EPILOGUE
Kennedy - 1 day
I didn't know he came home until I woke up the next morning with his warm body curled against mine, his face in my neck, and, well, his hand at my boob. Like usual.
And there were a long couple of minutes that I could just be still with him, enjoy having him nearby, take comfort in his strength.
Then I remembered we had some things to discuss.
Namely, what the big secret was that everyone else seemed to be in on except me.
I wasn't naive; everyone had secrets. Everyone was entitled to keep some things close to their chests. That being said, if literally everyone around me knew something, it didn't sit right with me that I didn't.
"Nope," I said when I felt his thumb move out to start working my nipple into a hardened point.
"Nope?" he asked, sounding a mix of amused and confused.
"We need to talk," I declared, rolling to my mother side to face him, almost reconsidering my stance on the talk-then-maybe-sex thing at seeing his cock already hard and straining and promising fulfillment to the need growing in my belly.
I wouldn't be distracted by his dick, damnit!
So long as I looked away from it, that is.
"Those are never good fucking words," he said, but his lips were quirked up, his eyes expectant.
'Talks' didn't exactly fill Pagan with dread. I had a feeling this was likely because literally nothing in the world seemed to manage to bring about that reaction in him.
"What does everyone else know that I don't know?"
His brows moved closer together as he folded up to a sitting position. "What everyone else knows that you don't know," he repeated.
"Yesterday at work, Benny and I were invaded by the girls club."
"What? And you're not a fucking black belt in karate yet? They're fucking slipping."
I smiled at that because it was genuinely funny. "It's Krav Maga and LINE, and I am apparently being dragged up to Hailstorm to learn it."
"Hold on," he said, closing his eyes. "Just let me picture you throwing down with one of the girls for a second."
He was really making it hard to be stern with him, damnit.
"Why did Ethan's name make everyone clam up?"
There. I said it. It was out there.
Pagan's eyes opened slowly, his smile slipping, his entire face losing its usual carefree amusement. No, in fact, he looked deadly serious right then. It was in the tightness in his jaw, the depth in his eyes.
When he exhaled hard and sat back against the headboard, his wide palm moving down his scruffy face, I felt something inside my belly harden, like I was internally preparing myself for some really bad news.
Rightfully so as it turned out.
"Ethan Criss is dead, Kennedy," he said, cutting right to the chase as was his nature.
I should have been shocked.
That was the normal, human response to that kind of news.
What did it say about me then that all I felt was... relief?
Whether I wanted to admit it or not, his name had been a dark cloud over my head since the incident at my salon. Even after knowing the building was mine free and clear, that he couldn't just drop in and ruin my life by raising the rent or telling me to get out once my lease was up. There was still a worry that maybe, at any point in time, he might find me alone somewhere without cameras and finish what he started, even after a beating and threat from Pagan.
Knowing there wasn't even a possibility of that anymore, yeah, I thought there was an understandable amount of relief felt.
It was almost an embarrassingly long minute before the true weight of what he was saying fell down on my shoulders.
Because Pagan had come back from seeing Ethan with busted hands and knuckles.
So if Ethan was dead, then it seemed to go without saying that Pagan had killed him.
Killed him.
It was maybe the first time I realized as well that it was more than likely that most of the people I had been mostly living with inside the compound were killers as well.
"Oh, God," I said, every inch of me seemingly frozen as I sat there, trying to absorb that information, trying to reconcile it against the kind of people I knew those men to be.
And women, a voice inside my head whispered.
I couldn't discount the likes of Lo and Janie in talks of violence. They worked at a paramilitary camp. Janie was a bomb expert. Of course they had killed. Maybe it was a bit close-minded and naive of me to have not thought about that before, but a part of me maybe just didn't want to critically think something that would make me see a person I actually liked as a killer.
"I know you don't live in the same world that we do, pet. I get that there are very defined lines between right and wrong in a normal society. But in your world, rich, good-looking, white men like Ethan Criss almost always get away with assault, almost never go away for rape. And if they do, it's time served or some other bullshit like that. In my world, that's not fucking good enough. Maybe that's because we live in this underbelly where all the shits like him fester. And because we smell it every goddamn day, we know that there is no such thing as a 'one-time thing,' a 'mistake,' a 'lapse in judgment,' or whatever the fuck defense attorneys want to spew. Sexual predators are just like a man who hits his wife, if it happens once, it will happen again. And again. And a-fucking-gain. You can't cure a rabid dog, Kennedy. You have to take him out to the barn and shoot him."
He was right; I did live in a world of rights and wrongs, of laws and lawbreakers, of crime and justice. But that being said, literally everything he said was right. I did believe there were kinds of sick that could not be fixed- sexual predators of all kinds at the very top of that list. And I was pretty sure all the news stories I had seen over the past several years also reinforced what he said about the justice system failing women and protecting predators.
Maybe there was something to be said for street justice.
Maybe, in some situations, it was the only justice to be found.
It was still hard, though, to imagine those around me were capable of something as brutal as murder.
But wasn't every single person capable of killing another human being if the circumstances were right? As much as I liked to think of myself as a peaceful person, I knew that if it came down to Ethan and me in a dark alley and he had bad intentions and I had a gun, well, he'd be sporting a bunch of new holes.
"Look at me, pet," Pagan demanded, tone still as casual as ever. "Whether or not you agree with what I did, it's done. It can't be undone unless you know some voodoo magic shit. So, what this comes down to right now is- can you accept it and move on? If not, can't say I won't be disappointed as fuck, but I would respect that."
"Can I just... ask why?" I asked, feeling like I needed to know what drove him to that.
"Meant to rough him up," he said, shrugging, curling a hand into a fist, and pretending to hit my jaw with it. "Then force him to sign over the building. But then the mother fucker started running his mouth, telling me things you left out of your side of the story."
I had glossed it over when I told him, uncomfortable with the idea of getting into the details like his hands on me, things I didn't even want to think about, let alone say.
Had Ethan really been stupid enough to throw that in Pagan's face?
Well, he was a dick, so I guess he could have been.
"He put his hands on what was mine, Kennedy. Then he fucking boasted about it to my mother fucking face? That bastard couldn't go on breathing. Not on my fucking watch."
I should have been horrified at that. But, instead, I felt a swelling sort of sensation inside. Maybe it was as simple some primal, neanderthal appreciation for being valued and protected. Maybe it went deeper than that. Regardless of what it was, I found myself oddly accepting of the screwed up situation.
I swallowed hard. "I'm yours, huh?"
He smirked at that, reaching out, and pulling me onto his lap. "Killed a man for you," he said, hand going to my jaw. "Would kill a hundred more to keep you safe." Oh, lord, the butterflies. There was an entire swarm of them inside me right then. "Damn fucking right you're mine. And as scarred and fucked-up as I am, I'm yours too."
Then, well, there was a lot of not talking.
Pagan - 6 months
"Roderick, leave the poor girl alone," Kennedy warned as Cyrus brought his girl in for the first time.
Roderick was still Roderick, always looking for a chance to fuck with someone, especially one of the women.
"What, mami? I'm just welcoming her to the club. Social graces and all that."
"Puppies," Maze said, shaking her head. "Just when you think they're growing up because they stopped pissing on the rugs, they go and start eating the furniture and chasing cars like idiots."
The new batch of probates were finally off lockdown in the barracks room, having gone through background checks, skill assessment, and whatever bullshit, menial task the rest of us could come up with to torture them.
Sugar and Virgin did it all without even a grumble, both having already gone through the process once before, and likely in a lot less friendly of a group.
Roderick took every opportunity to fuck around.
Roan did it all stoically, taking orders from some of us who were younger than him without bristling.
"Well, at least these ones are almost trained," Kennedy agreed.
"Sure, but I bet as soon as we start being able to kick back and relax, Reign'll be adding a new bunch on. He's in a zone about this shit. But heaven fucking forbid he finally give me a patch," Maze said, giving him a small-eye from across the room, to which he only smiled. It was an old game for them, Maze only jokingly holding onto the bitterness about not being patched-in. "Alright, well, I have to go pick up my demons. Children. I mean children," she said, moving off. "I'll see you at five for my touch-up," she added to Kennedy who was home for a dinner break.
If she had been a workaholic before I met her, driven by a hunger both metaphorical and literal, since she expanded her salon, it was borderline obsessive.
I think, after a life of only struggle, getting a taste of success was addictive. In just five months since her reopening, she had needed to hire three new hairstylists, a full-time manicurist, and a pussy waxer. There was a name for what she did, but fuck if I could remember it, and waxing pussy was pretty much her job description, so I called it what it was.
So me literally forcing her every night to take an hour for dinner was probably the longest stretch of awake-time we got most weekdays. But I wasn't complaining. I understood the drive to make a life you felt pride in. Mine might not have been traditional, but it was what I wanted. So Kennedy needed to work toward the life she wanted too. I was more than happy with the time I got to spend with her.
But this was important.
And I only had forty minutes left.
"Come on," I said, grabbing her hand.
"I thought we were eating here," she responded as I pulled her out the doors and toward the gates.
"No, I want coffee. They have some shit to eat there."
"At the coffee shop?" she asked, brows drawing together.
"Yep, come on, you're short on time."
I pressed her into the table she had been at six months before, making her stay there as I got the drinks, the ring heavy in my pocket.
"I guess she didn't follow my advice," Jazzy said, shaking her silvery-purple hair. "This might be the only time ever that doing that was the smart choice."
"What advice?" I asked, dropping a ten into the jar for Hannibal Lecter over Dexter.
"I told her months ago that if she wants a tour of your sheets and orgasms that make her see the face of God, that she should go to the party. But that if she had any ideas on commitment, to run. Guess I misread you, huh?" she asked, giving me a smile.
"Guess I misjudged you too, Jazz. Was that rumor I heard about you true?"
"Which one? I get talked about a lot," she said with a smile, not being bothered by that in the least.
"About a certain man you're fucking with."
"Sh," she said, eyes going around. "That's top secret. Where did you even hear that?"
"Luce caught you guys getting it on next to his cruiser last week."
"We were not getting it on. We were making out. And I don't know, you know? He's a cop. And I'm friends with the likes of criminal scum like you," she said with a wink. "Now go and do whatever has you fidgeting like a kid in church. Oh, and you still haven't given us a Yelp review, you know. No amount of tipping is going to make me forgive that."
"No?" I asked, reaching into my wallet and dropping a fifty.
"Well, I'm feeling a bit of clemency. You know... for today at least."
I chuckled, taking our drinks and moving to hand one to Kennedy before sitting down at the table I had sat at half a year ago, when I first got a glimpse of her.
Because, when I sat and thought about it, Gramps had been right; I knew it that moment. The decision was made in a blink. She was a stranger that I somehow recognized.
Every day since then had just been adding assurances on top of that choice that had never really been a choice at all.
"What are you doing?" she asked, brows together, confused smile pulling at her lips.
"No one would claim I am a particularly eloquent guy," I started, reaching into my pocket, palming the ring, keeping it a secret for another moment more. "I think you know by now I'm not the wine and roses type. But that seemed to work for you, so I am going to go ahead and do what got you down the street and into my arms in the first place." I lowered myself down, pulling out the ring. "Why don't you take those tits, that ass, those legs, those lips, and what I know is a prime USDA pussy, and let me have them forever?"
She threw her head back to laugh even as a tear slipped out of the corner of her eyes and slid down her cheek.
"Well, I've put up with you this long," she said, giving me her hand, blinking through a wave of wetness in her eyes. "I guess another fifty or sixty years won't be too bad."
So that was how I got her to agree to marry some cage-fighting, arms-dealing, crazy as fuck biker.
Kennedy - 3 years
I was trying not to get my hopes up.
That was a pretty shitty mindset to be in right then, but after three miscarriages, I wasn't going to let myself get all hopeful until I was told for sure that we were out of the woods.
I took a slow, deep breath, letting it out in what was almost a sigh as I sat in the waiting room of a very upscale, obnoxiously expensive doctor's office. At Richard's insistence.
"Whatever it is," Pagan said casually, squeezing my thigh.
I know there was nothing casual about him right then.
I knew this because the first time I was pregnant and I told him, he had freaking lit up. I had never seen anything like it. He had been a happy man on our wedding day, sure. He had looked at me like I was the only woman he had ever seen in his life. And, let's be honest, he had seen more than his fair share.
But at the idea of having a baby, he unexpectedly looked like I was carrying the sun. Like I was the reason for all things ever in existence.
Losing the baby ten weeks in had been devastating for both of us.
But we weren't giving up.
The second, we were slightly more trepidatious.
The third, we were sick with worry.
This one, well, we were almost resigned to what seemed like the only outcome for us, despite the doctors telling us that they couldn't find anything wrong with either of us, any reason for us not to be able to have a full-term baby.
Which was why, twenty minutes later, after listening to the whooshing of the ultrasound machine and feeling the cold jelly on my stomach, I almost didn't believe him when he told us that the baby was healthy.
Five months.
We had never made it past three.
And five meant that at any time, if I went into labor, the baby had an eighty-percent chance of surviving. If we made it to twenty-seven weeks, that went up to ninety-percent.
My eyes slid to Pagan's finding the sun-look again, knowing for sure right then that everything we had been through the past few years had been worth it for him to look the way he did.
Two months later, and only eight weeks premature, we welcomed a surprisingly hefty baby boy into the world.
Five pounds and seven ounces.
"I'm not fucking crying," Pagan insisted as he turned away, making me smile at his back through a rush of tears in my own eyes.
"Of course not," I agreed, watching the baby get scrubbed and tagged and whatever else they needed to do to make sure he was healthy.
It was about an hour later as he was clutched to my breast, Pagan with me on the bed, that we discussed the topic for the first time, perhaps being too superstitious about it before.
Names.
"I know Gramps would like another Robert. The fourth and all that cheesy rich dude shit."
"Well, for all intents and purposes, he is going to be a little rich dude." Seeing as we were the sole beneficiaries of Richard Sr.'s will when he passed. Which was hopefully not for a good, long time. He had, over the years, become almost like a father figure to me, a fatherless girl. He had been the one to walk me down the aisle, to offer me franchise advice on my business, to be there for every holiday and birthday, even if that meant he was surrounded by all our criminal friends.
"He's being raised like a biker," Pagan demanded, as he had from the day we knew we would finally be parents. He had been really stern about wanting to keep the baby grounded, not wanting he or she to grow up in a rich kid bubble. And, from humble beginnings myself, and believing whole-heartedly in the concept of hard work, I had absolutely agreed.
"Yeah, but you know... Robert kind of makes sense, don't you think? I mean, I thought you looked like Robert Di Nero when we first met. Maybe we can name him Robert so he keeps the four since that is so important to Gramps... but we can call him Niro."
Then we did.
Pagan - 10 years
"Oh for fuck's sake," I groaned, seeing a seven-year-old Niro walking into the compound.
Looks-wise, he took mostly after me. He had my height, my build, my dark hair, most of my features. But the eyes, yeah, those were all his mother. The brightest fucking blue you could imagine.
And currently blue and busted.
His lip was swollen and slit and his fists looked bloody.
Niro also, in many ways, took after me in the personality department. He was mostly laid-back, but also fast to action, not afraid to use his fists. Growing up around a biker compound, they were traits he needed. All the kids scuffled. It was just part of how things were around there.
But he also came in from after school busted up from playground fights.
Hell, at six-years-old, I was pretty sure he had been the youngest kid in his school to be suspended for fighting.
Thankfully though, it was summer break and whatever scrap he got into wouldn't result in accusatory looks from teachers when I came in for parent-teacher nights.
"Little homie can't get enough of the bloodshed," Virgin said, moving past, ruffling his hair as he did. "Takes after his Pops."
"Alright," I said, folding up slightly as he moved to sit across from me. "What was...
"Hey, what do you think about... oh, hey Niro. When did you get bac... oh," Kennedy said, exhaling a breath, shaking her head.
Really, all things being considered, she had almost gotten over her aversion to blood over the years. I guess having me come home in all stages of fucked up would do that to a woman. And when I stepped down and gave up Hex to the young bloods, Niro stepped up to give his mother's stomach some churning.
I reached up, dragging her down with me. "I was just asking what went down," I said, giving her a squeeze, reminding her silently to not do the mom-thing and run to him and baby him over his scrapes. She could do that later. After we got answers.
"It wasn't my fault, Dad," he said, immediately getting riled, eyes lighting up, using his hands to speak. "We were at the park and these guys walked over to Andi and pulled her hair," he declared, his voice full of indignation. "I couldn't let him get away with that!"
I looked over at Kennedy, trying like hell to keep my lips in a firm line, a thing about parenting that no one talked about enough- how hard it was to keep a straight face when your kid was hilarious. Hilariously bad, often, but hilarious.
Little kid turned out just like me.
I saw the recognition of that in Kennedy's eyes as well.
"He shouldn't have pulled her hair," Kennedy agreed, trying to not condone the fighting behavior, though she knew that she agreed with it underneath it all.
Fact of the matter was, Andi, Reeve's girl, was small for her age, a delicate little fucking China doll replication in human form, all soft, all sweet, all golden hair and big brown eyes. The idea that anyone, even some little seven-year-old shit would do something to hurt her had me wanting to go whoop his ass.
So, quite frankly, I was going to go ahead and do the 'bad parent' thing and verbally condone his behavior. "And you needed to show him why he shouldn't put his hands on her," I agreed with a nod, ignoring the big eyes I was getting from Kennedy. "If there is ever a time I'm going to tell you it's alright to start shit with someone, Niro, it's always going to be when you're defending someone who can't defend themselves. Case closed. Now go let your mother help you get cleaned up so that cut near your eye doesn't get infected."
"Think it'll scar?" he asked, jumping up, excited about the idea. Guess I was to blame for that too, being covered in scars myself, making it seem cool to him.
"Looks like it," I agreed, nodding.
"Yeah!" he said, running off toward my room which we rarely used anymore, but was ours nonetheless.
"He's going to be brought home by the cops one day, I just know it," Kennedy said, shaking her head.
"Hey, at least he only fights when he feels it is justified. Got to give him credit for that."
"We have that charity event this weekend with Gramps and all his important people," she reminded me. "Even in a suit, he's going to look rough around the edges."
"Hey, if they can stomach being introduced to someone named Pagan, then I think they can handle a little boy with a busted lip and black eye."
We didn't do a lot of events, and Gramps generally knew better than to ask. But his latest cause was a huge charity event for the Navesink Bank women's shelter. It was a cause we felt like we should show our faces at, knowing how much good they did. In fact, most of The Henchmen, Mallicks, Grassis, Hailstorm, and all the other various allies around were planning on attending.
She sighed at that, shaking her head. "We live an odd life."
"You love it," I shot back.
"Yeah, I kind of do," she agreed, smiling. "But I love you more," she declared, moving up onto my lap to give me long and hard and just shy of inappropriate for the common room, and we Henchmen were loose on such rules.
"Love you too, pet."
"Mooooom!" Niro called from off in the bathroom, making us both smile.
Perfect.
Fucking perfect.
I hadn't done shit in my life to deserve her or our son, but I had them, and I was man enough to admit how goddamn lucky I was.
XX
Flip forward for a sneak peak of what is coming to Navesink Bank.