Page 130 of Lost in the Moonlight

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They kept me for two damn days in the hospital. My parents hovered, the media tried to sneak in, and the authorities came and went with multiple questions. But by the time I got home, by the time Axel was going inside to clear the house ahead of us, Willow had moved her things from her mother’s cottage into mine, which made coming back a true homecoming for me.

The bodyguard who’d picked us up from the hospital with Axel drove the SUV right up to the back door in order to avoid the media that had flooded Cherry Bay. Axel stepped out of the house and said, “You’re clear. We’ve got men out front and out back, but the press has mostly stayed at the end of the street. They’ve been respectful, even when your parents were staying here.”

Willow started toward the door, and the hands we had tangled together tugged at her as I held my ground. She looked back at me, puzzled. I gave her fingers a little squeeze, saying, “Go on in, Sweetness. I want to talk to Axel for a moment.”

She darted worried eyes between us but then did as I’d asked.

Silence settled for a moment while I watched Axel’s man standing near the garage, scanning the surroundings behindmirrored sunglasses. Another man had stood there just days ago and lost his life in the dead of the night.

“Your man…the one who died…I’d like to do something for the family.”

“We’ve taken care of them,” Axel said, lips tight.

“I imagine you have, but for my own sake, I need to do something too. One of the news articles mentioned he had kids, right?” When Axel nodded, I said, “I’d like to start a fund for them. They can use it for college or trade school or to start a business—whatever they need for their future.”

Axel’s throat bobbed. “That’s generous of you.”

“He lost his life protecting mine. Protecting Willow.”

“You protected yourselves better than we did,” Axel grunted, and I saw the remorse I was so familiar with echoed in his eyes.

“I don’t know who it was that first said it, but if someone really wants to kill you, they’ll find a way, right? Hate and evil keep coming until it wins or is stopped. You stopped Jennings. I stopped Aaron. I think we can call it a draw.”

I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but I felt them on me, weighing what I’d said, weighing me.

“I’ll send you his family’s details.” He ran a hand over his shorn head. “Just so you know, Jennings died. Never regained consciousness, but we believe he got the gun from Aaron.”

“What? How?”

“In Jennings’s journals, he wrote about a man approaching him who wanted the same thing he wanted—you and Willow dead. The man gave him the gun, and from the way Jennings described him, it had to be Aaron.”

“How did Aaron find us?”

“Poco.”

I cussed under my breath, and Axel continued, “After his brother died, Aaron posted a wanted ad on the dark web for Willow. Poco saw it and had cashed in on it even before he sent the photos of the two of you toThe Exhibitor.”

“You arresting him?”

“No one can find him. Whatever he was shoveling in the graveyard must have had him digging his own grave with Paul,” Axel replied. Knowing eyes met mine as we both remembered Paul and his men taking Poco into the back room. Maybe it was another scale I’d have to balance at the end of my time on this earth, but it felt fitting to know he’d suffered.

Axel stepped away and said, “If you need anything, anything at all, you call me.”

He gave a chin nod to his man at the garage and then strode toward the street and the half dozen black SUVs waiting there.

When I walked into the kitchen, it smelled like sugar and spice and everything nice. It smelled like Willow. A pink box sat on the counter, lid opened, and when I glanced inside, I saw she’d finished another piece of food art. Stunning golden foliage littered the surface of a garden path with a starry sky over the top of it.

“You finished your Gustav Klimt?” I asked.

“More like art inspired by him. I found the print online, and it spoke to me more than his actual work.”

“The gold is stunning combined with the blue. It’s beautiful, Willow.” I closed my eyes and let the smells run through me. Berries. Butter. Vanilla. “It’s decadent. Too pretty for anyone to eat.”

She waved at more pink boxes stacked behind her on the counter. “I have the individual desserts over there.”

I eased toward her, wrapped my good arm around her waist, and drew her into me. “You’ve been busy.”

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