He looked at her and saw more than just her. Behind her shoulder he saw the hard face of Sergeant Semyon and the wise, sad eyes of Uncle Mike. He saw the cost of this miracle.
And he understood that his fight was not over. It had only changed. The hardest battle was still ahead—the battle with himself, with memory, with guilt.
To live with it—that was his real punishment. And his real atonement. A month passed.
Roach went on trial. The proceedings were sealed, but rumors got out. Dozens of counts. Corruption. Kidnapping. Murder.
His empire was finished. Wade, mutilated and mute, was placed in a private long-term psychiatric facility. That was where he would spend the rest of his life, drooling and staring.
Arthur’s body, ruined beyond recognition as a functioning man, was never publicly tied back to Alex. It was written off as gang violence. Cody, still staring at the screen of his phone, was found in the locked basement a week later. He was alive, but his mind was gone from terror and dehydration.
His fate may have been the worst of all. Justice, in one form or another, had been done. Alex walked slowly through the hospital garden, leaning on a cane.
The scar on his abdomen still hurt. But it was an honest pain. A reminder that he was alive.
Coming toward him in a wheelchair pushed by Lena was Katie. She was still weak. Months, maybe years, of rehab lay ahead. But she was smiling…
