Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81279 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81279 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 406(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
The “other guy”. Otto Grass.
I lick my lips, not sure if this is a good or bad development, but Saint gives me a wolfish grin.
He pretends he’s leaning down to kiss my ear as he whispers, “I have poison.”
My heart skips a beat, and I hardly register it when Todd tells us to stop touching.
“I love you,” I say to Saint when our eyes meet.
Epilogue
Saint
A year has passed, and Rosehill Pines hasn’t changed a bit. There is the new pop-up bookshop boasting that they sell only Christmas-themed books, but otherwise, the town remains blissfully stagnant. The restaurant where I took Rowan on our first date even features the same seasonal specials. It’s as if time here stood still while my life rushed forward, skipping milestones so fast it’s difficult to imagine me and Rowan only got together twelve months ago.
It feels like more.
And yet, there’s still things I’m finding out about him, like the fact that his family once took a long hike through the Grand Canyon, which he only mentioned when we visited Arizona some weeks back. Or that he really, really despises mint tea.
I hope that once we run out of things to find out about one another, we will keep making discoveries together, because I never want to lose the magic sparking between us and the sense of joy I feel in his presence. I used to be lonely, yes, but I didn’t understand how empty my life was until he became a part of it.
Now, it's full.
Exciting.
And so damn happy.
I’d cut off my own finger if it made him smile.
And speaking of cutting off body parts, I love that he isn’t squeamish about the grisly sides of our work. I have lots of money in savings and wanted to wait until he felt ready to get involved, so we took things slow and cherry-picked two jobs in the summer. We trained a lot beforehand, so he could learn everything from self-defense techniques to using a sniper rifle, and by the time we ventured out, I was certain it would be safe for him to go. Or at least as safe as our job can be.
Coming from a very rich woman, the assignment was so lucrative it would have been difficult to pass on. Her husband, or should I say, ex-husband, faked his own death and then started another family all the way down in Paraguay. I was excited to take on the task of disposing of him, because Rowan has never been out of the US before that. Going abroad came with logistical challenges, like the issue of sourcing guns in another country, but we took our sweet time, and I let Rowan make the killing shot once everything was set up.
There’s so much innocence in him still, but he recognizes that people and their situations come in all shades of gray, and that makes him perfect for me. In our everyday life, he’s sweet and gentle, but there’s something wild and magnificent about him when the darkness takes over. A sense of justice that will guide us both in the future.
Human trash needs to be disposed of, plain and simple. That’s why I had no moral issues with finishing off Otto Grass in the jail cell, while he was sleeping off his cocaine comedown. He likely passed out as soon as he laid his head down and didn’t even wake up when we joined him.
The only regret I have about his death is that Rowan didn’t get the satisfaction of cutting the bastard’s life short himself, but I’m more experienced with those things, so he did the sensible thing and let me do the honors. I always keep poison in my shoe, for emergencies, and the needle it utilizes is so thin Otto didn’t even stir when injected.
Fifteen minutes later, Rowan and I called in the cops when he went into cardiac arrest. Bastard was gone before reaching the hospital, and while both me and Rowan would have liked for him to suffer for all his crimes, what mattered at the end of the day was that he was no longer ruining the world with his rotten life.
Over the next months, Otto was declared the murderer of Miles Brown and the others, since Brown’s phone ended up being identified at the murder house, like I predicted. Some of his belongings have also been found in a small utility room in the mall’s basement. He’d apparently been sleeping there, so maybe Brown did mean Otto going underground literally. We’ll never know. What matters is that the case was closed. When a detective with too much ambition for his own good remembered Rowan’s connection to all the dead men and started asking questions, Mrs. Treville once again proved to be an angel in disguise and gave us the perfect alibi.