An officer knelt down by Tom and felt his neck. “No pulse.”
“Good enough,” Dugan said. “I’ll notify the coroner.”
I backed away from the scene unfolding before me, my heart slowing, my skin prickling. It was as if I were an outsider looking in, as if a scene on television were climaxing.
Tom had killed himself, rather than face the music.
In the end, after everything he’d done, after everything he’d put my family through, he was nothing more than a coward.
One of the officers, a female, approached me. “Mr. Steel? Are you all right?”
Her voice was tinny, as if it were being filtered through a cheap walkie-talkie like Bryce and I had played with when we were kids.
I nodded.
I was fine. I would get through this. I would see my child born, and I would have a life with the woman I loved. I longed to put all of this behind me, to focus on the life I had with Melanie and our child. To embrace my family. To maybe have more children and to watch my nieces and nephews born to Talon and Jade. Ryan and Marjorie would each eventually marry as well, and our family would expand into one giant crowd of Steels.
The thought almost made me smile.
Almost.
I couldn’t yet smile, because this wasn’t over.
If my suspicions were correct, once I had the necessary proof, I would have to tell my brother the devastating truth of his parentage.
But that wasn’t all.
One man was still out there. The most dangerous one.
The one who had been untouchable so far.
Theodore Mathias. Alias Nico Kostas, Milo Sanchez, and a host of other names. The one who had founded the infamous future lawmakers club. The one who had orchestrated the abduction, torture, and rape of my brother. The one who had raped his niece and attempted to rape his own daughter. The one who most likely had killed Jordan Hayes.
If degrees of evil existed, he was the most evil of the three.
None of us would be truly safe until he had been caught.
Chapter Forty–Nine
Melanie
Several days later…
Jonah pushed a gift bag into my hand. “Go downstairs,” he said softly. “Put the contents of this bag on, and wait for me. On your knees.”
I smiled. I’d missed him. We hadn’t made love in a few days. Too much had been going on.
But he shook his head. “That’s not what this is about. I don’t want to take any chances until the baby is born. We have to be careful.”
“I’m a physician, Jonah. Sex is perfectly safe during pregnancy.”
“I’m not saying no sex. I could never keep my hands off you for that long. But I worry. I don’t want to be too rough with you.”
“What if that’s what I want?”
He smiled. “We’ll both get what we want. I promise. But right now is about something else.”
I nodded, biting my lip. I took the bag and headed downstairs. I opened the door to the dungeon and walked in. I smiled. The bed was covered in lavender buds and rose petals.