of us were sitting around in Abe’s office. I was perched on the end of his desk; he was giving me too lascivious of a look for the workplace, even if he’d just revised his personnel policies.
Freya, Sam, Delilah, and Henry were all clapping for me.
“Thank you, thank you,” I said, standing and taking a bow. It had been three months since we’d all left London, and while I was still in the process of moving my life from Brooklyn to Philadelphia, Abe had already invited me to live with him in his fancy condo near City Hall.
I’d said yes, of course, both of us dedicated to making our house a real home.
Working with Louisa had been my last official case as Argento Enterprises. I was now merging my old cases and former clients with Codex’s and settling into a new routine as the sixth member and Abe’s business partner. Equal footing, as promised. Those five years working on my own had been vital to my own self-discovery, but it was time now to be part of a team.
In the intervening moments, I spent every second I could with Abe or with Codex. They were friends—we were friends. Delilah and Freya had permanently adopted me into their girl gang, and I’d never, ever, ever, been happier. Our taco Tuesdays had become legendary, and most Friday nights Delilah and Freya dragged me to their favorite bars and restaurants in the city—for drinking or dancing or talking the night away.
“Although I’d like to point out that Henry and I didn’t receive a sash or a crown or any kind of formal welcome,” Sam said, bemused.
“Sloane’s a girl,” Freya said. “So it’s more exciting all around. And she’s Abe’s girlfriend, and her existence means Abe will be a lot nicer to us.”
“No guarantees will be made,” Abe said, eying us with affection.
To me, he said, “I can’t imagine Codex without you. You were the final missing piece, Sloane.”
I reached forward, squeezed his fingers. “And you were mine.”
After the nonstop adrenaline of that week in London, Abe and I were simply together. The adjustment for two (former) lone wolves was not without its challenges, but our trust, our intimacy, and our growth deepened every single day.
We were also having the most frivolous, silly fun of our lives. Dance classes, cooking lessons, picnics on our living room floor, weekend road trips, and lazy brunches in bed. After my first video chat with Abe’s moms, they’d told him, definitely, that I was the one.
After we’d hung up, I crawled into his lap and kissed his cheek. “The one, huh?”
He’d scooped the hair off my shoulder before kissing me back. “If I’d called them the night we met, I could have told them the same thing.”
We didn’t get out of bed that night or the next day.
Our nights together couldn’t accurately be put into words, except that I woke each morning with wild sex hair, bite marks on my throat, and a smile of smug satisfaction. We had also broken our fair share of tables in Abe’s home.
There was another reason why today was so exciting. Sam’s father had sent us all the information he had on Bernard and the criminal organization that Codex had helped bring tumbling down. Abe, sensing my shift in thoughts, rapped his knuckles once on the desk.
“Now that Codex is officially a team of six,” he said. “Shall we dive into it?”
There was a chorus of “please—for the love of god—fuck Bernard for real” to which Abe smiled discreetly. “We have the Deputy Director to thank for this, by the way. Though I did appreciate your father thanking Codex in his press conference about Bernard last week.”
“Sam may have had something to do with that,” Freya said. “Andrew Byrne might be… kind of… almost becoming a… half-way decent human being.”
“Finally,” Sam remarked dryly. “He was curious to hear our thoughts after we see all of these updates.”
Codex had still received its fair share of smaller cases. Bernard had fallen, but low-level book thieves were still using a stray Reichenbach Falls code word every so often. For the most part, they appeared opportunistic in nature, not orchestrated on a grand scale. Codex was grateful for a bit of peace and quiet.
Freya projected her laptop screen onto the large white wall and opened all the files Sam’s dad had sent. “Now our glorious leader has read through all of this, right?”
“I have,” Abe said. “If you pull up those first few pictures, I’ll walk