That was fine. His hips powered into her one last time as he finally gave in with a strangled shout. “Moi, je t’aime.”
They lay together after that. Him glowing with knowing. Her not saying anything at all. Especially not “I love you back.”
But that was alright. She didn’t have to agree in French or English. He hadn’t earned it yet. Besides, they had time. And he could be patient.
They spent the rest of August at the bayou house, allowing themselves to enjoy each other for the first time without duplicity or guilt. He told her why he no longer had neighbors, how he’d been buying their properties one by one over the years with plans to transform this unincorporated piece of swamp into a waterfront neighborhood called Bayou Falls.
He also answered all the questions she’d stored up over the years. Mostly about his behavior.
He told her about the anonymous hit that had brought them to the bayou house, which Jam had left fully stocked. They were basically lying low in a place Hades trusted, since there were only two ways into this area. By boat or down a single long and twisty road.
Either way, a potential hitman would be sighted by one of the Reapers he had posted in various houses along their bayou. Sighted and taken out before the would-be killer reached them.
Almost all of the other questions about his treatment of her fell within the same range of terrible excuses, though: denial, stubbornness, and more denial.
“I think I understand,” she said at one point. “I didn’t want to want you either. Still being attracted to you was the hardest part of getting through the first three years.”
He noticed that she still talked in terms of the deal language. And he tried not to let it bother him or ask his own questions about whether she was still planning on leaving him.
What they had was a strong but fragile thing. One of those Chinese porcelain vases they’d had to swap out of the lobby of his club. They looked real pretty and could hold trees. But let some drunk partygoer knock it over, and bam! Shattered to pieces.
He wasn’t going to knock this over.
That’s what he told himself when he hid her envelope of getaway money at the bottom of his bag. He wasn’t volunteering to give it back to her. But she also wasn’t asking for him to return it. The vase remained upright.
Instead of pressuring her about a future that was already certain in his mind, he assured her things would be different this time when they returned to New Orleans. They talked about getting her an Etsy shop. And to his surprise, she pitched an idea he loved about starting a charitable foundation in his mother’s name.
Suddenly, everything was gentle and loving between them. Somehow, they’d turned the bayou in August into a paradise on earth.
But much like that drunk partygoer, you never see the cause of your vase’s destruction coming until it’s too late.
In this case, it was a text from Vampire one morning after he finally let Persy escape his arms and go take one of her Sisyphean showers.
VAMPIRE: We got a name.
His heart soared when he saw the message. Hades knew immediately that Vengeance had smoked out whoever had the nerve to commission that hit.
A name meant they could go back to New Orleans. Start their new life. Maybe even—
Vampire’s second text message interrupted all that hopeful mental planning.
VAMPIRE: It’s Zeus.
His heart soured as fast as it had soared when he saw the name—heavily coded but easily understood. By Hades, at least.
“You okay?”
Hades looked up from his phone to see Persy, once again draped in a towel and standing in the bathroom door.
Like a dream looped and reset. Right before it turned into a nightmare.
EPILOGUE
STEPHANIE
Four Years Later
“Stephanie, are you out here?” a voice whispered in a dark night fragrant with roses. “It’s me, Amira!”
