Only thing I could get out around the outpouring of love.
The river of hope.
Everything. Everything.
A torrent of tears clouded my vision, but I was still moving, trying to get around the other side of the car.
Mack was already there, ushering Thomas in my direction.
I just stood there for a beat, watching my brave little man, his eyes a little haunted but brimming with his own hope.
For a few seconds, he just stood there, before he ran for me and threw his arms around my middle, burying his face in my stomach as he began to weep. “Mom. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I settled the girls onto the ground beside me so I could get back on my knees in front of my son. I took him by the outside of both of his arms, forcing him to look at me.
To see me.
To understand.
“None of this was your fault, Thomas. None of it. Not for a second. You are so brave. So very brave, and I couldn’t be more proud of you. Do you understand?”
Through his tears, he nodded, and I gathered him back up again, squeezing him so tightly, my chest so full.
I fumbled to reach for the girls, pulling them into the same embrace.
Holding my babies close to me.
To the pound of my heart and the well of my devotion.
My voice was a haggard promise. “Mommy is the one who is sorry you all had to go through this. But I promise you, you’re safe now. You don’t have to worry about anything. Not anymore.”
“That’s because Ian-Zian the Great is our hero!” Mallory shouted, giggling, having no idea she was driving a knife into that wound that I wasn’t sure would ever heal.
Right into that place Ian had taken. Carved out for himself.
I forced a smile, glancing up at Mack who anxiously waited at the back of his car.
Giving us a moment.
Easing back from my children, I touched their faces, just needing the connection, before I gathered myself and angled my head toward the house. “Why don’t you go inside and give Gramma big hugs. She’s been missing you like crazy. What do you want to bet she’s making a big ol’ feast for us to celebrate tonight?”
“A million dollars!” Mallory agreed.
Thomas scoffed. “You can’t bet a million dollars if you don’t have a million dollars to bet, Mal.”
“You’re just a party pooper, Tom Tom.”
There they were. My bickering kids who I adored.
Somehow, I knew right then, that we were really going to be okay.
Pushing to my feet, I watched them as they raced for the house, Thomas taking Sophie’s hand and making sure she got inside okay, Mallory singing and jumping and dancing the whole way.
“Be careful, Mal, you’re going to bust your face on the porch if you don’t watch where you’re going,” Thomas warned.
My little protector.
“If you fall, you get right back up again,” Mallory just sang louder.
A smile pulled across my face.
Both brittle and beautiful.
Because in the middle of the most intense happiness I’d ever felt, there was sorrow, too.
I could feel it, so thick, as thick as the weight of Mack’s presence. The wary heaviness that he wore like a shroud.
I finally forced myself to turn to look at him. He was the one who’d called to let me know he had the order to return my children to me.
The one who’d dropped me to my knees, my heart bleeding with relief.
But his voice had been grim when he’d told me that we needed to talk.
So, there I stood.
Waiting.
Winter whipping through the trees and me hugging my arms across my chest as I looked at the big man waver, a sadness I couldn’t quite understand pouring from him in sheets.
He lifted his hand to gesture toward the house. “The best part of my job is when I get to see things like that happen. When wrongs are righted, and everything turns out the way it’s supposed to be.”
I could barely nod. “Thank you so much for bringing them back to me. They’re my world.”
“And that’s why they belong here.”
I waited because I knew there was more. Something that was going to break me.
A heavy sigh heaved his massive shoulders. “Reed Dearborne and Lawrence Bennet are both in custody. They’re charged with multiple counts of racketeering, prostitution, fraud, and smuggling.” He paused. “Also murder, Grace. Their crimes went deep and dark and farther than any of us really estimated, even though I’ve been on an undercover team investigating Lawrence Bennet for the last year. Don’t think either of them are going to see the outside of a cell for the rest of their lives.”
A gasp choked out in the middle of the stark relief that pounded through my blood stream. A buoy to my heart.
Revulsion at the depths of the wickedness. The realization that it had been much worse than I’d ever allowed myself to imagine.
“And?” I begged, edging forward, praying for news that wouldn’t shatter me a little more.
Unsure of Ian’s fate.
What he’d sacrificed last night.
The idea of him being hurt was more than I could comprehend. More than I could physically bear, my mind not allowing me to imagine an outcome so reprehensible.
Mack flinched. “Grace . . .”
I hugged myself tighter, and my mind spun. They got to him. Oh, God, no, they got to him. He was gone. He was gone. No. God, please, no.
My entire body tensed as I prepared to receive the news.
“Ian is also in custody.”
“What?” The word rushed from me in a rasp of shock.
“He’s charged with racketeering and money laundering.”
“Oh. God.” It was a whimper. A cry. Disbelief.
I clutched myself, trying to stand. Trying not to allow the man to knock me off my feet again.
“He . . . he was involved? The whole time, he was involved with them?” It didn’t matter how I tried to hold myself steady.
Everything swayed.
My body and my heart and my mind.
Sympathy passed through Mack’s expression. An age of it, as if he were dredging it up from the past. “Ian has had probably the hardest life of anyone I’ve known, Grace.”
For a second, my eyes squeezed closed, riddled with the warnings Ian had given that I hadn’t heeded.
I’m no good.
I’m the devil.
My mind hadn’t even traipsed into the territory of this being what he’d meant.
“That’s no excuse,” I spat, trying to hold my anger back. To just put it all behind me since the only thing that mattered was my children were home.
That they were safe.
But I couldn’t make myself budge from that spot.
Because my soul screamed with how much Ian had come to matter.
“He got involved with Bennet around the time he found his mother dead of an overdose. He was seventeen. Alone. Bennet swooped in. Became a father figure. Ian was seeded in that world before he even knew what being in that world meant.”
My head shook, wanting to refute it, stomach tumbling with rolls of nausea that I could barely keep down.
Sorrow for Ian. Anger at Ian.
He didn’t deserve my sympathy, did he? But I couldn’t stop the way my spirit trembled in pain for the man I didn’t think I’d ever stop loving.
Not after everything we’d shared.
In agitation, Mack speared his fingers through his hair. “Ian’s done some shady shit, Grace. No question. He knows it. He’s known it for a long time. I’ve been begging him to cut ties with Bennet, knowing things were gonna get messy and hoping he would get away before it was too late.”
Mack paused before he rushed, “He turned over everything, Grace. All the proof we needed to put Reed and Lawrence away for a long, long time. He broke into Bennet’s office. Produced all the evidence he could find on the two of them. By doing it, he implicated himself.”
“What?” This time the word left me as a pained breath.
As it all started coming together.
What Ian had done. The goodbye of his text.
He’d given himself up.
For us.
He’d lost his career.
His freedom.
His life.
“Standing here, I’m making no excuses for what he’s done,” Mack continued, helplessness as he tipped his hands up. “He’s done some bad shit. What I am telling you is it about killed me to have to put him in cuffs because at the core of him, he’s one of the best men I’ve ever met. He proved that to me all over again last night. He gave himself up for you. For your family.”