Judged (The Mercenary Series Book 4)

by Marissa Farrar

  “Vee, we have to go,” X yelled, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me. I wanted to fight him, but my desperate need to be alive for the sake of my daughter allowed my feet to move. I knew we were almost out of time. I couldn’t let Ellie-May die as well.

  My heart tore in two as we ran from the warehouse and out onto the street. My tears blinded me, so I couldn’t even see where I was going, only X’s hand in mine leading the way. We kept going, putting distance between us and the building. It felt like too much time had passed, and I allowed myself to glance back, wondering if perhaps it had all just been one final cruel trick our father had been playing on us, allowing myself a tiny modicum of hope, but as I turned, a blast of hot air hit me, followed by a huge roar and an explosion. Suddenly, pieces of debris were flying all around us, and instinctively I threw my body toward X, not seeking his protection, but trying to shelter my daughter from the pieces of flying building.

  We huddled together. Around us, everything settled, a silence in all the noise. Then a pop and a bang, and a crackle and roar of flames. The building was alight. There was no way anyone inside could have survived that.

  The sound that came out of my mouth wasn’t just a cry, but a howl. A sound no human being should ever have to make.

  The sound of my heart breaking a thousand times over.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  X

  We went back to the house because it was the only place we knew to go. Things weren’t as simple now as they had been almost a year ago, when we’d first met. We had a baby to think about, and that baby needed things. Ellie-May was hungry and needed her diaper changed, and right now Vee wasn’t in any state to cope with doing any of that, never mind on the run.

  Besides, I didn’t think we should run from this.

  I remembered the detective Vee had worked with before on her father’s case, the same detective who’d arrested me for Harvey’s murder. We hadn’t done anything wrong—except for shooting her father, perhaps, but considering his body would have ended up in pieces after the explosion, I figured we could leave that part out.

  I called the detective and explained what had happened.

  The cops arrived within twenty minutes, though others were already attending the warehouse explosion downtown. It had been reported by almost every single person living or working in that area. We were told we shouldn’t have left the scene of the crime, but I explained how we had a tiny baby who’d been severely premature and only been out of the hospital for a matter of weeks. She’d needed to be fed and we hadn’t been able to do anything waiting at the scene of an explosion.

  I explained how Ellie-May had been taken from the house and they were able to see the security system had been tampered with.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, Verity,” Detective Caraway said gently. “I knew how much you loved your sister.”

  She only nodded in return, not meeting his eye.

  Vee answered his questions in detached, one word replies. She was distant again after her emotional outburst at the warehouse, and I was worried she was going to pull into herself again and hide from the pain. But after the police left the house, warning us that they would probably need to ask more questions at a later date, she curled up into my arms and cried against me until my shirt was soaked through. A dam had been opened inside of her, and all the years of grief and pain—not only for her sister, but her mother, too, and what her father had put her through—poured out.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” she said, when she managed to get herself together. “This house has too many memories. I don’t want this life for Ellie-May. I don’t want her one day having to lose the people she loves most in this world.”

  “Shh,” I said, holding her tight. “We’d never let that happen.”

  “It almost happened tonight. Things could have gone a different way. We could have lost her, too. There are too many bad people in this world, and if we stay here, we’ll only end up drawn into someone else’s fight again. I’ve had enough of fighting. I can’t do it anymore.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “You always talked about Mexico.”

  “Bikinis and margaritas on the beach?” I said.

  She gave a cold laugh. “I’m not sure this body of mine is up to a bikini just yet.”

  “Hush, you’re perfect.”

  “Not that it matters. Who cares what I look like when Nickie is dead?”

  We fell into a contemplative silence. There was nothing I could say to make her feel better. She’d lost the sister she’d spent her whole life trying to protect.

  One Year Later

  “Come on, Ellie-May. You can do it.”

  I held out my arms to my daughter as she lifted her bottom into the air and then straightened, so she was upright. She grinned widely at me then moved one of her chubby little legs, taking an ungainly step forward, before plopping back to her bottom on the sand.

  I laughed and clapped my hands. “Hey, you did great. My clever girl.”

  Something cold and wet pressed against the back of my neck, and I squealed before turning to see X pushing a cold bottle of beer into my hands. “Sand isn’t exactly the easiest of surfaces to walk on,” he pointed out.

  “Maybe not, but at least it’s soft when she falls.”

  Ellie-May had made extraordinary advances during the past year. She was still behind on a few developments, but overall no one would guess she almost hadn’t survived birth. She was saying words now—Mama and Dada, and even animals like bird and cat, which she pointed to excitedly as she formed her mouth around the sounds.

  I missed Nicole with every single second that passed. Every cute thing Ellie-May did, I found myself wishing I could tell my sister about it. I’d taken a ton of photographs from my father’s house when we’d left, and I took those occasional quiet moments with my daughter to show her the pictures, pointing at Nickie’s face and telling her, “That’s your Aunt Nickie. She loved you more than anything.”

  X and I were living the quiet life now. As his only surviving relative, I’d inherited my father’s estate, which included not only the house, but a number of other investment properties as well. I didn’t want to have anything that would tie me to the life he’d once lived, so, as soon as I was able to, I sold the house and the other properties. The money was enough to pay all the huge hospital bills off from Ellie-May’s birth and care, and the small amount left was enough for us to move to Mexico. Living was cheap here, and we were able to rent a small house and have enough to live on day to day. I’d handed all my father’s business over to Dylan Ferrera. I thought I could trust him to handle things fairly, without there being more bloodshed. Whatever my initial opinion of him had been, he’d proven himself to be a decent human being.

  I knew at some point in the future we might have to think about going back to America, to get Ellie-May into school and try to integrate into normal life, but I couldn’t think about that right now. My grief still hit me when I least expected it, leaving me breathless and struggling. I found myself going over the last few minutes of Nickie’s life over and over, trying to think of something we could have done differently. I dreamed of telling her she couldn’t come with us when we’d still been at the house, but I knew if that had happened, I’d only have lost someone else. X, most likely. Or even my own life, together with my daughter’s. I tried not to dwell on the revelation my father had made right before he’d died, that Nicole had been the one to tell him about our mother’s affair and that I’d known, too. She’d had no way of knowing what his reaction would be, and, to her young mind, my mother’s affair probably had felt like a very real betrayal. She hadn’t known him then, had only seen him on the pedestal a daughter would often put a father. If only he’d accepted that love for what it was, instead of destroying everything.

  I glanced over to where X was playing with our daughter in the sand. He freaked out if she so much as scraped her knee, and I knew he’d never do a single thing to hurt her. We were a fa
mily, the three of us.

  “She looks like you,” X said, dropping onto the sand beside me and taking a swig of his beer.

  I smiled. “No way, she looks like you.”

  It was a favorite game of ours, arguing which of us our daughter looked like the most. In truth, with her jet black hair and bright blue eyes, she was the perfect combination of the both of us.

  Ellie-May was a walking, talking show of our love for each other, a little girl who had fought her own battles, even at such a young age, and had survived them all. She gave me a reason to keep going, even after my heart had broken, and both she and X were doing everything they could to help heal that heart. It was working, and day after day, things were getting better.

  No more crime. No more killings.

  Just us.

  THE END

  Acknowledgments

  It’s always a bitter sweet moment when I come to the end of a book series. It means saying goodbye to characters I have lived with for a number of years, from the little spark of an idea, right through to typing those final words. I won’t be ashamed to admit I did so this time, as I often do, with a tear in my eye.

  Though the initial writing of a book is a solitary thing, the final production involves lots of people. I would like to say thank you to long term reader and friend Sherri Wyman and her mom, for allowing me to pick her brains about prison etiquette. Apologies for how sadistic the corrections officers were in this book! Any mistakes made were purely my own and done to keep the flow of the story.

  Thank you to a new addition to my team, Joshua Guess, for his content edits and help ironing out some of the technicalities of the US legal system. Joshua is also an author, so please go and check out some of his excellent books on Amazon! Thanks to my long time editor, Lori Whitwam, even if she did call me a cruel and heartless author during her edits for this book! I’m sure she wasn’t the only person who felt that way. She also has a new book out called Dead End Road, which is a romantic suspense, so go check it out.

  Thanks to my proofreaders on this book, Tammy Payne from Book Nook Nuts, and Karey McComish for helping to find those pesky typos that slip through. I hope you enjoyed the final book.

  Finally, thank you to all of my readers—I wouldn’t be where I am without you.

  Thanks for reading!

  Marissa. XXX

  About the Author

  Marissa Farrar has always been in love with being in love. But since she's been married for numerous years and has three young daughters, she's conducted her love affairs with multiple gorgeous men of the fictional persuasion.

  The author of more than twenty five novels, she has been a full time author for the last six years.

  You can visit Marissa’s website at http://www.marissafarrar.com/ or find her at her facebook page, www.facebook.com/marissa.farrar.author.

  She loves to hear from readers and can be emailed at marissafarrar@hotmail.co.uk. To stay updated on all new releases and sales, just sign up to her newsletter! https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/g0x9r0

  Also by the Author

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  DENIED

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  WARPED

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  The Serenity Series:

  Alone (free first novel of the series!)

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  Captured

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  THE COMPLETE SERIES BOXED SET

  The Dhampyre Chronicles:

  Twisted Dreams

  Twisted Magic

  The Spirit Shifters Series:

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  Saving Autumn

  Autumn Rising

  Autumn’s War

  Avenging Autumn

  Autumn’s End

  THE COMPLETE SERIES BOXED SET

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  DIRTY SHOTS

  CUT TOO DEEP

  SURVIVOR

  THE SOUND OF CRICKETS

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  UNDERLIFE

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