Chapter 15 - EVERYTHING WE ALMOST LOST
She thumbed the switch.
Nothing happened.
Her face twisted in confusion. She pressed again. Again.
Her daughter pulled a second device from her pocket and dropped it to crush beneath her heel.
“I disconnected the charges while you were playing queen,” she said. “You will kill no one today.”
Federal agents burst through every entrance. Weapons raised. Shouting commands. The remaining guards dropped their rifles. The Council members fell to their knees, hands high.
The matriarch stood alone. Defeated. Surrounded. She looked at me, eyes burning with venom.
“You may have won today,” she spat. “But families like mine never truly fall. We wait. We return. And one day… Noah will learn what blood truly means.”
“Let him learn love instead,” I said. “Something you never understood.”
They led her away in cuffs. She did not look back.
I stood up, brushed splinters from my coat, and reached down. Noah stared up at me, eyes huge and unblinking. I lifted him into my arms and held him so tight he squirmed.
“It’s over,” I whispered into his hair. “They are gone. We are safe.”
He wrapped both arms around my neck and buried his face in my shoulder. “Can we really go home now?”
“Yes, baby. Home. And never again will anyone separate us.”
Investigator Marquez found us there. Breathing hard, checking the room. She saw the ledgers. Saw the Council in custody. Saw the matriarch being led out.
“We have it all,” she said. “Every name. Every crime. Every account. This will never happen again.”
I looked at the woman who had risked everything to help us. She stood alone by the great fireplace, watching the arrests.
“Will you be safe?” I asked her.
May you like
She smiled sadly. “I have evidence too. Testimony. Immunity. And a new name. A new life. I will be fine. Go, Adrian. Take your son. Live the life Claire died to give you.”
I nodded. “Thank you. For everything.”
