Devious Vow: Epilogue

“Is that all of it, Charles?”

My grandfather purses his lips petulantly.

“Do not make me ask again, Charles.”

There’s an edge in my voice when I want there to be these days that I’m not sure I used to be able to pull off. Being locked in a basement playing Russian Roulette with a psychopath will do that, I guess. I’ll be honest, I’m excited to whip out the new hard-edged voice in court and see who I can make shit their pants.

Until then, though, that pant-shitter looks like it’s about to be my grandfather.

He pales. “Yes, that’s it.”

“If I find out⁠—”

“I swear to you, that’s it.”

“Good.”

I glance around the room—at Gabriel, his face still bruised but healing, his arm in a sling. Taylor stands next to him, and then Tempest. Caroline is glowering behind her idiot husband, and of course Eloise is next to me.

This is the last bit of business we need to wrap up in New York before Eloise and I hop on a jet to Paris, where I’ll officially be meeting Andre LeBlanc.

I’ll also be telling him my intention to marry his daughter. Like, soon.

I proposed. Of course I did. She’s divorced now—well, annulled post-mortem, as it was never consummated. But yes, I’ll be marrying Eloise. I was an idiot to let this woman go the first time, and I never will again.

So yes, this is my big “meet the father” moment now that Andre’s out of his coma—the one that Massimo put and kept him in, with the help of two dishonorable fuckers in Andre’s organization who sold him out.

Luckily, “dishonor” doesn’t get you very far with the French Mafia. The French are pretty hardcore about the whole “Liberté, Egalité, Fratnerité” thing, and now that he’s awake, Andre’s people have…dispatched the traitors in their midst.

At least, that’s what I hear. I’m merely an attorney, after all.

Massimo and the traitors, of course, took Andre out to secure the marriage deal that Luca had first floated and Massimo now wanted too. Not because he had any real interest in Eloise romantically, obviously. But because he wanted Andre’s smuggling route, which was apparently far more lucrative than anyone was letting on.

On a more insidious level, his obsession with “taking things from me” was also part of why he married her, I think.

How’s that working out for you, fuckwit.

There’s a tiny part of me that wonders if I should mourn the loss of a brother. We’ve looked into it, just to be sure about everything, and Massimo was telling the truth for once.

I am Luca Carveli’s oldest son. My mother did die giving birth to Massimo. And Luca’s side-piece of the month, Gia, did help my uncle Angelo, who—pay attention, this will be important—was a lawyer, did take me away from Luca. Gia, it seems, took pity on me and the life Luca was forcing me into. She’d also, apparently, been a friend of my mother, and so she reached out to my uncle Angelo for help. It would seem their intention was to take a baby Massimo, as well, but were stopped in the attempt by Luca’s men.

When the accident which probably wasn’t an accident on the West Side Highway took their lives and somehow spared mine, a man who’d worked for years alongside Angelo found me in the hospital.

That man was Vaughn Black. The only real father I’ve ever known.

The only real father I choose to have.

I am not, nor will I ever be, Bruno Carveli.

My name is Alistair Black, and my life is my own.

“You’re sure this is it?” I growl at Charles as we stand in the library of his lavish mansion on the Upper East Side, in a half-moon around the fireplace.

“I promise you, Alistair,” he hisses quietly, nodding at the folder in my hand. “That is the very last scrap of evidence on earth connecting you, Alistair Black, to⁠—”

“You don’t need to say the name out loud.”

I draw in a breath and look at the folder—a tether to another world where I’m another man.

But I don’t want that world.

When my uncle and Gia were killed, I was also presumed dead. In fact, they called it in the ambulance, and only changed it when the EMT caught the faintest hint of a heartbeat just as they arrived at the hospital.

Apparently, I have been a fighter my whole life.

When Vaughn arrived after getting wind of what happened, he, his wife, and a close attorney friend of theirs knew what kind of a life Angelo and Gia had been rescuing me from, and what they had to do to save me from that life.

Money was palmed where it had to be. The EMT who found my pulse “un-found” it, and changed the paperwork when his school loans were miraculously paid off.

So Bruno Carveli died from blunt force trauma to the body and head, at the age of six.

And Alistair Black was brought into a different family, and shown love.

What I’m holding is the very last shred of physical evidence that ties me to the boy I once was, and the crime family whose bloodline I’ve just ended.

Without another thought, I hand it to Eloise.

“You do it.”

She smiles at me, her eyes twinkling. With a flick of her wrist it goes into the fire, and I watch it curl to ash.

“You understand, of course,” Gabriel growls, glaring at Charles and Caroline, “that if you ever speak of this⁠—”

“W-we won’t!” Caroline stammers, looking pale. “I swear to God!” She turns to me with a panicked look on her face. “I swear, we’ll never tell a soul!”

“Indeed. I…” Charles clears his throat, eying me. “I’m aware of what you’re capable of, Alistair.”

I start to chuckle.

“You’re worried about what I would do to you?”

I grin.

“You’re not getting this, Charles. The Carveli family still has a few guys out there. Sure, the other Commission families are hunting them down, but a few will manage to stay hidden. And if you spill any of this, Charles,” I growl. “And it gets back to them?” I shrug. “I mean, they’ll probably come for me, first…”

Charles looks confused.

Here comes the right hook.

“But I’ve prepared documents stating unequivocally that it was you who killed Luca Carveli. You were in Paris when it happened, after all.”

Charles’ eyes widen. “I was in Zurich!”

“Zurich’s not even a ninety-minute flight from Paris,” Gabriel mutters with a shrug of his good shoulder.

“If anything happens to me in the way of retribution from the Carveli family, Charles,” I growl, “that information becomes public. And I don’t believe the remaining Carveli men, who, by-the-by, liked Luca a lot more than they liked his son, will enjoy hearing that on the eleven o’clock news.”

Charles swallows hard. “You have my word. This never gets spoken about again.”

“Wonderful,” I say amiably. “Which brings us to the best part.”

I nod to Taylor, who opens a file folder and sets it down on the desk by the window.

“Try as I might, Charles—and trust me, I’ve tried,” I sigh. “I can’t stomach sentencing my own grandfather to die in prison.”

“Now, listen, Alistair⁠—”

“It would behoove you, Charles,” I mutter, “to shut the fuck up right now.”

His mouth snaps shut.

“You’re out. Done. Finito.”

His brow furrows. “With?”

“With everything. All of it,” I shrug. “You’re done at the firm, for a start. Clean cut gone. No board seat, nothing.” I level my gaze at him. “And don’t you fucking dare try and fleece us or poach any staff on the way out. It will not end well for you.”

I glance at Gabriel and Taylor to see them smirking at me. I flash them a quick grin and then return my wrathful gaze to Charles.

“You’ll get your contractual payout, no more. Caroline, you have no contract, since you’re only on that board because you gave our grandfather enough blowjobs. So you get shit.”

I savor the moment the panic hits her face.

“If either of you even walk back into Crown and Black, you’ll be arrested on sight for trespassing. Oh, and all the other shit you’re into, Charles? The wheeling and dealing where you try and relive the glory days when you actually were a king-maker?” I grin. “That’s over. You’re out of that now, too.”

Charles’ mouth falls open. But he’s got the good sense to not say anything.

“Look on the bright side, Charles,” Gabriel says cheerfully. “Now you get more time with your dear wife!”

Which sucks for him because, well, Caroline is Caroline. And it sucks for her, because she’s probably going to have to let the old guy fuck her more often, if he still can, because he’ll be around more often.

I take a deep sigh, letting this knowledge warm my spirit before I tap on the contract laid out in front of us.

“It’s all in here. If you choose to go another way, I dig up every single skeleton in your closets, and I swear to fuck, I will put you away for the rest of your life.”

I tap the contract again.

“Sign this or die in jail. Your choice, Charles.”

He’s staring at the contract, fury etched on his face, together with fear.

“I…” He shakes his head. “I could take you down with me,” he mutters. “You… I know you shot Massimo.”

I chuckle. “Charles, please. The things I know about you, your business dealings, and your clients? Go ahead, take me down with you. I’ll get three years. Five, max.” I shrug. “You, however, are looking at twenty-three years, minimum. And with your record at the DOJ?”

“Yikes, Charles,” Gabriel sighs dramatically, shaking his head.

I smile at our grandfather. “That’s twenty-three years without the possibility of parole.” I wince. “Big ouch, Charles. Big, big ouch.”

He grits his teeth, still staring at the contract.

“Charles…” Caroline mumbles next to him.

I hold out a pen and dangle it in his face.

A second later, he snatches it from me, clenches his jaw, and furiously signs the document.

We’re done here.

Taylor, Gabriel, and Tempest end up coming with Eloise and me to the airport, where Andre’s jet is waiting for us.

I hug my sister fiercely, then Taylor. My brother goes to shake my hand, but I roll my eyes and pull him into a bear hug, even if it makes us both wince.

He’s the only brother I’ve got, after all.

On the jet, I pull Eloise into my lap. My lips find hers as we completely ignore the “fasten seatbelt” sign.

“You got lucky, you know,” she murmurs, grinning as she pulls away.

“You mean when I got you, right?”

Eloise blushes deeply, biting her lip. “No, I meant…you know,” she looks down. “Before. Back in…that basement.”

I shake my head. “I’ve told you before. I make my own luck.”

“Slipping a bullet out of a gun while the bad guy isn’t looking is luck, not manifest destiny.”

I grin. “Objection.”

“Overruled!”

I grab her hand and place it on my bulging crotch. “Tampering with evidence.”

Eloise giggles. “Bribing the witness…”

“Agree to disagree?”

“I can agree that I love you,” she grins.

“Only if you agree that I love you, too.”

“Counselor, we have an accord.”

“Good. The defense rests.”

“I’m glad,” she murmurs, pulling me close to her by my tie. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

Neither do I. So I kiss her, and keep kissing her as the plane lifts into the sky, and we fly toward the rest of our lives together.

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