A/N: Was away. All is good, if you asked. I figured I'd freeze posting for a bit since i was traveling. Here we go, to the end. Thank you greatly for the reactions!

..:.. Chapter 65 - Paper Bags Stapled Shut ..:..

Many months later …

"You sure this is it?"

I remember it like yesterday.

Jess turns off the ignition. We don't move. It's an unspoken needed pause.

I sigh, looking out at the family-owned business.

"Thanks, Jess. I don't think I would be able to keep above water without you."

She chuckles softly. "Don't give me too much credit. I'm doing this for me, too."

I know. She and her father were once also tightly gripped in the fist of the Cullens. She knows what I'm going through. In all the chaos, I hadn't seen her for the longest time. After helping me escape the house and Edward so long ago, we hadn't reconnected in person, until just recently. We've come together to finally finish this.

It's been months.

The news died down, and the chaos that came with gossip and familiar faces appearing on the news eventually faded. This town has been freed. The city can breathe.

But not for some.

Some grieve.

All of Edward's factories were closed or transferred as federal property, making all the jobs obsolete. It was work, good work for so many.

But it's been torn apart. Maybe everyone will see that as good in the long run.

Well, not everyone.

Some face a life sentence.

Accounts were confiscated. Accountants along with them. The heads of foreign sectors involved are all being prosecuted. Every last person ever involved is on a list and waiting for trial. Cargo in hangers under the Cullen trade were raved, so many were captured. Many have felt the aftermath of the Cullen Capture—perfect for a news headline.

Mostly, I wonder why Jenks needed me at all if he had so much proof to go by. It goes farther than I had anticipated. We all believe the Cullens were interrogated for every single detail.

I wonder these days if Ephraim Adams and Stephen made it out alive in all this.

The businesses that were taxed every month were the minimal crime in the large pool of mass production. Also the last to be dealt with, if at all. Neighborhoods aren't seeing the relief in all of it. Years of taxes would never be compensated to its full amount. They've lost so much.

That's where Jess and I step in. I promised myself I'd right this somehow.

We gather ourselves, hop out of the car, and head in. The shop is still fairly empty, a long day of work behind them. The chime sounds when the door opens. The one behind the tall counter looks up. Then his eyes go wide before the pale dread shows. Blood rushes out of his face. He waits for the inevitable.

I've been here.

He knows my face, because once I came in and sat with Edward as he ate his free lunch—on the house. He gave me an ultimatum; tax the father and his daughter for their monthly share or forget joining the Cullen business.

Jess and I walk up to him, he's silent but his hands visibly shake over the register.

"Let me pass," I say to get through. His daughter walks out from the back room, her expression matches her dads. She knows who I am. But instead of defeat she gets angry.

"Open the partition," I say, more firmly.

He hesitantly does. I step through, Jess stays back. I drop a few paper bags in the kitchen out back stapled shut like take out. His daughter bumps my shoulder as I walk past. She's fierce and fearless. I like her.

Jess looks at me and smirks at the exchange, but says nothing.

"A delivery will be dropped off every month until we've settled the debt. Good?" The father is confused. I look over at the daughter. "Good luck in college."

Jess and I leave to make more deliveries.

Paper bags full of cash—just like the ones they'd used to make their monthly taxes—are placed back in their hands. I look through the window as the father walks out from the back to look after us with wide eyes. His smile comes, but slowly.

I turn away.

Jess was always good at accounting. It was an easy sell when I called her months ago from an international number from Malta to give her a few accountant names from a piece of paper I once possessed.

I handed Stephen and Jenks a list, but a curated one. Jess got all the accounts of taxpayers from small businesses around the city.

And we're giving it back.

Mac's young employees who collected taxes were broken up the day the Cullen mob was. Gone, but for that one kid who confessed to me what I needed to know. Alec, a Mac employed collector, has a new job now—and it's with us. Until business owners grow to trust us enough, we can't transfer the full sum into a bank account, but it's best this way. Small amounts go unnoticed for them. It'll take time. But it's inevitable.

Jess always was a genius.

"This was … fun," she says before she drives back home after this training day. Her job here is done. "It should be smooth sailing from here." she says, pausing to look at me from the driver's seat. I'm standing on the curb. "You're gonna be all right? I've told you, time and again, to stay with me. Seth has enough space in that big house of his."

I smile. That secret affair with the company president at our old job isn't so secret anymore. Her finger adorned with a diamond so large it sags to her pinky.

"Nah, I'll be fine. Sue would kill me if I disappeared now," I tell her. "She's already decorating my apartment. Every detail."

Jess chuckles. "I saw." But her eyes aren't happy for me, they're worried.

My tears have run dry by now.

I'm … numb. I must move on. I have no choice.

"I'll call you on Saturday. I'll pick you up," she says. I nod, knowing I won't pick up and I'll lock my doors. "It will help you. I know it."

"Yeah, yeah," I mutter lazily.

….