Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 53693 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 268(@200wpm)___ 215(@250wpm)___ 179(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53693 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 268(@200wpm)___ 215(@250wpm)___ 179(@300wpm)
She walks over to the nightstand and grabs her tablet. She swipes around furiously for a moment before handing it to me. When I look at the screen, I see dozens of encoded files. I look at her curiously.
“I’ve been building a case against my father since the day I found out I was pregnant again,” she tells me. “I hacked into his computers and compiled all the evidence we need to take him down.”
I stare at the screen, shocked. Once again, my wife has proven her strength and brilliance. We’ve both been working to protect our family, and she’s made sure that Dimitri will go to prison for a long, long time.
I nodded dumbly and look at her. “I’ll turn him in to the feds. I’ll testify in order to get us immunity and protection. It’s time for this to end.”
She embraces me, her love for me surging. In the four years we’ve been together, we’ve become the perfect team. But the threat was always there, the chance that someone could take away our happiness.
I’ve worked tirelessly to protect her, never realizing she’s been working behind the scenes to protect me. To protect us. I’ve never found her sexier.
I kiss her softly, running my tongue across her bottom lip. Her lips are already open for me, desperate for my tongue to enter her mouth. I breathe in her scent, consumed with my love for her.
“We’ll have to be quiet,” she whispers, letting out a gasp of pleasure. “I don’t want to wake up the kids.”
EPILOGUE
TEN YEARS LATER
Kat
I kick off my heels happily, my feet tired and aching from the long wedding. I’m grateful Johnny decided to leave the Bratva, because I don’t think I could handle community weddings like this regularly. He once told me that he attended ten Bratva weddings in a single month. I could never.
“It was a nice event,” Johnny whispers in my ear, pulling me against him.
He’s already hard, ready to take me now, but we have to relieve the babysitter. He’ll need to keep it in his pants for a few more minutes. He whispers that he’ll be upstairs waiting for me, and I send him off, walking into the living room where the teenage girl is watching a movie.
It’s late, and my kids have long gone to bed. Or, at least, they better have or I’m not paying this girl her full fee.
“Hi, Geri,” I call out to her, and she looks up at me, startled. She must not have heard us come in.
“Hi, Mrs. S,” she says, standing up quickly and turning off the TV. “How was the wedding?”
“It was a lot of fun,” I tell her honestly. “But I’m glad to be home. Were the girls okay for you?”
She looks a little embarrassed before telling me that Aubrey and Autumn had a huge meltdown because Lily was being too bossy. That was typical for them.
“Did they all go to bed okay?” I ask.
She nods happily, proud of herself for wrangling three rambunctious little girls into their PJs and into bed. I’m proud of her too. Getting the girls to bed each night is no easy task. I pull out my wallet and slide her a few crisp twenties.
She smiles and thanks me, having enough tact not to count the money until she walks out of the living room.
Geri’s a good girl, a neighborhood teenager who’s running her own babysitting business. I know for a fact that we pay her the most of any of our neighbors, but our girls are a lot of work. The twins are constantly fighting, and Lily’s inching ever so slightly to her preteen phase. Some days I miss my little babies and long for the moments when I could calm them with a lullaby.
When Geri’s gone, I lock the front door and turn on the alarm. Johnny comes back down, looking much more casual. I eye him suspiciously.
“What?” he asks, defensive. “I didn’t want to mortify the babysitter with the massive boner I had for you.”
I smile and fall into his arms, kissing him sweetly. The wine from the night is going to my head, and it doesn’t take much to convince me to rip my dress off and let him inside of me.
When we’re sated, we lay on the couch and start a movie. It’s a rare miracle to have the TV to ourselves these days, and we can never watch anything rated higher than PG when the girls are awake. Our lives have become a quiet, suburban dream.
He holds me in his arms as he flicks through the streaming options. We have to find the perfect movie to watch in this rare, child-free moment. Nothing gang-related or too violent, though. We’ve had enough of that for one lifetime.
I think of my father, who’s been in federal prison for the last four years. It was a long battle to get him there. We had to upend our entire lives and go into hiding for a period while Johnny worked with the FBI. But we both agreed it was time to get out of New York and find somewhere safer for our family.