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It isn’t until hands grab my shoulders and an arm wraps around my waist to lift me that I realize I’m screaming, a war cry tearing from my lips.

“Everest,” Brix’s deep voice grumbles near my ear. “Stop, baby. She’s dead. Stop,” he says as I struggle against his hold, determined to continue to choke the life out of Ada Sidorova.

Madd appears in front of me, blocking my view of my mother still lying on the floor. She isn’t moving, isn’t tossing out threats or insults.

Not climbing to her feet.

Maddox’s face resembles a Jackson Pollock painting with the blood smattering his face and neck, but all I see are his pretty green eyes, the look of anger and concern as he takes my face in both hands.

“It’s over, baby. Stop,” he says in an uncharacteristically calm voice.

My breathing saws in and out of my lungs, my heartbeat is loud in my ears, and I’m shaking. No idea whether the trembling is from adrenaline, rage, or fear. Maybe a combination of all three.

It’s over.

It’s over?

Pulling from Madd’s hands, I turn and look around the room. Kato is talking to a guard with blood trailing down one side of his face. Mikhail and Eriks are both on the ground unmoving. Eriks’face resembles roadkill, as though Maddox literally smashed his face in with his fists.

Mikhail has a bloody hole in the center of his forehead and is lying in a puddle of blood that continues to grow by the second.

And my father, Dima Sidorov, is crumpled on the floor, his head tilted back revealing the open gash. Pretty sure if I look closely enough I’ll see his spine with how deeply someone cut into his throat.

It’s over.

We’re safe. We’re alive.

My parents will never again interfere with our lives.

Our nightmare is finally over. For the first time in four fucking years I feel as though I can take a full breath, and truly restart my life and build a future with the three men who own every inch of me, heart, body, and soul.

Chapter 48

Everest

Six months later

“You realize if we go through with this, life as we know it is over,” I remind my husbands for the tenth time…today.

This has been the same conversation we’ve had for the past few weeks…

Ever since we contacted a lawyer about adopting a child or ten.

There may come a day when my body might decide it can handle a pregnancy, and we sure as hell haven’t taken a single precaution to prevent it.

But, according to all three men, even if we adopt ten kids then I give birth to ten more, we’ll make sure all twenty of them feel equally loved and cherished.

Obviously, I have no intention nor desire to get knocked up ten damn times. That’s way too much. I mean, not too many kids, just too many pregnancies.

I guess ten to twenty kids is a little outrageous, too, but at no point have the four of us considered ourselves a cookie cutter family. Nothing about our lives together is considered normal to a lot of society, and we couldn’t give a single flying fudge brownie what anyone else thinks.

That’s another thing – I’m doing my best to break the habit of cussing. And not just me, either. Every single day, I have to remind the guys to watch their language at least a dozen times. I figure it’s better to start now than wait until we have a little one walking around mimicking us.

“How do you figure?” Maddox asks as he looks through the paperwork our lawyer sent over.

“Well, no more fuck…I mean, no more making love anywhere we want, when we want. I don’t want to emotionally scar our kids.”

He makes a dismissive sound and smirks. “The locks work on our room.”