Elaya nodded her understanding.
“So . . . Does that mean this is over? Once and for all?” Elaya asked them as she looked at Tiara.
Tiara lowered her gaze to the ground. She wished she could say it was over, but that would be far from the truth. She now held a solemn expression on her face.
“What? Why are you looking like that? You don’t have any more crazy assassins coming after you, do you? Or do you think Vincent will come back to steal your inheritance? You said he escaped, right?”
“Yeah, he got away. And the answer to your other questions is, probably both,” Tiara swallowed and gave Elaya a look that let her know that she was done answering questions for the night.
Epilogue
One month later
The day was sunny when she made her way through the cemetery. It was the first time that she’d ever been able to muster up enough courage to show her face at his grave site since he’d been buried. It blew her mind that even from the grave years later, Blake still intimidated her. His tombstone was a large angel, bigger than any of the others in the cemetery, and he was separated from the other burials at the grave site. It was a nice winter day, and the air was rigid, but that didn’t stop Tiara from making footprints in the snow to get to her father.
She was breathing slightly heavy when she finally reached the spot where her father was buried and put her hand on the cold tombstone to wipe some of the snow away. She read the words that were engraved.
Here lays Blake Alexander Rogers. A loved husband, father, and businessman. May he rest peacefully in the arms of forgiveness.
“Hey, Dad,” Tiara said and kissed the tombstone. She felt a breeze on her cheek, and she smiled. “I know, I know. What took me so long, right? I’m sorry.”
Tiara knelt down and talked like her father was kneeling right in front of her, in the flesh.
“I just wasn’t ready to come see you,” she said. “It took me awhile to come to terms with all of this. I never meant for you to die, Dad.”
Tiara took a deep breath. She thought everything in her life would fall into place once she embraced who she truly was, but it turned out that it was both a blessing and a curse. There was still no word on Stevelle, and the biggest piece of her heart prayed that nothing too terrible had happened to him. She prayed to God every day that he was still alive. After all, it was thanks to him that she’d even gotten her father’s empire back.
She’d jumped headfirst into all of her father’s business dealings, even the illegal ones. In only one month, she had revamped his entire operation. With an array of killers by her side that would go if she gave the order, she had no worries about anybody testing her. She learned as she went, and each day she grew a little more gangster. No longer was she that naive green girl that she once had been. Soon, her name would ring bells the same way her father’s had. She was doing good by Blake Rogers’s name and proved that she not only looked like him, but she had his hustle too. She moved back into the house that she’d grown up in, and it took a little getting used to, but after completely redecorating the entire house, minus the basement, she started to feel at home again.
Elaya visited often, even though Tiara told her to stay her phat ass at home. She was due any day now, and the only thing she should have been doing was resting up before she wasn’t allowed to sleep for the next eighteen years.
Through all of her successes, she felt like something wasn’t right in her life. She had forgiven Doctor Pierce for all of the horrible things he had done to her. She had even forgiven Mario for what he’d done to her. But still, something wasn’t settled in her life. Tiara still visited her counselor once a week, and from seeing Tiara for years, he seemed to know exactly what was missing in her life. He told her that she would never be at peace with her past until she faced her last demon. At first, she started to call this ridiculous, but when she thought about it, she knew he was right. So there she stood.
“I saw your video,” Tiara said. “The video of your death. Frank showed it to me before I signed his final check. I heard your last words, and it meant everything to me to know that you didn’t hate me. But still, that didn’t make me hate myself any less for what happened. Your death was my fault. I let Mario into your home, into the home you built from the ground up to protect you from the kind of harm I inflicted! Oh, Daddy, I would do anything to have you here with me. There is still so much that I don’t know. I never knew until now how much I needed you. I wish we could have another chance, but unfortunately, that’s not the way things can be. But I love you with all of my heart.”
Tiara felt another breeze. That one seemed to linger on her cheek, almost as if it were caressing it. A tear came to her eye, but she quickly wiped it away, remembering that her father hated to see her cry.
“Anyway, I have tons of news for you,” she said. “I finally am happy. I’ll spare you the gory details of what has happened to me up until now. We all know how your anger is. I made a new friend, though. She’s amazing. Elaya is the nicest person that you’ll ever meet. She can sometimes have an attitude problem, but that’s usually in the morning. She is
