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EPILOGUE

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

~ Stephen King

Ten Years Later

Saros

Life was a funny thing. It took you in directions even the most well-planned people never saw coming. For example, I was currently sitting in an auditorium, watching my daughter do what I believed was a dance about butterflies. She was five, and I loved her, but she was awful. Half the time she faced the wall, she stepped on the girls’—on both sides of her—feet about four times, and as she was finishing up, she was crying. Like she had to finish the number but would rather have lightning strike her at that very moment.

“I better get back there.” Em patted my leg. “She’s a mess.”

“This entire performance is a disaster.”

“Hush.” He laughed and kissed my cheek. “They’re kids.”

“Thank God Paulo likes sports. I can handle that.” Our son was seven and currently obsessed with baseball.

“You say that now, but wait until the first game. Now let me out.”

He slid by. I slapped his ass as he passed and I stayed where I was. Paulo was to my right, the seat next to where Em was.

“Come here.” I patted the seat and he did.

“This is bad, Dad.”

“I know, I’ll stop and get you ice cream on our way home.”

He sighed and sat in his chair watching the end of this catastrophe. I smiled as I thought about what my life had become.

“Be nice,” Aunt Penelope admonished from behind me. My uncle chuckled. Cosmo, Dafni, and my niece and nephew looked about as happy as Paulo did.

Dafni had been the surrogate for both Paulo and Caroline, our children. I married Em one year after I met him, and we had our reception at The Sky—a place he’d always wanted to go to. We’d waited a while, loving just being together, and then one day he’d said he really wanted a baby.

What Em wanted Em got, and I wanted to be a dad too.

In all the years we’d been together, he’d never once asked what had happened to his parents. I’d killed them, of course. Gave Shyla a lethal dose and let her fade away, better than she’d deserved. Ramsey I’d enjoyed taking apart. He’d died slowly, and I’d gotten creative. No less than he deserved. In the end, they were cremated, their ashes tossed into a porta-potty.

RJ surprised me. He thrived in Greece. He met a woman, got married, and had three kids of his own. He never came back to the States, and he didn’t have a relationship with Em, but he never fucked up either. Not once.

The governor went on to become a state senator and his son, Andre, was the current mayor of Eastbury. They were really great people to have as allies, and on more than one occasion we’d helped each other out.

“Oh, thank goodness. They’re done—can we go?”

“Yeah, bud. Let’s meet Dad and Caroline in the hallway.” I nodded to my family. “We’ll see you at the house; we gotta get ice cream first. I’ll bring you all some.”

“Okay,” Uncle Andrew said, and they filed out.

I grabbed the flowers, and Paulo and I followed the flood of parents wanting to give their untalented stars flowers.

“Daddy!” Caroline ran out, tears streaming down her face yet also wearing a smile.

“How’s my little dancer. You were amazing.”

“I forgot everything.”

“Did you? I hardly noticed.” I handed her the daisies, and all sadness was gone.

“Flowers!” She hugged them, likely crushing the life out of them.

Em walked over to us, ruffled Paulo’s hair. “Ice cream?”

“Yeah!” Caroline and Paulo shouted.

With Caroline in my arms, Em beside me holding Paulo’s hand, we walked out of the auditorium to the car.

I was still a killer, still the most powerful man in Eastbury. But more importantly, I was the prince Em wished for, and I’d make sure he knew every day he was the wish I’d never known I needed.

THE END