Six months later
“A FEDERAL COURT HAS FOUND Dominic Casso not guilty of all pending charges. Should we start calling him Teflon Dom?” a news anchor asked his co-host.
“I don’t know how he did it. I really, truly don’t,” Eden whispered from beside me on the couch with her gaze glued to the TV.
“He successfully pinned everything on Vin and Angelo, who didn’t exactly have a chance to refute it.”
“I’m not sad about it. I don’t know what that says about me as a person, but I’m not sad at all.”
I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You don’t need to be sad. Angelo was a creepy fuck.”
We’d found more and more evidence of that once we’d gone back to New York and cleaned out Eden’s apartment. That was, after the Feds had let us in. Thankfully, we knew people who knew people.
Cameras had been installed in every room, including the bathroom, as well as in her office at the spa.
The head of one of the crime families who was supposedly engaged in the so-called “power struggle” that had been happening to take control of the Casso empire had come forward. He confessed to Dom that it had all been orchestrated by Vincent with Angelo’s help. Dom had cleaned house, identifying more associates and soldiers on Vincent’s separate payroll.
I hadn’t pushed too hard for more answers because, quite frankly, I wanted Eden as far away from the entire thing as possible.
Her father agreed, and had given his blessing.
Not only did he not want me dead, he wanted me very much alive for Eden. I didn’t want him dead either. Enough blood had been shed.
“Did you check the mail I left on the counter? There was a big envelope for you.”
She shook her head and pushed off the couch. When she made it to the counter, she lifted it. “This one?”
“Yeah.”
Eden tore it open. “What the hell?”
I stood and strode toward her. “What is it?”
She handed me a piece of paper. “A deed.”
“What?”
I grabbed the envelope, which didn’t appear to have a return address, and dumped out the rest of the contents on the counter. A picture, a brochure, and a set of keys fell out.
It was a house in the French Quarter. The picture didn’t look like much, but the brochure was a whole different story. From the outside, it looked like a simple brick building, but the pictures of the inside showed a completely renovated townhouse. The ten thousand dollar a square foot kind.
The deed was in both our names.
Eden flipped the picture over, and a note was stuck to the back.
An early wedding present. Don’t keep my girl living in sin for too long, Bishop.
—DC
Eden’s eyes practically bulged out of her head. “Holy shit. My dad just gave us a townhouse. In the Quarter. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I thought about the ring I’d bought last week at an antique store on Conti Street and had been carrying everywhere with me since. I shook my head. How did the old man do it?
“Oh my God, we have a house!” Eden yelled and jumped into my arms. “Not yours, not mine. Ours.”
“We sure do.” I stared down at her. “Did you see the note?”
She nodded. “You don’t have to. I mean . . . if you don’t want to. I know that’s not really your thing.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Getting married. We don’t have to if that’s not what you want.”
“Why the hell would you say that?”
Eden shrugged. “I don’t know. I just . . . Delilah told me you said you never wanted to settle down.”
I set her on her feet. “Before you. Every fucking thing changed when I met you, Eden. Stay here. Hold on.”
I headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
Eden came outside as I ran down the stairs to where my bike was parked in the courtyard.
I unlocked the hidden compartment and pulled out the tiny silk bag. It hadn’t cost a fortune, but it was too perfect for her.
I came back up the stairs as she was coming back out the door with her flip-flops on. “I told you I’d be right back.”
“But—”
She stepped inside the apartment and I dropped to one knee. “This isn’t how I planned to do this. Actually, I hadn’t yet figured out how I was going to do it. But I don’t ever want you to think that this wasn’t what I wanted. You’ve always been what I wanted, Eden.”
I pulled the ring from the bag and held it up. A pink morganite stone set in an antique platinum band of vines.
“You . . . you bought that?”
“Yeah. I did.”
“You want to marry me?”
“When you’re ready and not a day before.” Her eyes shimmered with tears as I slid the ring on her finger. “If you’ll have me.”
She nodded. “Always.”
I looked up at the ceiling, wondering if somehow Casso had known. Didn’t fucking matter. He’d given his blessing, and Eden was mine.
The End
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