Page 99 of Wicked Mafia Beast
"I know." Onyx looks at me. Her blue eyes soft, the scar on her temple catching the light, the ring glowing on her finger. "I really did."
I take the phone from her hand. "Sloane."
Dead silence on the other end. Then, cautiously: "Hi. Hello. Beast man."
"Dinner. This weekend. Bring wine. I'll cook. Deal?"
Another silence. Then, "Oh my God. He's inviting me to dinner. At the lair. Onyx, he's inviting me to DINNER."
"He does that. He feeds people. It's his love language with family and friends."
"I'll be there. With wine. And questions. SO MANY questions."
"You’re Onyx’s best friend so I'm counting on it." I hand the phone back to Onyx and press my lips to her temple, right over the scar. "Your friend is loud."
"She's perfect." Onyx ends the call and tosses the phone onto the nightstand. She turns into me, her hand settling on my chest, her body warm and loose and entirely mine. "Thank you. For inviting her."
"She matters to you. So she matters to me."
Onyx is quiet for a moment, her thumb tracing lazy circles over the rose tattoo. Then her hand drifts down and settles on her stomach. Her expression turns pensive. I sense her needing to tell me something I already know, but I wait for her to make the first move.
I have a feeling this is about the pharmacy bag on the bathroom counter. She’s left it unopened since the day I put it there.
I press my lips to her hair and let the warmth of her body carry me to sleep.
Whatever comes next, we face it together.
Epilogue
Onyx
Six Months Later
The New York Times publishes the Malone exposé on a Tuesday.
I read it on my laptop at the kitchen counter of The Foundry, drinking coffee from a mug with a chipped handle, wearing a henley that stopped belonging to Kon approximately four months ago when I claimed it as a permanent wardrobe fixture. The article fills three full pages of the digital edition with my byline at the top in clean, black type.
Onyx Rose Malone.
My name, my words, my truth.
The article is devastating. I compressed two years of investigation into a narrative that traces the Malone empire from its roots in Boston to its rot in Chicago, connecting trafficking operations to political corruption to the systematic destruction of anyone who got in the way. Declan's testimony anchors the financial section. Luca's intelligence fills the gaps my own research couldn't reach. And my mother's story,Catherine Malone's slow, deliberate destruction at the hands of a man who called it "managing liabilities," forms the emotional core that elevates the piece from journalism to indictment.
By noon, my inbox has forty-seven emails. Editors from publications that rejected me, the same people who turned down my applications with polite form letters and handwritten notes that saidMalone influence, see attached.Now they're falling over themselves to offer assignments, columns, staff positions, anything to attach their masthead to the journalist who just detonated one of Chicago's most powerful families.
I delete every one.
I don't need their validation anymore. The woman who needed approval from editors in Manhattan to feel legitimate died somewhere between an underground auction and a converted foundry. The woman who replaced her writes from a desk that smells like cedar and old paper and publishes her truth on her own terms.
Kon sets a fresh cup of coffee beside my laptop and leans against the counter, scanning the article over my shoulder. He's read every draft but he reads the published version anyway, his dark eyes moving through the text with the quiet focus he gives to everything that matters.
"I delivered a copy to your uncle and your father this morning," he says, his voice low and even. "Thought they should see your byline."
My chest tightens. I wrap my hands around the warm mug and stare at the screen. A dozen questions tumble to sit on the edge of my tongue but I hold them back. Where are they? What didSeamus's face look like when he read it? Is my father eating? Is he sleeping? Does he think of me?
I don't ask. Some answers are doors I'm not ready to walk through.
Kon watches my face the way he always does, reading the questions I won't voice, and after a moment he presses his lips to the top of my head.
