by J. A. Huss
I’m picked up. Carried at a run by Five.
And I have never tasted anything sweeter than his kiss on my lips and the fresh, clear air when we finally make it outside.
Epilogue - Five
Two weeks later
Corruption kills everything.
It’s something my grandfather said often when we were together. And I always wondered what he meant, since he was, after all, one of the most corrupt people I’ve ever known.
Societies rise through trust and they fall by corruption.
Lies.
I’m not trying to say he was a good guy, but he did redeem himself in the end.
At least that’s how I see it.
Wen’s people got us out of Princeton that night two weeks ago. Damian Li had made a deal to end his reign by taking down his own people. He made a database of names. Every corrupt official in the local Hong Kong government. He sent me to Fort Collins that day I met with Jack Joseph to retrieve a code I had written years before to help him infiltrate the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau in Hong Kong. He was going to team up with Wen to bring it all down. And after his death, Wen came to me. To give me a chance to get out and set things right at the same time.
I gave him that code. And the database that Cliff handed off to me after we met over the summer. Turns out Cliff Middleton had big dreams of bringing down world corruption as well. He was working with Wen the entire time.
Wen set the code to work in the government systems without anyone knowing it was him. In the past week, more than seven hundred people have been imprisoned in China for being on the Triad take.
It’s just a start. One Triad does not a sweep make.
But it’s more than Wen had before, and he’s hopeful now. He sees Hong Kong’s government as something his people should be able to trust.
I can respect that.
Rory was sick for days afterward, but she’s getting better every day. We took her to a specialist, who came up with the name of the poison—a derivative of ricin, which was thought to be untreatable until a few years ago.
I didn’t want to know any more about that. All I wanted was for my princess to be OK.
Two weeks on and she’s almost back to normal, and all the medical experts Spencer Shrike flew in on the recommendation of my uncle James say she’d be dead by now if that antidote the blonde woman gave her hadn’t worked.
Dead by now.
I want to fucking kill someone just thinking about how close she came.
“Hey,” Rory says, walking up to me and sitting down on the sand.
“Hey yourself,” I say, smiling at her. She’s wearing a pink bikini and white sunglasses. “How’s things?”
This is my code phrase for, How are you feeling today?
She wraps her arm into mine, twining us together. The way it was always meant to be. “I miss her,” Rory says, meaning Tera. “And him too,” she adds. Meaning Cliff.
“I know,” I say, pulling her into a tight hug. “But they’d be happy for you. That you made it out.”
She leans into me and says, “We made it, Five. Together. That’s the way it was always supposed to be.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And I got you to agree to marry me for real.”
She smiles at that. Then her smile falters. “I wish I could tell my sisters. And I wish my parents could be here too.”
“We talked about this, Princess. Uncle James got here to the island in secret. No one knows you’re alive. No one knows I was in Princeton that night. Well, except Chen and he’s dead.”
Motherfucker. That’s what he gets for betraying my grandfather.
That toxicology came back too. Same thing as what they used on Rory in that weird deathtrap down in the Palladium basement. Turns out those mansions were built over some secret tunnels used for the Underground Railroad back in the day.
Lucky for us.
“I’m not complaining,” she says.
“I know that,” I reply. “But it’s OK to be sad, ya know. You can’t ever go home again. Ever. And only Sparrow, Belle, and Kate, and our parents know you’re alive. If they”—and by they I mean whoever the fuck these Palladium people are—“know you’re alive, they’ll find you, Rory. Use you to get to me. So you’re staying here with Uncle James. You’ll have him, and Harper, and the kids.”
“Kids,” she says, wistfully.
“And I’ll be back as often as I can slip away. We won’t be apart forever, ya know. It’s all gonna work out in the end.”
“I know,” she says. But she’s sad.
Which is why now is the perfect time to give her my present.
I pull the small box out of my pocket. It’s wrapped in white paper with a pink satin bow. “What’s this?” she asks, But her smile is big. Bigger than any smile I’ve seen on her face since I came back into her life and fucked it all up.
“Just a little something to make it easier,” I say. “That’s all. Open it.”
“Five Aston,” she says. “What did you do now?” But her fingers are already pulling on the bow. It slips off and falls into the sand beside her. When she rips the white paper off the box and opens it up, she frowns. “A flash drive,” she says dryly. “Thanks. I’ll treasure it always.”
“Don’t be a silly princess,” I say. And then I hand her my phone and say, “Plug it in.”
She does, and the phone comes to life as the code in the drive activates.
I watch her watch the screen, and then the little icon appears.
“Dead Notes.” She makes a funny face. “What the hell is this?”
“I made the first version of this app back when I was a kid. It’s… kinda morbid and it never took off the way I thought it would. But it makes people feel better.”
“What’s it do?” she asks.
“It’s a messaging system. For loved ones who’ve passed away. You call the cell phone of the person you lost and they pick up. Their voicemail greeting. So people can leave you a message. It’s only one-way, of course. The dead can’t reply. But it makes those left behind feel better. Feel like they can talk to you. And since you’re not really dead, it’ll make you feel better too. Your sisters can call. And you can keep up with them.”
She starts to cry.
I pull her into my lap and let her.
It’s hard to walk away from your life and live in secret. She’s allowed to grieve for her loss, even though neither of us died.
She’s losing everything right now, and I want to make it better.
“Your parents will come,” I say, dragging a piece of hair out of her wet and teary eyes to tuck it behind her ear. “Every year, during their Disney trip so no one suspects anything. And my parents will come too. Kate can come. And Sparrow and Belle. Maybe eventually… one day… we’ll be safe again. We’ll know we won and we’ll leave this place and rejoin the world. But in the meantime, Princess, we’re gonna live our happily ever after right here.”
Safe.
Together.
Till death do us part.
It’s not much, but it’s all I can offer for now.
One day she’ll get the real happily ever after. She’ll get the real wedding. But until then, we’re not gonna give up or stop living.
So I stand up and pull her off the sand so she’s standing with me.
There’s a postcard-perfect sunset tonight. And a cool breeze to go with it.
And I whisper in her ear the only other thing I can think of that might make her smile again.
“Let’s make babies while we wait.”
END OF BOOK SHIT
Can you believe it’s been three and a half years since I published the first appearance of Five in Guns? I can’t. If you’re reading this book, and this EOBS, then you’re probably a fan. And you know what this part of the book is all about. Just a place for me talk it all out.
Wow. I’m still awed and amazed at the response I’ve gotten for a series that started my career as a romance writer.
Tragic publishe
d in May 2013 and it found its audience almost immediately. Some of that had to do with the special pricing, some of it had to do with a Book of the Day promo opportunity I had with the people over at Ereader News Today, and some of it was probably because of that cover. I had an agent tell me once that the cover was awful and I should change it immediately if I wanted to try and shop it to a “real” publisher.
I ended up telling that agent to fuck off, and even though I did change the covers eventually, it wasn’t because I hated that cherry one. It was just because I really didn’t know what I was doing when I made those first three covers.
The cherry cover might’ve been a mistake, but it was an honest one. And even though branding the covers in the series was a good idea, no one (and I do mean no one) has ever said, “Damn, Julie. I love that second Tragic cover so much! I need it on my bookshelf!”
But they do say that about the cherry one, bitches. They do.
Most of why Tragic took off and the rest of the series did so well (and has remained one of my most beloved stories), was because I put a lot of truth into those books. I think there’s a little bit of me in each of my books, but especially Rook & Ronin series. It’s hard for me to choose a favorite female character because I love Rook, Ronnie, and Ashleigh so much more than any of the others. Especially Rook and Ronnie. They are my two favorite female characters after Sasha. But Sasha was part of this series too… so it’s fitting that all my best girls came early. It might just be because I’ve known them the longest. They feel like childhood friends, not new friends. But it might just be that I gave them more opportunities to grow. I gave them bigger problems. I raised the stakes to unbelievable levels. And I never gave any of them an easy way out.
I wanted Rory to be testament to these women who came before her. I wanted her to suffer so that the end, when it finally came, was sweeter. A little more delicious. And a tiny bit bitter at the same time.
No, her ending (so far) isn’t perfect. But neither was Rook’s. Ronnie and Ash didn’t get that perfect ending in Guns, either. And Jesus, no one who read Sasha’s end in Wasted Lust would think she got a perfect happily ever after.
Because you don’t get to erase your past. You just have move forward and learn to live with it. Make the most of the lessons you learned and try to make better choices in the future. That’s all you can do. And that’s all anyone should expect of you.
I have also spent the most time with these people. And yeah, to me—they are people. Not just characters. And I’m pretty sure my fans think the same way about them.
Some people might be asking… Will you ever stop writing about this world? And even though if you had asked me this question two years ago I’d have said yes, that answer today is a very firm, NO.
I won’t. Not as long as I love the story I’m telling and I assure you, I’m still in love with it. ;)
It’s kinda confusing with two generations (and we’re coming up on the third, bitches, just you wait…) but whatever. People can jump into these books in lots of places. Then if they like what they read, they can go back, start it from the beginning—and there’s plenty of beginnings to choose from—and get the whole story.
But for the sake of new readers—those who haven’t yet read the entire saga, I’m gonna explain how all the books connect.
The Rook and Ronin series are first generation and the books, in order, go like this:
Tragic, Manic, Panic – all three focus on Rook & Ronin love story and introduce Ford Aston and Spencer Shrike. Then Slack and Taut –both of which are about Ford looking for love and finding it with Ashleigh. Sasha Cherlin also makes her first appearance in the book Slack. Bomb and Guns are about Spencer and Ronnie finding their happily ever after while also dealing with the aftermath of what happened at the end of Panic. At the end of Guns we get two happy moments—Ford’s first biological child (Five) is born and then we skip ahead six years to Princess Shrike’s first day of kindergarten.
They are already destined to be together in Guns, but we gotta move on and get more stories in before they can grow up and get their own book…
So we start a new series, which was called Dirty, Dark, and Deadly (and the books were called Come, Come Back, and Coming for You) but it’s now called The Company. The Company books feature James Fenici (Uncle James in this Five Book), his love interest, Harper Tate, and… tada… our little Sasha from Slack (who is also “related” to Five in a weird way.)
After Coming for You winds down, I have a book about Merc. He’s been in so many books by this time… (Slack, Taut, Guns, Come Back, Coming for You) that he needed his own book. That’s called Meet Me in the Dark and also features Sasha, all grown up.
After that, Sasha, who is now an adult, needs to find her happy ending, so I gave her a book called Wasted Lust. Five and all the Rook & Ronin kids are in this book for the very first time. They are all small still. Just kids. But their names are already familiar. Kate. Sparrow and Starling. Rory, Belle, Jasmine, and Ariel. And little Oliver makes his first appearance as Spencer Shrike’s very first son. Pre-teen Five has developed an app “that will change death as we know it”. Just a hint at what’s to come later…
The “final” book in this world was supposed to be the Happily Ever After novella. That’s when we meet Cinderella, Ronnie and Spencer’s final princess. Better known as Cindy… but I’m getting to that. In HEA, Five and Rory are teenagers. They’re at a crossroads. Five needs to go away to college. He’s a genius, like his father. And he’s got plans. That’s where the love story between Five and Rory starts. That’s where he hands her the Love Notes app as her Christmas present. And that’s where he makes his promise to never forget her.
Now, things diverge a little because we start a brand new series called The Misters. Five books about five men, and one extra… to make six total Misters. The Shrike sisters appear in this series too. All grown up – every single one of them in some way. Sparrow and Starling are there. Sasha gets a mention or two. Rook, Ronin, Ronnie, Spencer, Ford, and Ashleigh all get hinted at. And a brand new mystery starts.
This is how the Five book converges with the Mister books. And this is why the final Mister book (Mr. & Mrs.) will be the last book for this series.
It took me a LONG time to get here. I realize that. I know that most of you have been patiently waiting for Five and Rory since he was first mentioned in Guns way back in April of 2014. But even though I write fast and publish often, I don’t believe in rushing a book. If I don’t have a story, I don’t start the book. And even though I had quite a few possibilities for a Five and Rory story, none of them felt right to me. So I put it on hold until halfway through the Misters when I realized… there it was.
So all the apologies for taking so long to get this book out to you. I just didn’t want to rush it. I hope it was everything you wanted. Or at the very least, it was satisfying, even if it wasn’t what you imagined.
Thanks for reading, you guys. If you’ve enjoyed my books, please don’t forget to leave a review where you purchased it. I’m STILL INDIE! And as I’m sure you’re aware, Indie authors need all the help from fans to get the word out about their books.
Julie
JA Huss
Mr & Mrs
MR & MRS
BY JA HUSS
Edited by RJ Locksley
Copyright © 2017 by J. A. Huss
All rights reserved.
ISBN-978-1-944475-30-7
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
DESCRIPTION
Is it the wedding of the century? Or a disaster in the making?
All the Misters are gathered together on Five’s island paradise for the most outrageous wedding in the history of weddings. Mr. Perfect wants one last dream-date with Ellie. Mr. Romantic is trying to learn how to be a �
�girl-dad”. Mr. Corporate needs to know why his adopted son is sneaking out at night. Mr. Mysterious is on a bizarre scavenger hunt for his crazy Cinderella. Mr. Match is desperate to give Katya the dream wedding. And Mr. Five… well, Five didn’t raise his family on a secluded tropical island just so his teenage daughter could up and leave one day.
It’s a wild ride featuring a crazy cave adventure, swimming pigs and feral little girls, a boy who wants to be like his father, a detective looking for his sugar cookie, kittens climbing up a wedding dress, and Five. Who will need to redefine what “paradise” is, because his princess has put her foot down.
Mr. Perfect, Mr. Romantic, Mr. Corporate, Mr. Mysterious, and Mr. Match found what they were looking for and now it’s time to seal the deal. Five Aston hasn’t quite found his happily ever after yet… not quite. But he will. And he’s about to host the party of the century for all his family and friends.
If you loved Happily Ever After, you can’t miss this one either. It’s the delicious cherry on top of the most perfect dessert and all your favorite characters will be back for one… final… swoon-worthy story.
Chapter One - FIVE
My queen is scared as she looks out over our little lagoon in the Caribbean. I’m holding her hand, squeezing it tight, anticipating her emotions as they ebb and swell like the waves crashing on our private island beach.
“It’s gonna be fine,” I whisper into her ear, trying to get my words past the wind.
She nods, but her eyes never leave the horizon.
