surgery carefully patching me up the first time.
I also managed to pick up an infection from God-knows-what was all over that grimy floor of the cabin.
But now I’m getting better, and I’m back in New York. We both are, though Neve was discharged about a week ago.
The door swings open behind my brother. Instantly, a grin spreads over my face when my eyes lock with my wife’s. She was at my side almost every single minute when we were both healing. I mean literally at my side. She wouldn’t let them move me back to my own hospital room for anything, be it kind suggestions or outright demands.
She simply wouldn’t.
Eventually—in part due as well to Cillian’s chilling, psycho look shutting down any possible pushback, I think—they ended up just moving another bed into her room and pushing them next to each other.
Since we got back to New York and she was discharged, she’s still been with me almost every minute of every day.
Neve’s hand finds mine as she leans against the bed. I groan as I pull her down, my lips searing to hers and locking in place there.
“Jesus, get a fucking room.”
I glare at my brother. “I do have a room. You’re in it, that’s all. Feel free to change that any time, by the way.”
Hades chuckles, shaking his head. Neve grins at me.
“Cillian’s just outside with Agent Dorsey.” Her brow furrows with concern. “Only if you’re ready, that is.”
“I’m ready. Let’s do it.”
A large part of me would like to pretend that everything that happened back at that cabin was a nightmare. That I invented it, and then woke back up to reality.
I’m sure a shrink would say that’s PTSD talking.
But it did happen. And now, it’s over. Or at least, it’ll be over once I talk with Shane Dorsey, give him an official statement he can take back to his higher-ups, and close the books on this whole thing for good.
Neve smiles, leaning down to kiss me softly. My hand entwines with hers, my fingers brushing the edges of the bandages on her wrists.
She’ll have scars, but they’ll fade. She’ll have the trauma of what happened to us both. But that will fade too, and I’ll be there, every minute of every day, to keep her moving forward. To hold her close if the terror ever grips her.
She’s going to be okay.
We’re both going to be okay.
They’re releasing me today, probably right after I talk with Dorsey, which is one reason I’m eager to get the interview over with. I’ll still need plenty of bed rest back home, and the cast and brace on my shoulder will stay there while my broken collarbone and torn ligaments heal. But I’ll get there.
I mean, I doubt I’ll ever become a left-handed star quarterback for the NFL now. But that’s their loss.
Neve smiles, nuzzling my face and kissing me again before she pulls away. She walks to the door and pokes her head out. A second later, she turns back to me as her uncle, Shane Dorsey and Castle file in behind her.
Cillian nods at me.
Castle arches a brow. “Oh good, you look a little less like shit today.”
“Stop it, you’ll make me cry.”
He grins.
Cillian’s the one who got to us first. Well, him and Castle together. And not a second too soon, either. They had a doctor with them who was sure if they moved Neve and I, we’d never make it. But I’m pretty sure the odds were in the toilet whether we stayed in the cabin or risked racing to a local hospital.
In the end, it would seem fortune favored the brave.
Of course, it’s not just luck or fortune I have to thank, or Cillian’s timing in getting to us. I was very close to dead when they got there: no pulse, blue lips, the whole nine yards.
But luckily, Neve and I aren’t the only ones with type O-negative blood.
Castle does, too. And that’s who I really owe my life to. That big asshole carried me out of the cabin, dumped me into the passenger seat of the car, and gave me a transfusion from his own veins while he drove us to the local hospital.
That’s the only reason I’m still here.
When he steps into the room, it’s the first time I’ve seen him since I’ve woken up. Before I can say anything, he shakes his head.
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
Castle shrugs. “You don’t thank family.”
Neve squeezes my hand as Cillian walks over to me.
“You ready to do this?”
Not really. But I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.
“Sure.”
His eyes hold mine. “Despite Castle’s poetic words,” he growls quietly, “thank you for doing what you did for her.”
I nod. “Same to you.”
His lips curl into a normalish grin, at least as normal as it gets for Cillian.
Dorsey clears his throat. “Well, should we do this?”
“Let’s.”
Half an hour later, between myself, Cillian, Neve, Castle, and Shane we’ve hammered out a pretty fantastic “official” statement. One that leaves in everything it should, but leaves out anything that might hurt us.
The part about Neve being blackmailed with those pictures, for instance, is left out. Unfortunately, so is the part where Owen Foley betrayed us all for a shot at power.
But that doesn’t really matter anymore. Owen’s dead, and the only thing leaving that tidbit in would do is shine a light on the Kildare family in ways none of us want, or need.
So my official statement is that Owen was just another victim of Seamus’ random unhinged violence. As it turns out, the FBI is more than happy to minimize the fallout and public knowledge of any collateral damage from O’Conor’s escape.
Oh, and the official statement has Dorsey as the shooter who put Seamus down.
Dorsey gets a pay and title bump for that, the Drakos and Kildare families get another pass and probably even better FBI perks with his new position, and the Bureau gets to boast about taking down a crazy serial killer.
Nice, neat, and everyone goes home happy.
“Well, that’ll do it, then.”
Dorsey stands and shakes my good hand.
“Hell of a shot, by the way,” he grins at me.
When he’s gone, Cillian shuts the door and turns to me. “There’s something else you should know.”
Jesus, really?
“About how we got to you, I mean.”
That’s certainly something I’ve been wondering about. But in the chaos of the last two weeks, where I’ve mostly just been focused on Neve, I let it fade.
Cillian clears his throat. “Let’s just say that if you’re in the habit of passing out Christmas bonuses, you might want to set a big one aside for Mr. Adamos.”
My brows arch incredulously. “Ezio?”
He nods. “Turns out he’s been trying to crack the passcode on his son’s old phone. He finally succeeded about two weeks ago, and found an audio file on it.” Cillian’s eyes narrow. “It’s a recording of the meeting where my brother Declan and your uncle Vasilis died, as well as Ezio’s son.”
I frown. Neve’s fingers lace through mine, squeezing, and she stares at her uncle with a look that says she hasn’t heard this yet either.
“They had a truce on the table. And then Owen walked in, made a bad joke, and shot them all—Declan, his lieutenant Eamon, Vasilis, and Ezio’s son, Jason.”
Holy shit.
Cillian shakes his head, his eyes fierce. “I knew Owen for damn near my entire life. He was hiding his real self the whole time. He held that fucking grudge about my half-brother being made a Kildare and taking over New York for decades. And that was his plan: fuck up the truce, create a war, wait for the bodies to drop—maybe help with that—and then take over the throne. The scumbag even had a proposal already drafted and ready to submit to the Council—a petition for him to take over as head of Irish operations in New York.”
My grip tightens on Neve’s hand.
“But when war was avoided by you two marrying,” Cillian goes on, “Owen changed tactics. He used some men he had on the inside of Florence, as well as some paid Russian muscle, to break Seamus out.”
My eyes narrow. “Russian? As in Bratva?”
Cillian’s face is grim, but he says nothing.
“I’m looking into it,” Castle growls. “If it ends up pointing that way, we’ll be paying a little visit to Gavan Tsarenko.”
Fuck. As powerful as the Kildare and Drakos alliance is, the idea of getting into a tussle with the head of the New York operations for the Reznikov Bratva isn’t exactly appealing.
Well, we’ll cross that bridge if and when we have to.
“Anyway,” Cillian growls, slipping a cigarette between his lips but for once not lighting it as he folds his arms over his chest. “Ezio heard that audio and started tailing Owen nonstop, looking to make an iron-clad case before he brought it either to you or I. When he saw Owen stuff your unconscious ass into the back of a car, he reached out to me.”
Shit.
And I almost threw the guy off a roof.
I make a note to call the head of the Adamos family and settle all of this once and for all, not to mention express my deepest gratitude, the minute I get out of here.
Well, not the minute.
First, broken collarbone and gun wound to the shoulder or not, I’m taking my wife home to our bed, ripping her clothes off, and fucking feasting on her.
The doctors come in once more to remind me for the millionth time about taking my meds and doing my PT and all that bullshit. And after all that, I’m gone…walking right out the front door—with the help of the woman I love.
The one I almost lost.
The one I’ll never let go of.
Outside the hospital Eilish, Callie, Hades, Kratos—even Deimos, who’s flown in from London—are waiting for me, alongside Ya-ya, of course. There are hugs all around, and tears, and laughter. And I watch it all from almost outside my body, like an observer watching the impossible happen: rivals who turned into allies.
Enemies who became family.
And there, surrounded by that blended family, I turn to my wife. I grin as her lips curve up at the corners. My good hand cups her face as my eyes lock with hers.
I tell her I love her, and it’s the truest thing I’ve ever said.
She tells me she loves me too.
Our lips come together, and the world melts away. The sun shines down.
And it’s a brand new day.
