Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 32452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 162(@200wpm)___ 130(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 162(@200wpm)___ 130(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
He gritted his teeth and laughed. “Someone will come and they will do to you what you’ve done to me.”
“No, they won’t,” I said. “Because I will always be ready.”
And with that, I fired my gun, a single shot to the forehead, and Vincenzo Serra, the man who ordered my sister’s kidnapping, the destruction of my family, fell to the ground.
I didn’t expect peace.
I didn’t expect anything.
I had no plans for some great epiphany.
Death was never the answer. Yet, as I stared down at the man who had filled my every waking moment with a need to kill and was dead, I felt a weight was lifted.
The vow I made twelve years ago was finally fulfilled, and he was gone. My sister and parents, my dogs were still gone, but the man that had done it was now gone as well.
My cell phone pinged, and with it, the text from my wife.
The safe house was secured and my wife was waiting for me.
Epilogue
Odin
Ten Years Later
“Are you happy?” I ask, glancing down at the top of my wife’s head. She’s looking out into the distance at our three beautiful children, currently playing in the lake. Reese, our eldest son, is pretending to be a crocodile, while Milly and Thomas are running away, screaming in fear.
Alba tilted her head back to look at me, and offered me a smile. “Yes, I am happy. Are you?”
She always asked me the same question. It’s a habit we’ve gotten into the last ten years. The life I once promised her was not the life I could give her. We couldn’t go to my rebuilt home, where my parents once lived. There was no future there. No way of finding a future without the past coming back to haunt us.
The attack on the safe house and my realization in finally dealing with the Serra Mafia problem, helped me understand what I needed to do. To eradicate the problem, I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t walk away. There would always be people who were determined to own others, to control them, to hurt them.
I gave Alba a choice: she could go, live her life, and finally have her freedom. I wouldn’t come looking for her. I wouldn’t allow anyone to ever come for her. I would keep her safe, but she would never know I was there. Or, she could stay by my side until the end.
Alba shocked me, because when I gave her that ultimatum, she walked right up to me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and that sweet smile I’d come to love was shining up at me.
“I’ll stick with you.”
Since then, she had given birth to three beautiful children, and I had worked to make life in the city as clean as possible. There was always a Mafia, always a Bratva, an MC, someone who wanted to ruin another person’s life, but I always stopped it.
At least I had Alba and my family.
After losing a family once before, I knew how precious it was to hold onto them, and I knew that no matter what, I was never going to let them go.
Alba reached over and placed my hand on her stomach, and in that moment, I knew she was pregnant with our fourth child.
The End