Page 89 of Until Ace

“I’ve got you, baby.” I scoop her up in my arms and run like hell. There’s no one around here anymore, but I want her out of this place and to see a doctor as soon as possible.

She stirs in my arms, jolts, and mumbles, “Ace?”

“Yes, it’s me. I’ve got you, baby,” I chant over and over.

“I want to go home,” she begs weakly, seconds before her whole body sags in my arms as she slips into unconsciousness.

“I’ve got you,” I again whisper into her ear, before I put her in my car and drive.

Epilogue

Mandy

Three months later

“Babe?” Ace prompts in my ear, sending a thrill down my body.

“Ace,” I say, smiling down at the pavement as I walk up to the store.

“Yep. The one you called, baby.” He chuckles.

“You’ll never guess what just happened.” I myself still can't believe it.

“What?”

“I got the promotion. Your woman is now a full-on car saleswoman,” I tell him proudly.

“My woman?”

“Um… yeah,” I say tentatively. And then it hits me. It's the first time I’ve acknowledged that I’m truly his.

Sure, we live together, and we’ve said I love yous, but after everything went down, life got busy.

Garett and Jim are in prison, awaiting trial, with Jim as the star witness in the case against Garett.

He was smart enough to hide the evidence showing how Larkin ran the show.

I thought I’d lost my brother a long time ago, but in that motel room, when he heard Garett say he was going to kill me, saw just how much danger I was in, he came back to me.

I haven’t seen him since that day. He’s held in an undisclosed location and under constant supervision, for fear of either him running away or someone ending his life.

Ace says he’s safe, as much as a man in his position can be, and that’s all I need to know, because I’m not ready to see Jim.

Too much went down for me to be able to get over it so quickly and without any real consequences for Jim.

But I did talk to him over the phone a few times. I don’t know if he’s truly aware of what he did, or if he’ll ever fully realize how terrible it was. But, as I sat in the office at the police station, holding a phone to my ear, I could hear the regret Jim felt in regard to what he did to me.

Gorskiy’s in the wind. He ran the moment Larkin had cuffs slapped on his wrists, but Ace is positive he won’t be coming after me.

After all, I was never his prime target. At some point, he wanted me to be left alone, since I had started seeing Ace and he’s a smart man. He knew that if he came in spitting distance of me—or anyone, in fact—that it would’ve bought him a one-way ticket to the state penitentiary. But my brother persisted, since I was his only way to pay for what he did.

I also had to go in what felt like a million times, to tell my part in the story.

They say they want to have all their ducks in a row to make sure Larkin will never see the light of day again.

By ‘they,’ I mean a new DA who flew in just for this case, since no one even had an inkling that the last one was so corrupt he was running a human trafficking ring right out of his office at the courthouse.

I haven’t heard a word from my parents. Nor my sister. And I prefer it that way. I can see now I don’t need them or their toxicity.