Page 126 of Revenge (Corrupt Empire 3)

“I’ve not heard that sound in a long time nor you making jokes.”

“Another thing you can thank Avery for,” I replied, still chuckling.

“It seems I have a lot of things to be grateful for when it comes to your wife.”

I looked down at my girl. She was eying me warily because she could only hear my side of the conversation.

“Anyway, I should go. I said I’d make lunch for the girls.”

“Okay, I’ll speak to you soon.”

I hung up, dropping the phone on the arm of the sofa before I leant down and stole a kiss from my wife who was about to open her mouth to speak.

“What were you saying about me?” she asked when I pulled back a little.

“Only nice things, princess.”

“I take it from your smile that things are okay.”

“Things will be fine… eventually.”

I wasn’t going to stay angry with her forever. It was time to let go of the past.

“Come on, there’s something we need to do,” I said, changing the subject.

“What?” she asked as she sat up.

“Something we should’ve done a long time ago, princess.”

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Both of us stood in the cemetery side by side. Avery hadn’t really wanted to come, but we needed to.

“She was here this whole time,” she said.

“Yeah… I guess she was.”

The one thing Rick told us before he left was where they’d put Lizzie. In Avery’s family’s plot no less. Nick had told him before he died. Mitchell had been insistent about it. What better place to hide a body than in a fucking cemetery. They’d paid handsomely to keep it quiet.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah… It’s kind of a relief to know where she is, you know. Are you?”

We were going to have a gravestone put here for her at some point, but it wasn’t urgent. Just knowing she was laid to rest made me feel better about saying goodbye. That was why I’d brought Avery here. So I could let go.

“Yeah… I never really said goodbye either.”

She squatted down and placed a white rose on her parent’s graves. She put a hand on the gravestone.

“Mum… Dad… There’s a lot of things I want to say to you, but not a lot of them are good. I’ll always love you because you’re my parents, but that doesn’t negate what you’ve done. If I come to visit again, it won’t be to see you. I hope you understand that. I wish you’d lived so I could’ve said this to your faces. Told you how much trouble you brought, but it’s okay. Your empire crumbled and that’s good enough for me.”

She rose to her feet and tucked herself under my arm and wrapped a hand around my waist, giving me a squeeze. I kissed the top of her head, knowing how hard it was for her to be here, but ultimately, she had to do this. For her own sake.

I stared down at the plot where my mother lay for the longest time.

“I wasn’t sure what I’d say when I got here,” I started. “And now I am here, I still don’t know.”

This was harder than I expected. There were so many things I wanted to say to her, but the words failed me. So I decided to tell her about the one thing I could talk about.

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