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Gently peeling apart a golden envelope, she pulled out a drawing, and her mouth fell open.
“I wanted to find your old camera. The one you had when we met, as I thought you might have had photos of your parents on there. Unfortunately, I couldn’t and it’s likely been destroyed.”
Ollie’s expression confirmed that as my eyes flicked to him. He’d requested searches at every facility. Not one camera was found. Of course, photographic evidence would be the first thing to be destroyed.
“I found a photo of your parents online. Well, Dec did after we did a lot of digging. It was in an article that was posted about what happened at your home. You and Rhylie weren’t in it, but I added you, and I hope you feel it looks right.”
The drawing in her hand was her family—the people who had created and raised the person who’d completed mine.
The truth was, I could have spent a fortune on her, and I would, tonight, online, buy her anything she wanted, but I wanted something special, something with thought and meaning.
“I love it,” she whispered. “I love it so much.”
Her fingers moved over her mother, father, and her sister. “They’re perfect. It’s perfect.”
“You can pick out a frame later.”
Her smile was contagious and beautiful and hard to pull my eyes away from.
Ollie’s phone rang in the background, but he ignored it, muting the call without looking.
Pulling Cat onto my body, I took her to other counter, to a birthday cake that I’d made myself, and fuck, was it a challenge.
I’d never insult her baking skills again.
A cinnamon roll cake with cream cheese frosting sat before us.
Her pretty mouth watered.
Dec moved in. “You know, Remi made that all by himself, and he wouldn’t let anyone in the kitchen, which makes me question what that white jizz-looking stuff is on top.”
“It’s cream cheese, dickhead.”
“And yet it looks like something that came straight out of your dick head.”
Cat found the joke funnier than I did and found me smearing the white jizz-looking stuff on her nose and me sucking it off even funnier.
Ollie’s phone rang again. “God, Karma, are you that desperate to say happy birthday?”
Karma had met Cat the day before last. He’d stopped in and had a pizza with us, which had rarely happened in the past, but with Ollie officially the boss now, we had no one to answer to when The Facility was left vacant.
Ollie put his phone on loudspeaker. “Go for it.”
“Happy birthday, Cat! I hope it’s truly amazing, but that’s not exactly why I called.”
“What is it?”
“God, Ollie. I shut down a house in New York.”
“And...?”
“And I found a picture of your girl there.”
“Loren? Did you find her?” So many thoughts rushed to catch up with Ollie’s quick words.
I glanced to the floor, expecting to see his heart there.
“No.”
“What was it? Like, an I.D. photo?”
Karma’s voice came in again. “No. She was in a picture, framed on the wall, in a fucking wedding dress.”
Deflated, Ollie wiped his eyes, pushing the stress away. “It’s probably just someone who looks sim—”
His phone pinged, and a photo appeared on the screen of the woman he’d shown Dec and me countless times, in a wedding dress, hands linked with a monster.
Loren.
The End
