Chapter 163 The End of It All
CAITLYN'S POV
The day the Bratva situation ended I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee when Rourke called. I looked at Jason across the table when my phone rang and he looked back at me and neither of us said anything. Every time Rourke called these days it meant something. Good or bad it always meant something.
I picked up. "Tell me," I said.
"It is over," Rourke said. "The FBI moved on them this morning. Four arrests. Two here and two in St. Petersburg through Interpol cooperation. They have everything they need to prosecute and the people who were coming after you are in custody."
I put the phone down on the table without saying goodbye and I looked at Jason and I said "It is over."
He stared at me. "What do you mean over," he said.
"Rourke said the FBI arrested them this morning," I said. "Four people. It is done, Jason. It is actually done."
He got up from his chair and came around the table and he pulled me up and held me and I stood there in his arms in our kitchen and I did not cry right away. I just stood there and let the words settle into me. It is over. It is actually over. I said it in my head a few times until it started to feel real.
Then I cried.
I cried in a way I had not cried in a long time. Not from fear or pain or exhaustion but from relief. Pure and total relief. The kind that comes when something heavy you have been carrying for so long you forgot what it felt like to put it down finally gets lifted off you all at once.
Jason held me the whole time and did not say anything and that was exactly right because there was nothing to say.
Emma was in her bouncer on the living room floor and she made a noise and I pulled back from Jason and wiped my face and walked over and picked her up and held her against my chest and she grabbed a fistful of my shirt the way she always did and I pressed my face into her hair and breathed her in.
"It is done baby," I said to her. "It is all done."
Rourke came by the apartment later that morning and sat with us at the kitchen table explaining everything. The FBI had been building the case for days using everything Elena had given them and everything they already had on the network from their own files. When they moved they moved fast and they had enough to make the arrests stick.
"What about Elena," I said.
"She is being relocated," Rourke said. "Federal protection. New city. New start. She cooperated fully and they are taking care of her."
"Good," I said. "She deserves that."
"She does," Rourke said.
"And the money," Jason said. "Collin's money. Did they ever find it?"
"The FBI forensic accountants traced it to three offshore accounts," Rourke said. "The organization has been pointed toward those accounts and the funds are being handled through legal channels. It takes the target off Caitlyn completely. Permanently."
"Permanently," I said.
"Permanently," Rourke said. "There is no reason for anyone to come after you anymore. The debt is resolved. The people responsible for threatening you are in custody. It is finished."
I sat back in my chair and looked at the ceiling for a moment. I thought about everything that had happened since Collin died. The arrests. The trials. Vanessa and her lies. The media and the protesters and the rock through our window. The legal fees and the lost job and Jason's secret run with Marcus. Elena is showing up outside our building. The Bratva and the deadline and the week of searching through Collin's old papers looking for something that would save us.
All of it. Every single piece of it. And now it was done.
"I have something I want to ask you," Jason said. He was not looking at Rourke when he said it. He was looking at me.
I looked back at him. "Okay," I said.
He reached into the pocket of his jeans and he pulled out a small box and set it on the table in front of me and I looked at it and then I looked at him and my heart did something that I did not have a word for.
"I have been carrying this around for three weeks," Jason said. "I kept waiting for the right moment and there was never a right moment because something was always happening. But Rourke is here and Emma is here and this is our kitchen and this is our life and I do not want to wait for a better moment anymore because this moment is already everything."
He opened the box and there was a ring inside. Simple and small and exactly what I would have chosen for myself.
"Caitlyn," he said. "I want to marry you. I want to be Emma's dad officially and I want to be your husband and I want to build the rest of our life with you starting right now. Will you marry me?"
I looked at the ring and I looked at him and I thought about the first time I met him and how none of this was what I expected my life to look like and how it turned out to be so much better than anything I would have planned for myself.
"Yes," I said. "Obviously yes."
Rourke laughed from across the table and Jason put the ring on my finger and Emma made a loud noise from her bouncer like she understood what had just happened and we all laughed at that and it was the best sound I had heard in a very long time.
Rourke stood up and shook Jason's hand and hugged me and said "I am happy for you both. You deserve this." Then he said he had paperwork to get back to and let himself out and it was just the three of us in the apartment.
Jason and I sat on the couch with Emma between us and I looked at the ring on my finger and I thought about the future. A real future. Not one shadowed by trials or threats or Collin's secrets. Just our future. Mine and Jason's and Emma's.
I thought about the last trial which had ended in a conviction like all the others. I thought about how Vanessa had taken her deal and testified and was serving her reduced sentence. I thought about how Collin's entire organization had been dismantled piece by piece through the work of so many people including me. I thought about how I had testified over and over and never backed down and how that had mattered and would keep mattering.
I thought about all of it and then I let it go.
Not because it did not matter. It did matter and it always would. But I did not need to carry it forward with me anymore. I could put it down now and walk away from it and build something new on the other side of it and that was exactly what I was going to do.
"What are you thinking about," Jason said.
"Everything," I said. "And nothing."
"That sounds about right," he said.
Emma reached up and grabbed his finger and held on and he looked down at her and smiled and I watched him do that and I felt something settle inside me that had been unsettled for a very long time.
This was what peace felt like. I had forgotten. But here it was. Right here in this apartment with this man and this baby and a ring on my finger and nowhere to be afraid of.
"I love you," I said.
"I love you too," Jason said. "Both of you."
Emma made another noise and we both looked at her and laughed and outside the window the city went on the way it always did and inside our apartment, everything was quiet and warm and safe.
Finally and completely safe.
THE END