Page 17 of His Dangerous Secret

Michael’s body hits the ground and Riggs is on him, pummeling him with his fists, his face red with rage.

Men pour in through the door, dressed in black tactical gear with machine guns drawn and raised high.

The FBI!

It’s all too much. My body just gives in and my knees go weak.

Yeah. It’s time to pass out now…

Epilogue

Riggs

Three years later…

The cool, crisp air fills my lungs as I step out of the barn into the afternoon light. The sun is high above the treetops, glistening in the bright blue sky without a single cloud to be seen. Somewhere back beyond the house I hear a chickadee’s call.

It’s so much nicer out here, away from the city, away from all the madness of my past. I can finally catch my breath now that I’m no longer part of a criminal enterprise.

I still think about it from time to time – the day I turned my father in. The day he almost killed me.

The day I almost killed him…

I would have if the agents hadn’t pulled me off him. And I would have been dead if not for the bulletproof vest I put on before confronting him in the kitchen. And thank God I came in when I did.

I gave the feds everything they needed to build a case on him. He w

ent down, got life in prison, and the whole empire went with him. Some of the agents were suspicious; they were sure it was a coup staged by the younger son wanting to take over his father’s position, so I let them keep their eyes on me for the next year.

I left the city, opened up my shop, and never looked back.

“Riggs! Honey, are you in the barn?”

Oh, and having her at my side makes it pretty damn easy.

“I’m out back!” I call in response. As my beautiful wife comes around the corner of the barn, I’m reminded again of just how much of a lucky bastard I am. She looks like the goddess she is in a white and yellow sundress with my baby boy in her arms.

We wasted no time getting married. As soon as I got over the blunt force trauma of taking a bullet to the chest, I was down on one knee proposing. Three days later we were married, and ten months later we were a family.

“Working hard or hardly working?” I grin at Mary, Ava’s mom, as she saunters up beside me and gives me her patented “friendly” slap on the shoulder.

“If you women wouldn’t bother me, I’d be working hard,” I chuckle, taking my boy from Ava as she hands him to me. “And how’s my little man doing?”

“He’s tired,” Ava whispers, kissing him on his head.

“I was just going to put him down for a nap,” Mary says. “Unless you want to give him a hammer and chisel and put him to work, Riggs?”

It’s no mystery where Ava got all her spunk from; Mary, despite what she’s been through, has a never-ending supply of it and loves to use it.

“I’ll give him a few years before I have him slaving away on the furniture,” I reply.

Mary takes him and brings him into the house, and I take my wife’s hand and lead her into the shop.

“Is it finished?” she asks with excitement. I’ve been working on a commission, one of my biggest yet – a full bedroom set for a client up in Vermont. It’s a huge job, but it will pay the bills for the next six months.

“What do you think?”

As they always do, my wife’s beautiful eyes light up when she sees my work. Before I met Ava, I never fully realized just how much a woman could make a man feel complete. Now, with her by my side, I understand just how truly lost I was until I met her.

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