Page 39 of Navy

“You’re both safe now, sweets,” I assure her.

“Good,” she murmured, lips pressed to my palm.

Not long after that, the first of the fire engines sped past us. We continued on towards Crow Manor.

It was our time now.

Time to live.

Time to love.

Time to build a family.

It had taken me a long time to get here, but I was ready for whatever life threw at us next. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to protect what was mine.

EPILOGUE

NAVY

And live we certainly did.

What a ride the last ten years had been.

As hard as we’d tried, I never did get my four girls and believe me, we didn’t give up easily. Instead, Gia had gifted me with four sons. The first one arriving nine months after we’d met. Four boys that not only looked like me but also acted like me. And they adored their mother just as much as I did.

About a month after everything had gone down and I’d blown up Gia’s childhood home, Kate had approached me about the property over the road from Crow Manor. There was no house on it, so it meant we would have to start from scratch. Not that starting from scratch bothered me, Gia and I were comfortable in our cottage and her gran and Hetty loved living in the village.

When I’d hear the price, I knew there was no way I could swing it by myself, no matter how comfortable I was financially. Deciding to call Bas and ask his opinion, he’d immediately told me not to do anything until he’d seen it. It hadn’t taken long for him to pack up Hope and the kids to come and have a look. They’d liked the potential and the fact that if we bought it as part of the estate it would be better tax wise, and they could build themselves a small home for when they visited, which they did often. It took a little while and some fancy lawyer-talk and we seemed to wade through reams and reams of paperwork, but in the end Bancroft Estate had ended up with a fair bit of property worth a lot of money.

I’d started to take a more active role in the estate, and, to my surprise, I was actually good at business deals. Between Bas, Hope, Gia, and I, we’d grown the family business to double what it had been.

Gia and I’d built the house of her dreams with an annex for her grandmother. Sadly, her gran didn’t get to live with us for very long before she’d passed away. We knew she’d been thrilled at the changes in her life; she told us so often. She’d hung on long enough to celebrate the birth of our first two boys with us before she’d left us. It had taken Gia a long time to get over her passing and Hetty simultaneously moving back to her family in Somerset.

The turning point had been when she’d found out she was pregnant with our third. When our fourth and last boy arrived two years after the third, we were complete, or so we’d thought.

When you walked into our house, you knew it was a home. It was also loud with four boys that were either fighting, laughing, or shouting. But most of all, it was filled with love. Gia ensured that our boys knew they were wanted and loved. Our dinner table was never quiet.

Bas, Hope, Vi, and George spent a lot of time between here and the main estate. Derek and Tristan had made their home at Bancroft Estates in Somerset as it was closer to the company that Tristan ran. It had been touch and go for Derek after being shot and I guess a wake-up call for all of us that time was short.

The first few years after Tristan took over his family company were hard, and he got a lot of pushback from older members of the board when their relationship was made common knowledge, but in the long run it was for the best. Gia had used the money she’d inherited to buy up their shares as a way to get those not happy with how her brother lived his life out of the company. It was a good decision because between Tristan and Derek, the company was thriving. I was proud of both of them.

The Crow MC was still growing and not just the one in the UK but the one in Zambia as well. Both were going from strength to strength and our numbers had grown with not just the second generation but the third generation joining in the businesses.

Over the last few years, we’d built up a nice alliance between a few other MCs. The O’Shea’s were still a big part of our lives as were their children and the businesses we ran together.

Once Reaper had stepped down from his role as President, the rest of us stepped back too, allowing the next generation to take our places and they did it seamlessly. We were always around if they needed us, but it seemed we’d done a good job of getting them ready for what life would throw at them.

With the MC in capable hands, it left us with more time to ride and enjoy life.

As with all things, time marches on and sadly we lost some of our beloved original generation, leaving a hole for a long time that would never be filled.

With their passing, it meant that the manor underwent changes and had some major upgrades done to it, ready for the next generation of Crows.

While some things changed, others stayed the same and one of those was the whole MC closing down business for the day and making the forty-five-minute trek to Bournemouth Beach on the last day of term.

Ellie insisted that this tradition continue as it was one of the best memories she had of her first year with us.

It didn’t matter if it was raining or not, we all went. If it was raining, we found a restaurant and had fish and chips. If it was sunny like it was today, then we packed a picnic and took it with us so that the younger children could run around wild.