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Ambrose stepped forward. “She said she was with him in his final moments.” He cuffed his arms, eyes heated on the body. “Though, lord knows the bastard didn’t deserve it.”
“But why would you come here, Em? Why?” Prinze asked her, her face in his hands. “You knew we were going to handle this.” He brought her close, his mouth to her head. “We were going to take care of this. I was going to take care of this. Why didn’t you let me?”
She had no words for him, silent. We all stood around as we watched a man comfort his wife, our own wives waiting for us, and I was sure I wasn’t the only one who thought about a significant other at this moment. Instead of Prinze and December, I saw Bri and me here tonight, me holding her while she tried to explain to me what she’d come to do here tonight. She definitely would have too.
I knew my wife.
She wanted to protect our family just as much as I did because that was who she was, so I wasn’t surprised to see December Prinze here this evening. We’d all been about to do the same thing and make the same sacrifice. I’d never been responsible for killing a man, but I’d been going to tonight, with the aid of friends, family. There wasn’t a distinction anymore, and there hadn’t been for a long time. When someone crossed us, they crossed all of us, and these men and their wives definitely had my family’s back tonight. I was sure I wasn’t the only one who’d never been responsible for taking a life before.
If that wasn’t family, I didn’t know what was.
Chapter Fifty
Royal
“She got lucky tonight, Royal. Real lucky.” Knight Reed panned over to my car, my wife sitting inside. She’d gotten in after saying goodbye to Ramses Mallick. He had his own car parked away from the scene, and a couple of our military guys had taken him to get it. Knight’s lips turned down. “We weren’t even sure if we were going to get in tonight, but she managed to.”
It hadn’t taken us terribly long to find my father, but that hadn’t been the problem. He’d been under the eye of many people and hadn’t made it easy to get to him.
“How did she then?” I asked, and Knight braced his arms.
“The place had virtually no security,” he said, shocking me. “Floor was basically completely clear, which was how we got in.”
That didn’t make sense.
“Like I said, she was lucky, and even more lucky because she hadn’t been caught on any security footage. Our guys went to turn off the systems themselves, but it’d already been done. Apparently, the power went out in the whole hotel before that, and the feeds hadn’t come back on with it.”
Crazy.
“So you don’t have any footage of what actually happened?” I wondered about the details, but honestly, not that much. My father was gone.
Finally gone.
I thought I’d feel something more about that, but I think my father had been dead to me for quite a long time. There wasn’t anything to feel, and after the bullshit he’d been pulling in our lives for over twenty years…
My team was in the process of working on what we were doing as far as the Mallick shares Sloane had signed over, and it only helped that my father wouldn’t be in the way to stall the process. There was a loophole in the paperwork Sloane had signed that my father had failed to tell her about, and I wasn’t surprised he hadn’t shared this detail with her. Knight and his online security team had been able to get a copy of what she’d signed, and she, gratefully, had a few months grace period to reverse her decision. This whole mess would be rectified quickly, and my son wouldn’t be basically handed down blood money. My father had left all the shares to Dorian in the event of my dad’s death, but a legacy like this I tried to keep away from my son. One of power and greed. My son and I weren’t like my father.
We were better.
“No, we don’t. I’m going to have our guys keep working on it, though,” Knight continued, staring at December in the car again. “We’ll figure out who did this.”
Again, my concerns lay elsewhere, and after tonight, my father would be a distant memory. He’d be nothing but a missing person starting today, and this was something my friends and I were in the process of finishing. Jax was overseeing the cleanup upstairs as we spoke. Once the room was wiped and floor clear, my father’s body would be properly disposed of, and then that would be it. He’d be gone, and hopefully, his dark legacy gone with him.
I left my friends to do that, something they volunteered for. Knight and Jax let me go back to my wife and Ramses to his own. They’d taken our burden for us.
They’d relieved us of more suffering.
*
I tended to my wife later that night, took care of her, listened to her. She’d had no business trying to handle my father herself, and it’d been foolish.
If I lost her…
So many things could have gone wrong today, my son without a mother. I couldn’t imagine a life in which I didn’t have Em in it, and the only thing that kept me sane was that things hadn’t turned out that way. December was safe, and I was there to help her wash the blood away. We showered for a long time that night while I held her, the woman so goddamn strong and frustrating.
But I wouldn’t have it any other way.
After she was clean, we went to bed and chose not to call Dorian until the morning. It was late, and we didn’t want to wake him. He’d be coming home to us not long after that, though, and to a safe home. This family had suffered so much in the last year.
