Page 128 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

JOLIE

“ P enthouse is clear,” a voice from Rocky’s team announced in our ears.

Kara came on next. “Ground is clear. All Spencer forces have either been taken out or subdued.”

“Roof is clear,” Dom announced.

“Almost,” I clarified in a hushed whisper.

Bennett and his father were on their feet now, circling each other near the railing opposite us. Zach, Noah, and I holstered our weapons, and with Bridgette clinging tightly to Noah’s arm, the four of us walked slowly toward them.

We came to a stop a few feet away, and we watched in solemn silence as Bennett exorcised the last of the demons he harbored for his father—and for Spencer.

James’ face was bruised and bloody, and he limped a bit as he moved, eyeing Bennett now with open loathing. My beast quieted as I registered that Bennett had only one purpling bruise on his jaw, and his powerful body moved with no signs of serious injury.

“You,” James spat, bloody saliva flying from his lips, “are such a disappointment.”

Bennett smiled, and he was so beautiful like that. “I'm everything you’re not, Father, and I’m so fucking proud of that. It’s over.”

James nodded, and he stilled, suddenly standing tall and adjusting his ruined suit in a way that reminded me so much of his son. “I suppose it is. You’ve taken everything from me, Bennett. But before we part, I’d like to return the favor.”

Bennett frowned.

Then his father moved.

With a shocking speed he must’ve pulled from the deepest, most desperate place inside of him, he lunged for Bennett. Bennett braced for the attack, but not before his father reached for the gun strapped to Bennett’s belt, yanking it free and taking aim right at me.

Shouts rang out. Noah shoved Bridgette behind him and dove for me. Zach jumped from my other side, both of them so fucking brave and so fucking infuriating as they tried to take a bullet for me.

I loved them so much, I thought my heart would burst from my chest.

“NO!” Bennett screamed.

His father squeezed the trigger just as Bennett’s big body plowed into him again, knocking his arm to the side. The bullet ricocheted off a concrete pylon and buried itself in the giant Spencer trident, which sparked in anger.

I’d dived on top of my valiant boys, dragging Bridgette down with us. I landed with a thud, sprawled over Zach’s back, and at the sound of one last guttural roar from Bennett, I lifted my head.

Bennett had shoved his father over the side of the railing, taking his gun back in the process.

James had caught himself, clinging to the top rail, his feet dangling as he fought to pull himself back up.

Bennett stood there, breathing hard, holding the reclaimed gun and aiming it one more time at James Spencer’s head.

“Bennett,” he rasped. “I am your father . You wouldn’t.”

“Don’t worry, Father,” Bennett replied, his tone suddenly eerily calm. “Unlike you, I can be a little merciful.”

The terror on James’ face was replaced with a smug grin. “I knew you didn’t have it in you.”

Bennett’s answering smile was cold, but his eyes were almost exuberant—the look of a man who knew this was the last time he’d ever have to listen to his own father belittle him. He pulled the trigger just as the blue light of the giant trident flickered and went dark.

His aim was true, and then James Spencer was gone .

Dead before he fell the sixty-plus stories to the unforgiving City streets below.

A small mercy, indeed.

Bennett turned back to us. His shoulders sagged, years of tension leaking from his body in a striking, visceral way.

I climbed to my feet, and Zach, Noah, and Bennett’s mom followed.

I opened my arms, and Bennett came to me immediately. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, and I held him tight as the others pressed in around us.

“Let’s go home, Angel.”

“The City feels quiet tonight,” Noah said, his voice soft and almost distracted as we both leaned against the railing that bordered our pool deck at the penthouse.

“Mmm,” I replied, snuggling closer to him. “I like it.”

Maybe it was because it was Wednesday, or maybe the extra humidity in the air was keeping more of the City’s residents indoors.

Personally, I thought the quiet was more in the look of it—Spencer Tower was now a blackened husk against the backdrop of the starlit river, and Ferrero Tower was the same, save the low red glow of the serpent affixed to its side.

There were a few lights on at Hargraves, but most of them would go out, too, when the last of Noah’s hired construction crew went home for the evening.

It might have been the first time in seven and a half years that I gazed upon the City’s skyline without feeling the echoes of terror and the burning anger I’d nursed all those years.

Zach joined us, giving me a quick kiss before handing me a glass of champagne. He dropped his elbows onto the railing and pressed into my other side. “Feels weird, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I murmured. “It’s ours now, huh?”

“You bet, Princess. If we want it to be.”

A laugh sounded behind us. I glanced over my shoulder to where Mari sat, lounging in her bikini and gauzy sarong and gripping her champagne glass between delicate fingers as she and Frankie giggled together.

Frankie’s pool party attire was his usual—ripped jeans, scuffed Converse, and a white tank top with arm holes cut so big, I could make out almost every detail of the serpent tattoo that wound its way up his torso.

Dom and Laura had commandeered one of the outdoor couches, while Julie and Kara occupied the other one. Max was actually in the pool, sprawled lazily on an inner tube, his tiny swim trunks hiding nothing and his keen gaze rarely leaving Mari and Frankie.

Rocky manned the grill, and Martinez was propped on a pool lounger nearby.

Rocky and Dom had schlepped him all the way to Knight Tower earlier this evening so that we could all see with our own eyes that he was alive and well.

Bennett may or may not have silently acquiesced to his spending the night in our guest wing with Bridgette, who sat daintily on the end of Martinez’s lounger, fawning over him.

For his part, Martinez looked much more like a cat who’d gotten the cream than a man who’d been shot in the stomach forty-eight hours ago.

Zach chuckled as I turned back to gaze out at my City. “You think we should expect to be invited to more of these impromptu barbecues at our own pool?”

“Yes,” I replied, feeling the wide smile creep across my face. “It feels… right.”

Noah reached for my hand. “We can have these people at our pool every day if it makes you smile like that, sweetheart.”

“Well, not every day, Noah,” I replied, squeezing his hand. “And they do need to stop showing up out of nowhere. Zach had only barely cleaned up the mess he’d made between my thighs when my parents waltzed into the living room.”

Zach shot me an indignant look. “Excuse you, that was not a mess . That was my love for you.”

I snorted, but before I could retort, a big, possessive hand wrapped around my neck.

Bennett turned my head so that he could steal a searing kiss over my shoulder, and I whimpered against his lips. My other boyfriends groaned at the sound, then Bennett released me, pressing his big hard body up against my back.

“Are you happy, Angel?” he rumbled in my ear.

“I am, Bennett.” I sighed contentedly. “My favorite place in the entire world is being pressed in between the three of you, after all.”

They all groaned again. Bennett leaned down to whisper in my ear, “ Don’t talk like that unless you want us to haul you back to bed. I’ll do it in front of our family—I don’t give a fuck.”

Happy tingles raced through my body at Bennett’s declaration that all of these people were our family , then I had to smother the other tingles that hit me between my legs at the thought of going back to bed with them—which was where we’d spent most of the day today.

We’d needed to be together after the events of last night, and my boys had loved me hard until I was wrung out and deliciously sore.

Noah gave me a knowing grin before he turned back to the City’s skyline. “I can’t believe that after all of this, we have to go back to school tomorrow. Like nothing’s changed.”

But of course, everything had changed.

What I’d set out to do the day I’d finally pulled myself out of Max’s bed and vowed to end the Families—that was finished.

But instead of leaving the City in burning ruins like I’d intended, I’d simply cut off its gangrenous limbs.

The heart of it remained intact, and now I had something I could make… great.

And I’d do it with my team, my family, and the loves of my life at my side every step of the way.

I could only hope that it would someday look like my mom and dad might have wanted when they envisioned a City where the Families could actually do good .

“I am looking forward to being a normal college student for a while,” I said to the boys, and they all grunted in agreement. “Though, now that I don’t have any ex-best friends to dupe or evil, murderous oligarchs to destroy, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with myself.”

Noah shot me a dark look full of promises—the reminder of my behavior last semester probably earning me some punishment later, and I shivered at the thought. Then his face softened as he said, “You’re going to heal, sweetheart.”

“We all will,” Zach added.

“Exactly,” Bennett finished. “Together.”

Together .