Page 89 of Final Vendetta

Chapter Forty

Imogene

Atlanta had always been home, even when I hated it. It wasn’t the city itself I’d wanted to escape. It was the memories.

But now, standing in the bedroom of the house Gideon and I had called home for the past few months so that I could be close to my parents, I saw the skyline differently.

The heavy weight I’d carried for so long wasn’t there anymore. Maybe it was because Samuel Tate,mySamuel, was alive again — legally and in every way that mattered. The powers-that-be had restored his name and his life, and despite everything we’d endured, we were stronger for it.

Not that I’d started calling him Samuel or anything. To me, he would always be Gideon.

I checked my reflection in the mirror, hoping a sundress would be appropriate attire for whatever Gideon had planned today. The cruel bastard he was, he refused to give me any clues. All I knew was he wanted to spend the day making new memories together. To drown out the old memories this date held for both of us. After all, it was on this date six years ago I thought I lost him.

But he somehow found his way back to me.

And despite everything we endured, we managed to come out stronger.

Mere months ago, I didn’t think I’d ever see Gideon again, let alone be able to start a life with him. I thought I’d die in that cell where Myers had imprisoned me, suffocating in darkness with only concrete walls and hopelessness for company.

And when all hell broke loose after I stabbed Myers, I thought I doomed us all. But I’d rather go down fighting than simply accept my fate.

Thankfully, Henry showed up like an avenging angel just when we needed him the most.

He had next to nothing to go on. Just the license plate of a van that turned out to be a dead end and what Gideon had told him during their last conversation — that the man who took me confessed to being the man who also held him captive.

So Henry focused on that thread. It was thin, fragile, but thankfully it was enough.

He went back through the files Gideon had taken the night he killed McGuire. There wasn’t much at first, just stacks of financials and coded transactions, but Henry dug deeper. He eventually traced a phone number McGuire frequently called to a pilot.

That in and of itself wasn’t a giant red flag, but it made Henry suspicious, so he had some of his field agents track him down. After some forceful persuasion, he discovered the pilot often flew McGuire to one of three locations — Maine, Oklahoma, or Palmdale, California.

It may have been nothing, but Henry knew he had to do something, so he reached out to Melanie’s father, Alexander, and they joined forces to storm a compound outside of Palmdale the pilot confessed to have driven him.

The FBI was horrified by what they found inside. Cages, recordings, and a vast network of atrocities orchestrated byMyers. Properties in Oklahoma and Maine tied to him revealed even more horrors.

As Gideon suspected, Myershadabducted Liam shortly after the recording of James Turner’s conversation with Brian McGuire was leaked to the media. Then, to make sure it never came back to him, he requested to be assigned the case investigating Liam.

The entire investigation was essentially a game to Myers. An “experiment”, as he called them.

And over the past several years, Myers had conducted hundreds of these experiments. The authorities said it would take years to unravel the full extent of Myers’ twisted operations and identify all the victims.

All to feed his sadistic need to push people to their limits. To control them.

But he was gone and we could finally live the life we once dreamed about.

Now that we were back in Atlanta, Gideon’s focus was on the community center he’d founded all those years ago, teaching at-risk kids how to channel their anger and aggression into martial arts. As for me, I ended my contract with the soccer team in San Diego earlier than I’d originally planned and start my own practice here in Atlanta. I still primary treated athletes, but I was now able to make my own schedule.

A sudden chiming cut through, the doorbell pulling me out of my thoughts. I checked the app on my phone, finding a man in a courier’s uniform on our front porch with a small envelope in his hand.

I tried to bite down the grin begging to be set free as I rushed out of the bedroom and down the stairs, eagerly flinging the door wide.

“Imogene Prescott?”

“Yes,” I responded breathlessly.

He handed me the envelope with a polite nod before disappearing down the walkway.

Unable to contain my enthusiasm, I tore it open and unfolded the single sheet inside. A familiar, masculine script greeted me.

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