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EPILOGUE
Fall In Line
GRIM - TEN YEARS LATER
“That’s where you end it? Where’s the rest?” Pen asks me as she places my diary on the coffee table and watches me apply the last touches to my makeup. I can’t believe this day has finally come, and I’m able to share it with the most important people in my life without fear of some bastard gangster trying to ruin it for us.
“Rest! Rest!” Iris repeats, clambering up on Pen’s lap as they both wait for me to respond.
My best friend and my daughter have always had an incredible bond, which was strengthened when I had to leave Iris in the care of Pen and her partners for a couple of weeks four months ago. Beast, Ford and his friend Camden accompanied me to a remote castle in Scotland with every intention of rescuing Christy from her kidnappers. Well, I say rescue… Because as it turned out, my little sister didn’t need rescuing. She’s a Davidson after all.
She’s a bad bitch just like all of the women in this room.
My gaze falls to Iris as she babbles happily on Pen’s lap. At the time, I hated leaving her, but I also knew that she was in safe hands. It didn’t do her any harm, she’s the happiest, most well-rounded almost two year old in the world and that has as much to do with her extended family as it does me and Beast.
“Well?” Pen insists.
“I guess I didn’t feel the need to write down my feelings, not when I had Beast to share them with,” I say with a shrug, brushing on a layer of blush to my cheeks. “To be honest things got kind of insane for a few years, and I didn’t really have time to keep it up. Besides, a lot of the stuff that happened after that point in my life wasn’t really my story, not in quite the same way anyway.”
“But the King?” Pen asks, planting a kiss on the top of Iris’s head. “You never did tell me exactly what happened to him…”
“Don’t worry, he got his comeuppance,” Asia says, stepping out of the bathroom in her fitted, black Versace dress, long purple hair and glammed up to the hilt. She looks incredible, and I’m proud to call her family. A queen in her own right, especially given the strength and courage she showed to keep her own family safe, including my brother, Ford. “We made sure of it.”
Pen frowns. “We?”
“Yes. Me, Camden, Ford, Sonny, Eastern, the Freed brothers. Grim too and my old principal of Oceanside Academy, the reform school where I met my guys. Malakai too actually. Is he here by the way?” Asia asks.
“Couldn’t make it. Connie is heavily pregnant and he didn’t want to make her travel all this way when she’s so close to giving birth.”
“Fair enough. I’m glad they’re happy,” Asia says.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Wow, okay. I think as soon as Grim and Beast are back from Paris, we need another girl’s weekend because I want your whole story, Asia. It sounds like it’s a good one.”
“Not quite the fairy tale like Grim’s,” Asia says, winking at me.
“Oh I don’t know. It seems like we’ve all managed to get our own happily ever after,” Pen says as Iris clambers off her lap and leaps into Asia’s arms.
“I guess you’re right,” Asia agrees, hauling Iris onto her hip and kissing her on the nose.
“You know I sawthatcoming too,” Christy calls out from the bathroom where she’s putting on some lip gloss.
“What?” Pen, Asia and I all ask simultaneously.
“Asia’s happy ever after. Though at the time I had zero idea who you or Ford were, given Kate was still in herI’m going to keep my siblings a secretphase.”
“I did it to—”
“Keep us safe,” Christy finishes for me with an indulgent smile. “I know. We know, and we love you for it,” she says, stepping out of the bathroom in her pale green Vivienne Westwood dress.
Apart from a touch of mascara she’s not wearing any other makeup, and her birthmark is proudly on display. She stopped covering it up when her men, Jakub, Leon and Konrad, otherwise known as The Masks, said they loved her all the more for it. They might’ve had a rocky start, and some days I still have the urge to shoot them in the nuts for what they put her through in the beginning of their relationship, but they’ve come a long way, and they make her happy so I have to respect that.
“You know I’m still pissed at you for not warning me that the pipe was going to burst at the club last week,” Pen says, changing the subject. “You could’ve saved me thousands of pounds in repairs. The place is still a bloody wreck. I’m not sure when I’m going to get it up and running again.”
“Sorry about that, I don’t get to choose what I see, and burst pipes aren’t usually something the universe deems important enough to show me.”
“Not unless we’re talking aboutthestud-muffin’s burst pipe, right?” Asia snorts, and I glare at her whilst Pen and Christy crack up with laughter.
