EPILOGUE
Evan - 10 days
Oh, good lord, the movies.
Okay. I mean, alright, movies were great and all.
But Luce was extremely adamant about fixing my deplorable 'cinematic education.'
Every conversation seemed to lead to another movie that I would simply have to see.
I had a feeling, and I felt it with a sinking sensation in my stomach, that maybe Luce liked movies so much because he could live through them in a way his real life wouldn't allow him to.
He lived his life in cages. At his father's beck and call, in the woods watching pot grow, locked up in some dealer compound in the city. Then, as he grew and moved on with his life, mostly in a house on a hill all by himself. He barely maintained acquaintances, let alone friends. He didn't have romances. He didn't explore. He didn't have adventures.
So he watched all of that in film.
He could see the world, fight wars, fall in love, have road trips with buddies, go to outer space.
It wasn't that I didn't get it; I did.
It was somewhat how I felt about a good book, how I liked getting lost in the worlds. Though, I admit, I was nowhere near as devoted to novels as he was to movies.
And I had to say, when he lit up talking about some amazing action scene or unexpected plot point and how I had to see it, I was charmed. I also felt like, in seeing the movies he was so passionate about, I got to see different parts of him as well.
That being said, I was not used to spending every night of my life curled up on a couch. Granted, being curled up there with Luce was maybe one of the best feelings in the world. Because we never just watched movies. His arm was always around my shoulders, and sometime in the middle of a movie, his fingers often found their way into my hair, sifting through the strands gently. Many times, my legs would wind up over his lap, and his free hand would stroke up and down them, driving me to distraction until the credits rolled, and I could straddle him and get relief from the need coursing through me.
So, after ten straight nights on my couch or in my bed with some gem of a movie - and a couple ones that had me raising a brow at him - I decided I had had enough.
I was fine with following his preferred interests, knowing that my own interests were, well, making poisons and traveling, neither of which I could do in Navesink Bank, but he was going to have to give in a little too.
"Fuck, doll," he hissed when I walked out of the bedroom. Since we had been hanging out in the house for over a week, I had maybe gotten a bit lazy with the dressing thing. In fact, if I managed to slip into panties and one of his tees, that was a lot. We ended up naked most of the time anyway.
So his reaction to my tight black dress and heels wasn't overly surprising. I had put some time and care into my hair and makeup as well.
I figured getting him out of his comfort zone might take a little persuasion of the sexy nature. Which was something I was completely fine with.
"What's this?" he asked when I handed him an envelope.
"Open it," I demanded as I moved to stand in front of him.
He looked up, brows furrowed slightly. "Movie tickets?"
"I like sharing your movie interest with you, Luce, but I am about to go out of my mind being locked in this house. Normally, I would want to drag you to some salsa club or play or something. So let's call this a fair compromise, yeah?"
He watched me for a long minute, head ducked to the side. "Yeah," he agreed, giving me a nod.
It didn't seem like a big deal to most, but getting Luce out of the house to do anything other than hit the coffeeshop, Barrett's, or the grocery store was a real feat.
This was a small victory for us, and, I thought, a step in the right direction.
Luce - 5 weeks
I knew this day would come eventually.
We knew it would come eventually.
Because, no matter how strong my feelings were becoming for Evan, I was still me. I still needed to do the things I did. I still had a mission in life that didn't involve movie marathons, late night drives with meaningful conversations, and enough sex to make me actually need to remember to hydrate it was so intense.
All those things were fucking amazing.
They were way more than I deserved.
But they weren't, and couldn't, be everything.
For either of us.
This meant that Evan was doing some looking around in Navesink Bank for possible job opportunities, or even educational opportunities. She was keeping an open mind, and trying to find something to do with her life that gave it meaning, that made her happy.
I already had that.
And that was why this day had to happen sooner or later.
I had been ignoring my pager for weeks.
It was time for me to get back to work.
We both knew the day would come, that I wasn't somehow a 'reformed man,' that my missions had to go on.
Could I say that Evan was exactly thrilled about it? No. Of course not. Not because she would see me any differently, not because she had an issue with my killing scumbags. No.
When we talked about it, she told me her only worry was my getting caught.
And there it was again, that tight, swelling, warm feeling in my chest. It was getting stronger as the time went on, insistent and distinct enough for me to no longer be able to do anything but call it what it was.
Love.
I fucking loved her.
I loved her in a way I didn't know was possible, with a depth I didn't think I possessed, with a heart I was sure had shriveled and died in my chest when I had a face buried in a pillow at seven years old.
I was sure any goodness, anything even capable of feeling something as selfless as love was gone.
Apparently, I was wrong.
Evan brought that out of me.
I was pretty sure that nothing I could do, not if I tried for decades, could ever show her exactly how much that meant to me. It was humbling to realize how wrong you were about yourself, that someone else could see things in you that you didn't know existed.
And she loved me back.
Which was an even bigger miracle.
She loved me back, despite my past, despite my darkness, despite what I did for a living.
But this was the first time where I would have to, in essence, test that theory. We had been living in a comfortable little insulated bubble. Sure, she was certainly dragging me out with her more and more, taking me to see movies, music, going out to dinner.
I had been out on the town more in the past five weeks than I had in the past fucking five years.
And I liked it.
But we couldn't live forever in her house.
I had to go back to work.
I ignored a bunch of lesser offenders that had been sent my way over the past month, no one being a big enough scumbag to drag me away from what I had only just found with Evan.
But then I got a page with a 111.
And a 111 was shit that needed to be looked into.
A 111 was a human trafficker. Of children. Into the sex trade.
It didn't matter how much I loved spending time watching movies and bullshitting with Evan about her travels and plans for the future. I couldn't just sit there and pretend I didn't know that information, that I wasn't the only one who could take care of it.
"Three days," I told her as she came out of the bedroom.
Three days was too fucking long, but it was what I needed. I would only be a few minutes away from her technically, but I might as well have been a world away.
"Okay," she said, nodding, sounding completely unaffected. Then she held up something in her hands, some leather satchel with a belt to wear it around the waist.
There was a strange tightening in my gut that I couldn't place. "Doll, what's that?" I asked, hearing the uncertainty in my own voice.
Then she flipped the flap open, and produced a small piece of what seemed like pointed wood, stuck inside some protective plastic cover.
"You said a child sex trafficker, right?" she asked, holding the little arrow thing up to the light, and squinting at it, then replacing it, picking up another.
"Yes," I agreed, glad to be able to talk openly. This was thanks to Barrett dropping by every other or third day to pick up or drop off Diego, depending on his schedule, always doing a sweep when he did. The careful fuck.
"Okay, this one then," she said, holding out the second needle/arrow thing.
"Ev, what is this?" I asked, having a feeling, which was why my lips were tipped up, but wanting confirmation.
"Something that will kill him. Quickly," she added, shrugging. "But painfully."
Did I mention I fucking loved her?
Because I fucking loved her.
And as I tucked the item in my pocket, and pulled her in for a kiss, I knew it. I knew it down to my marrow.
We were going to be just fine.
Evan - 3 months
Three months.
That was how long it took Luce's buddy Barney to make the necessary documents for my mother. Barney was eighty-years-old if he was a day, living in a building that was practically falling down, but with an apartment that had freaking gold fixtures.
The best forger on the east coast, as the rumors went.
Which was why it took so long.
Not because he had too many clients, but because he was an absolute perfectionist. Which was good. When it came to forged government documents, you wanted them as close to the real thing as possible.
But the papers were shipped to my mother the week before.
And the plane had landed five minutes ago.
Me?
I was a nervous wreck.
Why?
I wasn't entirely sure.
This had always been the plan. I wanted her in the States where we could truly reconnect, where we could tell stories, build bonds.
Sure, there was a part of me that had my stomach in knots because, as I had told Luce in bed the night before, I was terrified to share my stories.
All of them involved Alejandro.
I finally stopped thinking of him in familial terms: father, dad, papi.
He was Alejandro.
He was the man who took me around the world, showed me things I would never have seen without him, sure, but he wasn't my father.
In fact, my actual father was some nobody farmer from Brazil who died in a freak bus accident just two months before I was due to arrive.
This was why Gabriela had made the decision to come try to move to the States- for me, for our future. She knew that if she stayed there with me, I would likely end up married young, working as a cleaning lady or on a farm, have a bunch of kids, and continue a cycle of poverty that her own family had been in for generations.
It was enough to send her on a two-year-long mission across Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and finally... Mexico.
All I could think as she told me this over the phone one night was, how cruel was it for her to travel safely with a baby through eight countries, getting nary a scratch, only to be brutalized as soon as she finally, finally reached her destination.
"She knows exactly who you traveled with, Ev," Luce had said, shrugging it off. "She has had months to wrap her head around the situation. She might hate him, she might never forgive him - and she fucking shouldn't - but she isn't going to expect you to alter your stories to make them more palatable for her."
I was trying to put my faith to rest in that.
Time would tell.
"Stop wringing your hands," Luce said, grabbing one of them, curling his fingers in, and giving them a squeeze. "There's nothing to be nervous about. She loves you. You love her. When that happens, everything shakes out how it is supposed to."
I knew he was right.
But my stomach didn't unknot until she walked up, got into the back of the car, and hugged me from behind, letting off a string of Portuguese so fast that none of it made sense.
"That's all you brought?" Luce asked as he pulled away from the curb, and pointed us in the direction of Navesink Bank.
My mother's luggage was all of one large rolling suitcase. Aside from her purse, that was it. Granted, she lived in a small home, and couldn't have had many possessions to begin with, but still.
"I want a fresh start," she said, shrugging it off. "I have one box shipping in with house wears. That's all I need. I will buy new once I start work."
She allowed Luce and me to get her an apartment, only conceding when we informed her that the money wasn't from our pockets (or Alejandro's stash), but from the dickhead child sex trafficker who had almost thirty-thousand in his Bitcoin wallet. It was more than enough to pay for her apartment for a whole year, as well as do a few alterations like painting the walls, updating the appliances, and getting her a bedroom and living room set.
It was humbling to me to be able to give my mother the head start in America that she had wanted for me as well as herself. Twenty-four years late, sure, and after much heartbreak as well, but it happened.
We were together.
We were building our lives.
And all of that, literally every last bit of that, was thanks entirely to Luce.
If he hadn't been looking for - and found - Alejandro, if he hadn't made him disappear, if he didn't make it clear online that he had, I never would have sought him out. Had that not happened, I wouldn't have learned the truth of who Alejandro truly was; I wouldn't have known about (or found) my mother. And, you know, I likely would have been really sick from arsenic poisoning.
The crazy thing to me was that Luce never seemed to grasp the enormity of his presence on the earth. He had spent so much time angry, shameful, vengeful, that he wasn't able to see that through his actions, he changed countless lives. Maybe the men he had killed had hurt their wives or children who would then be free of his torture. All the children who might have been molestation victims never had to have their childhoods taken away from them. Women who had been stalked, raped, beaten, could sleep easier knowing their abusers were long dead.
Sure, he was a vigilante.
He killed people.
But that wasn't all he was or all he did.
It was my mission in life to get him to see the length of his reach, the depth of meaning in his actions.
Maybe I shouldn't have been okay with having a killer for a boyfriend. Maybe that wasn't normal. Maybe it wasn't even sane.
But that being said, I had grown up with someone who took lives for a living; I had seen the aftermath of actions men like the ones Luce killed left in the world. I understood the need for lives to be cut short.
I didn't mind his job.
In fact, some nights while he researched, I was right beside him, reading over his shoulder all the horrible things people have done, and suggesting which poisons might be the best bet for taking them out.
Which, in a way, made me an accomplice to at least three murders so far.
A child sex trafficker, a serial rapist, and a pimp who beat one of his prostitutes so badly that she had to have her jaw wired shut to heal.
I was okay with being a part of ending that.
I knew, though, that someday, it would be over. Someday, Luce was going to need to retire, hand over the reins, find a different way to spend his time.
And that was okay.
We would figure that out together when it came to be.
Luce - 3 years
There was a long pause, Evan watching me with a face I suddenly couldn't read.
"What do you think?" I asked, shifting feet, feeling uncomfortable.
"More importantly," she said, still not giving anything away, "what do you think?"
"These are the kinds of decisions that I believe we are supposed to make together," I tried. "You know, or that's what I've seen in movies anyway."
That softened her face, making her lips tease up. "You know, I mean... it's not like you have to retire from your old job. This sounds more like a part-time gig."
This was true.
See, it started out innocently enough.
I had been at She's Bean Around, having coffee like I did all the time, teasing Jazzy when she was between customers. Then in walked her man- Detective Lloyd.
And Lloyd had been doing big things for himself over the past several years, making a name and reputation for himself.
There were rumors of captain being a title he might be sporting soon, being one of the few members on the force who wasn't in someone's pocket.
"Alright," he said, dropping down across from me at a table, holding a reusable cup between his hands because Jazzy refused to give him paper because 'he's got two hands, and can wash out a damn coffee cup' or something like that.
"Alright," I agreed, brows drawing together, my spine feeling a little stiffer.
"Let's not sit here and pretend we both don't know who you are, and what you do."
"Is this an official meeting, Detective? Shouldn't I have bracelets on?"
He exhaled a breath, leaning back in his chair for a second, looking over at Jazzy who sent him a saucy wink that managed to make his hard face seem just a sight softer. "About what you do, this is me unofficially talking. About this next part, it is official."
"Alright," I said, even more confused. "What's up, Lloyd?"
"I work in a department full of fucking incompetents."
"Not one for mincing words, huh?" I asked with a chuckle, knowing just how right he was about the force.
"We've been known to hire consultants. Shrinks. Profilers. Artists. Fucking psychics..."
I knew where it was going.
And, oddly, my first reaction wasn't shock or fear.
No.
I felt... relief.
"And what would my actual title be there, Lloyd?" I asked with a smirk. "Resident Vigilante?"
He snorted at that, giving me the closest thing to a smile I had ever seen him give anyone other than Jazzy. "Cyber Crimes Expert Consultant should do." There was a short pause. "Consultants make fucking bank," he added, sweetening the pot.
So, that was what brought me to informing Evan of the possibility.
Sure, she was blissfully happy at the job she got at a local independent vitamin store, taking to supplements with the same enthusiasm she took to poisons. Except now, she had herself, her mother, Barrett, and me as her personal guinea pigs to try fixing whatever ailed us with her new vitamin regimens.
And, yes, I made money - sometimes very substantial amounts of money - out of the Bitcoin accounts of scumbags I took out.
It just wasn't steady enough.
I wanted to know there was always going to be something coming to me.
Even if it was on the other side of the law than I usually operated on.
"You think I should consider it," I guessed.
"I think that while it is nice that you came to me with this, that the decision is yours to make. It doesn't matter to me what you do for work. I just want you to be comfortable and happy with your choice."
So that was how I became a Cyber Crimes Expert Consultant.
Evan - 4 years
I turned off the timer on my phone, looking down at the stick in my hand with an odd, strobe-like feeling in my chest and belly. I wasn't sure if it was worry, anticipation, hope, unease, or a mix of all of them. All I knew was it was making me even more nauseated than I already was. Which was saying something.
I don't know what the hell happened.
I had been on the Pill since I was nineteen.
I never missed a day.
It was a freak thing.
But I was staring down at two pink lines.
Luce and I, well, we never really talked about kids. Not about having them anyway.
I was never one of those women with baby fever. I had never felt that "uterus crunch" I heard other women talk about when I saw a cute baby. That just wasn't how I was wired.
I liked babies. I had bathed, fed, rocked, and sang to countless babies all around the world. I had seen some take their first steps, say their first words.
I just never really thought about having one myself.
I guess this was nature's way of saying ready or not, here it comes!
There were three crisp knocks to the door, making me jump hard.
"So, what's it say?"
A snorting laugh escaped me as I looked up in the mirror to find myself smiling.
Because I hadn't told him.
I hadn't even whispered about thinking I might be pregnant.
He had no idea I bought a test.
I just... wanted to know before I got him worrying too.
But, I guess, this was Luce we were talking about.
He knew - and saw - all.
I reached for the door, unlocking it.
A second later, it pushed open, and in he walked.
Four years later, and he was still in a black hoodie with white hood pulls. True, he wasn't weird with me about his scars anymore, but I think it was just habit. In fact, for his last birthday, I had gotten him a gift certificate to a local tattoo parlor where some guy named Hunter, who specialized in covering scars with tattoos, drew me up this huge, intricate, black & gray biomechanical piece.
I wanted him to never see 'slave' when he looked at himself again.
I was nervous giving it to him, but he had actually freaking... lit up.
But he told me the piece needed an alteration.
He wouldn't tell me what it was.
Not until he came home with it on his skin.
He had Hunter add a bright, red, vivid anatomically correct heart in the center. And, if you looked closely enough, you could see "Ev" in one of the valves.
And me, well, I cried like a freaking baby.
But he still was a fan of his hoodies.
Quite frankly, so was I.
"Well?" he asked, looking a little smug, like he was proud of himself.
"How did you know?" I asked, turning the test away from his all-seeing eyes.
"You've been pushing around your food more than eating it. You're pale. Your tits are sore. And, you know, you missed your fucking period, Ev. Kinda hard to not put all that together."
"We never talked about kids," I said, tone careful.
"It was never a factor before," he said, shrugging, reaching for the stick, and turning it over.
"Luce..."
He didn't speak for a long moment.
Then his eyes raised, unreadable, as they often were.
"Maybe we should keep the cabin in the woods," he said, lips twitching slightly. "If this is a girl, and some shithead ever breaks her heart..."
"You can't murder and melt our daughter's boyfriends, Luce," I said with a genuine smile.
"Wanna bet?"
Luce - 22 years
"No."
"Dad..." Louana, who had been called Lou since pretty much day one said in that whining tone only teenaged daughters could truly pull off.
She was the spitting image of her mother and grandmother- long and lean with shiny dark brown hair, tan skin, and delicate bone structure. The only thing she got from me at all was her eyes which were a little darker, a little more deep-set than Ev's.
I can't read them, Evan had complained when Lou was seven and in a particularly bad phase of trying to pass off fibs as truths, just like I can't read yours.
"No," I repeated. "That is a word that works in all languages. Including Brazilian Portuguese. Which you do not need to know since you will not be going to Brazil."
"Everyone else is..."
"Don't. Don't make me do it, Lou," I implored. "I will fucking hate myself if I have to use that goddamn phrase." Her arms crossed over her chest; her eyes went challenging. I was always out of my depths with her, and she knew it. Fuck. "If all your friends jumped off... Jesus Christ. I can't do it. Ev, you're up," I said, raking a hand down my face.
"Lou, you know why we don't go to Brazil," Ev said, dropping down next to me, legs going up over mine.
"Alejandro has been dead for, what, over twenty years now. I don't think we have to worry about his enemies, Mom."
So, we had decided, when she was old enough, to be brutally honest with Lou. She had grown up to be mature, level-headed, rational, able to put things in boxes, and analyze them accordingly. She knew of Alejandro, what he had done to her grandmother, how he had taken Ev and raised her, what he had done to women all over the world, and what he did for work.
"No, neat," Gabriela said softly, but there was steel in her voice too. "Tell your friends that Turks and Caicos is lovely this time of year."
We didn't want to keep Lou locked up and away from the world. Evan wanted her to have the luxury of travel like she had growing up. As such, twice a year, every year since she was two, we had been choosing places to visit. This was done with extreme scrutiny of locations that might have any ties to the late Alejandro Cruz.
Lou had seen some of the most beautiful places of the world, had played with children of all different cultures, had - and this set my teeth on edge just thinking - as she was older, flirted with boys her age across several continents.
But Brazil, while Gabriela's and Evan's homeland, had always been strictly off-limits. Because of Alejandro, sure, but also what I had done while I was there.
Was that maybe fair to Lou?
No.
But it was just how it had to be.
Lou's brow rose, eyes - which I could read since they were just like mine - going curious. "You would pay for Turks and Caicos?" she asked in all her eighteen-year-old excitement.
Ev shot me a look, and I shrugged. "If it means you won't even think about visiting Brazil until you're, I don't know, thirty, then yes, we will happily pay for Turks and Caicos."
This declaration was followed by a squeal that made Diego squawk loudly. "Oh, hush," Lou said, shaking her head at him. "You're just jealous because you can't go. Okay. I'm going to call everyone."
She scrambled off, and Gabriela gave us a nod as she moved back into the kitchen where she was cooking a massive Sunday dinner.
"You know," Ev said, resting her head into my shoulder. "We did pretty well with her. You know, considering I was a poisons expert and you a vigilante killer."
"I'm almost offended she came out so normal," I agreed, making her laugh as my arms went around her.
"We're going to have to tell her about what we did in Brazil eventually," she said, being a voice of reason.
"Sure, but I just bought us another twelve years before we have to open up that can of worms."
"That's true," she agreed, kissing my neck. "You do know she is bringing her boyfriend on this trip, right?"
I didn't.
Because I generally chose not to think too hard about that guy, believing whole-heartedly that not a single guy on earth would ever be worthy of her.
Then again, lowly old me got Ev, so who was I to talk?
"Fuck... I do still have some lye laying around downstairs, right?"
XX
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