EPILOGUE

ATLAS

THREE MONTHS LATER

We'd spent three months traveling the world so far when I got the call from my uncle in London. I didn't know if he was my real uncle, but he was the man I was sent to live with when I was a child. He was also the man who'd sent me away to become the assassin I was today.

He must've been in his sixties. He ran quite the high-profile criminal ring in London. I enjoyed visiting him and the rest of the family in that area, although I never knew them properly, they were part of my life in terms of blood but beyond that, they were completely different to me.

On the doorstep of a large Georgian townhouse in one of the most affluent areas, I fended questions off from Jasiel who asked why we didn't have a big, fancy house like this.

An old man in a suit answered the door. "How may I assist you?" He'd aged some, but I recognized him as their butler.

"Atlas!" a voice called out from the hallway. "What are you doing here?" From the darkness of the hallway, my cousin, Samuel approached, stirring a spoon inside a teacup. "Thought you were dead."

"It's for me," a roar came.

"You're here for him?" Samuel asked, referring to his father, my uncle.

Jasiel was quiet now, for once. He clenched my hand tighter as he pressed his side to mine.

"He has a gift for me," I said, holding Jasiel's hand up. "We got married."

"Married," Samuel chuckled, his gaze washing over us in the doorway. "I suppose you best come in. You never know who's watching."

Lead inside the large house, I could tell Jasiel was asking why we weren't staying here instead of the hotel I'd booked us with views over the city. The place hadn't changed a lick since I'd been here last, many years ago.

Uncle Alistair was in his grand leather chair, an air cannister at his side as he pulled the mask to his mouth and sucked in deep. "Come, my boy, sit," he said between deep, heavy breaths. "I got you a wedding present."

"Is that what the racket was this morning?" Samuel asked, tapping the spoon on the side of his teacup.

"Oh hush," he growled at his son.

It always amused me to see families like this, mostly to satisfy my own morbid curiosities, since I didn't have a family dynamic.

"Suit yourselves," Samuel said before taking a sip from his cup. "I have a meeting to get to. I hope you'll stick around for dinner later."

Jasiel continued to hug at my side. It was unlike him to be so quiet, although he'd expressed to me earlier about being worried, he'd say or do something wrong. The Maxwell family had quite the reputation, and he knew that, but this wasn't going to be a situation like we had in Miami.

"I've got you a gift," Alastair said. "Hadley will take you down into the basement. It's something you asked for."

"I asked for?" I mused aloud. I rarely asked for anything since that meant there was a favor owed and a debt due.

"Just go see," he said before coughing up into his mask.

The butler took us from the living room and down the hallway to a white door. Jasiel wandered behind; his eyes fixed on every detail. The wood boarding on the walls and doorways was ornate and decorative. The wallpaper had the slightest gold embossing that glittered in the light as you passed it. The entire house smelled of money.

In the basement of the house, we were lead through another door into darkness. He turned the light on before making a swift exit.

Under the light, a man was chained to the floor. Held in place at his wrists and by his ankles, the chains rattled as he moved around to look at us. Dressed in torn clothes, his skin dirtied with blood and filth.

It took me a moment to place the face.

"Andres," I said.

Jasiel stared up at me. "Is it?"

The rattling grew restless as the man tried to back himself up into a corner. "No, no," he grumbled.

"That's him," I said.

He let go of my hand and approached the man on the floor. "You're Andres?" he asked. "You tried to have me killed?" He chuckled. "You! You tried to have me killed."

"Now he's yours," I said, spotting a small end table by the door, clearly out of reach from the man. On the table, there was an array of items to use in torture, from bone saws to needles to knives. I always knew my family here were fans of cruel and unusual punishment, but this impressed me. "If you want closure, now is the time to get it baby." I took a knife by the handle, swinging it around in the air to see if there was any drag on the movement.

"I didn't want you," he said, coughing. "It wasn't supposed to be like that. I tried to kill you many times."

"You probably shouldn't admit to that," Jasiel said, softly. He squatted to Andres's eye level. "You know, I learned about how disgusting you were, from the moment you beat my mom to the way you spoke to her. I—I wish I knew you were connected to the Coronado family beforehand; I might've used them to get to you a lot sooner."

"Baby, there are knives here."

"No, no, if you kill me, you'll never know the real reason your mother left," he said.

"She left because of your abuse," he snapped back, raising a hand. He fiddled with the ring on his fingers, making sure all the pointy bits were out. "She left to give me a better life." He gave him a backhanded slap, the diamonds on the ring sliced through Andres's face with buttery ease.

Andres coiled, pushing himself against the wall. "No," he said. "She stole my money. She stole millions. And I was told if I let you live, I could have that money back." He sucked back in a breath. "She died before I got it back."

Jasiel pulled himself away from the man and approached me, stroking a hand over his ring finger as he collected the droplets of blood from his skin. "I think he's telling the truth," he said. "In fact." He grabbed the old gold locket from inside his t-shirt. "I wondered what these numbers meant." Opening the locket, on the inside, there were numbers. "But maybe it's a code or something."

I knew almost immediately what those numbers meant. "They're co-ordinates," I told him. "That's where, whatever it is, your mom wanted you to have is."

Jasiel ran his finger across the engraving. "I thought it was a birthday or something."

Massaging a hand on his shoulder, I presented the knife to him with my other hand. "I know we said no more killing, but this is our wedding present," I said. "And once we're done here, we can go find that money."

Andres held his hands up in front of his face, begging for his life. It was a futile effort since Jasiel went for his body. It wasn't like he could easily pierce his skull and get to the brain, but the body was soft and squishy.

I watched with delight as he finished what we'd started.

He looked at me with pride in his eyes and blood on his face. Stabbing at the Andres's torso repeatedly, getting every single last lash of anger from within out onto a man who'd tried to have him killed many times.

Andres exhaled his last breath. Jasiel dropped the knife with an almighty clang against the stone. He came back to me, wrapping his blood-soaked body of clothes around me, squeezing me.

"How do you feel?" I asked him.

"Thirsty," he said. "Where can we get a slushie around here?"

All was right in the world.

THE END