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I’m downstairs in Howard Malloy’s office, using his big desk to put the finishing touches on the inventory of the document cache, when Gabriel and Claudia walk in. I jerk from Claudia’s seat, but she waves me back down and has Gabriel ease her into the sofa under the window. She leans against his shoulder, breathing hard.
“I thought I might come down and do some work,” she offers a weak smile. “Now that I’m here, all I want to do is go to sleep.”
“There’s not much work left to do.” I point to the chair in the corner, where Eli is slumped, sound asleep. “He spent all night working on the shipping timetables. And I’ve made a complete inventory of every scroll, including the title if I know it, the language, length, and the state of preservation. Some of them I can’t name without a Latin or Greek scholar, and there are some Egyptian texts that are a complete mystery. But now we at least know what we have.”
Claudia’s eyes are ringed with red. Her eyelashes flutter as I read down the list. It’s a treasure trove of forgotten texts, so much lost wisdom just waiting to be uncovered.
“Thank you for doing this. You’re amazing, George. You’ll be an incredible asset to the Triumvirate—”
“See, here’s the thing.” I pull a skinny white envelope from my pocket and set it on the desk. Claudia glares at it like it might explode.
“What’s that?”
“My acceptance letter from Blackfriars University.”
I expect the words to taste like soot, to feel like a betrayal of my friend. But they feel good. They feel perfect.
Gabriel was right. The four of them were in this one hundred percent. There is no going back from the August family, not while they have to clean up Emerald Beach. They’re happy to throw their lot in with their beautiful, brilliant crime boss. She gives them everything they never knew they needed – Noah has an outlet for his rage, Eli has the resources and freedom he needs to make a difference in the world, and Gabe… Gabe has someone who loves him unconditionally.
But even though I love them all as my family, this isn’t the life I’m meant to have.
It all became clear to me when I was lying on the patio, hands clamped on the grenade’s trigger. I don’t want to take back anything that happened over the past year. I don’t regret passing my fork under the bathroom stall to help another lonely soul. I’ll never forget what Claws did for me that night in the arena. The sweet sound of Alec LeMarque’s screams will always be with me when I need strength.
But I can’t be part of rebuilding her savage empire.
I’m done.
Claudia leans forward, those ice eyes boring into me. She lurches out of her chair and barrels toward me. For a flicker of a moment, I’m back in seventh grade and Mackenzie Malloy is bearing down on me with some fresh cruelty. I flinch away from her. But she wraps her arms around me and hugs me fiercely.
“You’re going to be amazing, George Fisher,” Claudia whispers in my ear.
“And you’re already amazing, Imperator.”
“Don’t you forget it.” She pats my arm. “Now come help me. I saw Noah heading for the kitchen.”
Claudia
Three years later
“I’d like to propose a toast,” Livvie holds her glass of pink champagne high. Her nails tap the stem – pink sparkles that catch the light. “To us. The most badass bitches in Emerald Beach. And to Claudia, for bringing us together.”
“And to Livvie, for your well-placed aim of a cactus.” I lift my own glass. “And to Cali, for not skewering me with your blade when you had the chance.”
“What is this shit?” Cali glares at her drink like it’s about to launch itself from the glass and choke her to death. “Can’t we drink Cutty Sark like normal gangsters?”
“We’re anything but normal,” Livvie shoots back. “Try it. It’s delicious. It’s the first batch from my new winery.”
Ever since she cracked open Nero’s books and saw how much the halt on the skin trade hurt his bottom line, Livvie has been proving herself a savvy businesswoman. She’s reinvented the Lucian brand as a top-tier wine merchant, buying up failing wineries and distilleries across California and turning them around. She’s practically legitimate and has even been profiled in Harper’s Bazaar. Just don’t look too closely at her acquisition methods or the overseas markets where she makes her biggest profits, courtesy of my contacts.
Cali, in contrast, has doubled down on what Dio does best – killing people as brutally and efficiently as possible. She’s rebuilt and expanded Constantine’s training school, luring the top martial artists to the city with impossible salaries to train her soldiers. She’s now recruiting assassins from all over the world and taking contracts from Italian crime families and foreign governments. She just got back from a trip to Monaco to dispose of a troublesome prince – she’s quite proud of that one. She even brought the prince’s head back on ice to mount above her fireplace.
But Cali isn’t all brutality and bloodlust. She’s full of surprises. When Cleo gave birth to her baby – a son – Cali and I spent a delightful three days together torturing her before we finally killed her. Call it female bonding, Tartarus Oaks style. We were going to put the boy up for adoption, but then Cali announced she was keeping him, and I’m not going to argue with her. That girl is terrifying. She’s named him Gaius, and she’s counting the days until he’s old enough to grip a knife. Bloodthirsty assassins make the best moms.
As for me, I’ve been strengthening our alliances in foreign markets and digging up the secrets we use as currency to smooth the path of our business endeavors. I’ve learned that a smile and a toss of golden hair can get me quite far with grizzled old crime lords and corrupt officials. I have Mackenzie Malloy to thank for that little life lesson.
I’ve also been putting plans in place to donate the documents to the city. We’re working out the details of a state-of-the-art museum to house them, designed by my girl Yara, of course. They’ll be a gift from three prominent citizens to a city we love.
We make quite a team – Cali, Livvie, and me.
