The Boss(hole) by Penelope Bloom
Epilogue - Adrian
One Year Later
Juliette and I decided to get married in the Italian countryside. We wanted a small wedding, but the venue was still incredible. The place reminded me of the screen saver on my old Windows computer. It was all vibrant green rolling hills and crystal blue skies. We were staying at an old manor estate that had been converted into a sort of hotel slash museum.
Our group rented the place out and we had enough room for all our guests to stay there. I’d invited Noah, Travis, and Jordan. Juliette invited Lythe, Anastasia, and her mom. Once we moved back to North Carolina, Jules had reconnected with her friend, Anastasia, and started hanging out with Lythe regularly. The three of them all launched a new business together, too. The concept was that people could rent personal assistants for short windows every day or even on a one-off basis. It turned out to be wildly popular.
Smaller businesses without the budget for full time assistants and larger places with temporary needs swooped in immediately and Jules’ business had been forced to keep growing to keep up. Now they were a bustling company with over seventy employees and getting bigger every day. More importantly, she was genuinely happy.
I found I hardly thought about Russ Coleton or Coleton Enterprises anymore. Noah had mostly taken over finalizing the demolition of everything Russ Coleton stood for. It had taken just over seven months to get him convicted and behind bars for a minimum of thirty years. It stung a little that it was the financial crimes that got him in far more legal trouble than the crimes against humanity, but I decided punishment was punishment. Coleton Enterprises was financially devastated, just as we’d predicted. Investors raced to sell their shares, value plummeted, pending foreign deals collapsed, and Coleton found itself having to sell off parts of itself to survive. But Coleton was never built to exist as anything but an ever-expanding giant. Once it lost its hold on the market, competitors stepped in to push them out.
The cream on top was the article written about it all that attributed Coleton’s fall to corruption. Maybe it wasn’t going to really mean anything in the long run, but I knew it was my legacy. That article would be the monument I’d leave behind to remind CEOs what can happen if they think they’re too big and powerful to get caught.
But all of that felt like another life already.
I was sitting in a vaulted stone hall with roaring fires on either end in elaborate hearths. The room was filled with laughter and conversation as my friends and Jules’ talked. Our wedding was tomorrow, and I was damn happy to know I’d put the last ring on her finger and make sure the whole fucking world knew she was off limits. She’d be mine.
Jordan nudged me. “This place is beautiful. You did good.”
“Jules gave me a very clear idea of what she wanted. I just found it.”
“Well, it’s gorgeous. If I ever tie the knot, I may steal it and just use this venue, too.”
I grinned. “Jordan Terranova talking about marriage? Are my ears working correctly?”
She smiled. “I don’t know. It has a little appeal to it. You know, now that I’m not consumed by the need for revenge every waking minute.”
“It’s funny how that changes your perspective, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Now I’m just realizing how all the men I know are either your friends, shitty, or both.”
I chuckled. “Being my friend means you wouldn’t date them?”
“Yes. But it looks like your bride to be is waiting for you. You should go be with her. She looks beautiful.”
“She always does. And hey, Jordan. I’m glad to hear you’re ready to get back in the saddle.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I just took it from zero possibility to a fraction of a percent. I’m not about to go searching for Mr. Right. I’ve still got a life to live and a new job, thank you very much.”
Juliette wasn’t looking at me by the time I headed her way. She was sitting in an old-fashioned leather chair while her mom braided her long blonde hair. Jules’ eyes were closed and she was smiling. “That feels so nice,” she said.
I stopped and watched her for a little while. That was the girl who changed everything. I was glad to know she’d changed her own life, too. Maybe the best part was that she’d found a new side of her mom in all of this. Her brother, Mikey, unfortunately wasn’t the same case. He’d tried to launch himself into the head role at Coleton in its dying days and wound up getting jailed for a handful of years on some lesser fraud charges.
Juliette rolled her head to the side and noticed me. “You going to just watch, or will you let my mom teach you how to do this so you can help?”
I grinned. “You want me to braid your hair?”
“Your future wife demands it.”
She had been using that shit for months, but it still made me chuckle. My future wife had also stopped taking her birth control, and I’d particularly enjoyed the first time “my future wife” demanded that I put a baby in her belly.
We found out last week that she was pregnant, and we’d both agreed to sneakily work it into our wedding vows. I was looking forward to seeing everyone’s reaction when they realized tomorrow.
Hell, I was looking forward to everything about tomorrow, the day after, and every other day to come where I got to know Juliette was mine.
I never went out looking for the perfect ending, but it wound up bumping mouth-first into my erection in an airplane bathroom, just like I always imagined it would.
The End
You know that instinct to run when something bad is coming?
Yeah. I apparently missed out on that one.
Because Damon Rose came, and instead of running, I got pregnant.
Read My (Mostly) Secret Baby
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