AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He’d almost reached the weapon when Ronan kicked it farther out of reach. Nick came to stand next to his brothers and they stared down at Juska.
She thought he might plead for his life, or maybe curse them the way the man in the bathroom had cursed her when she’d gotten him with the screw. Instead, laughter, low and maniacal, bubbled up from his throat.
“You want to do this asshole?” Ronan asked Nick.
Nick looked at him. “You know what? I do. Thanks for asking.”
He lifted his weapon and fired into Juska’s head. Alexa didn’t look away.
Declan took a step forward and fired into Juska’s torso twice.
"What the fuck?" Ronan said. “He was already dead.”
Declan shrugged. “We’ve been out of work a long time, and the first floor was empty. Besides, he deserved it.”
Then Nick was rushing toward her, pulling her into his arms. “Are you okay, Lex? Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
Sirens wailed faintly in the distance and Ronan stepped over Juska’s body. “Time to go home.”
Alexa had never wanted anything more.
28
Alexa took a drink of her coffee and closed her eyes, savoring the dark, bitter roast. “Hmmm…”
Everything had been more powerful in the month since her rescue. Laughter was sweeter, food tasted delicious, even sex was better, something she wouldn’t have believed possible when it came to Nick.
She opened her eyes to find him looking at her with a smile. “What?”
He grinned. “Keep moaning like that and I’ll have to take you back to bed.”
“I wouldn’t complain,” she said. “But not until I eat my waffle. I need sustenance.”
“I wouldn’t dream of letting you go hungry.”
She smiled and looked around The FriendlyToast. The restaurant’s colors seemed especially bright, and the scent of warm dough, syrup, and coffee made it feel like home. They were sitting at the exact table where she and Nick had gone to breakfast that first day, after he’d picked her up off the icy pavement in Copley Square, and she couldn’t help feeling that it was fate, that everything had come full circle.
They’d gotten out of the apartment building before the police arrived. Alexa’s parents had been waiting with Julia and Elise at the house, all of them welcoming her with open arms.
Her parents had asked surprisingly few questions about the Murphys in the weeks since her rescue. She wasn’t foolish enough to think it would last forever, but for now they seemed happy that she was alive and safe, grateful to Nick and his brothers for getting her out alive.
She wanted to believe she would have saved herself, that she would have escaped the apartment even without Nick and his brothers, but who was to say? In the end, it didn’t really matter.
She was alive, and for the first time in a long time, it felt like a promise.
Nick reached for her arm, his fingers stroking theskin around the healed wound on her forearm. “How’s this feeling?”
“Not bad,” she said. It was another scar, but this time, she wasn’t embarrassed. She was learning to see her scars as proof of her strength.
It wasn’t the only thing that looked different since her kidnapping. She’d thought a lot about Frederick Walker, still a free man, having never paid a price for all that he’d done.
But more and more, his existence seemed divorced from her own. He and Leland belonged to another chapter in her life, one that was behind her. She hoped they would someday be held accountable for what they’d done — to her and to Samantha and to everyone else they’d hurt — but it didn’t seem as important as it once had. She was learning to appreciate all the good things in her life, and she was surprised to find that sometimes, putting the past behind her was really as simple as letting it go.
The waiter appeared at their table and set down their breakfast.
“Here we are.” He smiled at Alexa. “Enjoy.”
