Page 145 of The Fates We Tame

The wrapping is a total hack job because, quite frankly, my left hand is never going to be quite the same again. Brain function, nerve damage… Who knows why I struggle to bring my fingers and thumb together? Physical therapy has helped. But if all I’m left with is an inability to wrap gifts and a preference for clothes without buttons, then I’m doing okay.

It takes Sophia all of two seconds to shake the cut I got for her free of the paper.

“Sparrow,” she says softly as she takes in her name patch. Then she turns it around and her smile grows. “Property of Switch.”

“Check the pocket.”

She does as I say and pulls out a small box. When she opens it, her jaw drops as she sees the wedding ring I put in it. “You got an engagement ring that we used at the wedding. So, this is your wedding ring. Inscribed with Theo and Sophia. The cut is who we are to the world. Switch and his Sparrow. But the ring is who we are to each other. Theo and Sophia.”

I take it from the box and slide it on her finger as she hasn’t put her engagement ring on yet for the day.

“I love you,” she says.

“Good. Because I love you too. Now finish fucking me, because you’re the only thing I really wanted for Christmas.”

EPILOGUE TWO

VEX

“Uncle Vex?”

I look down at Avery, my brother Bates’s little girl. “What’s up, sweet cheeks?”

She climbs up onto the barstool next to me, ignoring the New Year’s Eve party swirling around us.

The clubhouse is full, the rock music is loud, and the single brothers have been put on notice by Niro that if he sees any of them doing anything above PG-grade shit with club girls in front of Avery, he’ll slit their throats.

“What are invest-i-ments?”

I grin. “Investments?”

“Yeah. Those.”

“It’s when you take a hundred bucks and use it to buy into something, like a company. And if the company does well, they give you more than a hundred bucks back.”

Her eyes narrow. “How much more?”

I shrug. “That’s the problem. You don’t know. They might even make a loss. So, they only give you ninety of your hundred bucks back.”

Her mouth opens and little lines form across her nose. “They steal your money?”

“No. It’s like, they used that hundred bucks to make more money and it didn’t quite work, so they can’t give you it all back. Or, sometimes, it works so well, they give you lots of money back. Why you asking?”

“I overheard Uncle Switch tell Uncle Clutch that you are really good at making him money.”

She’s not wrong. Neither is Switch. I’m a goddamn genius. Plus, I write and run a little code to trade foreign currencies off against one another. “That’s fair. I am.”

At this, she grins and shrugs her panda backpack off her shoulders. “Is there a hundred bucks in here?”

We all know what the panda backpack holds. Every time Niro swears around her, he pays her five bucks. At one point she was saving for a dog. Don’t know what the fuck happened to that, but I heard Bates’s old lady, Vi, is allergic.

And Avery never lets anyone look inside her backpack. Bates is worried it’s going to need its own security detail eventually because of how much cash is stuffed into it.

“You want me to count it for you?” I glance around to see where Bates and Vi are and find them dancing together, but Bates’s eyes are on his daughter.

“She okay?” I can’t hear him over the music, but I catch his drift.

I nod. “I got her.”