Ella's POV—5 years later

Five years ago today we said goodbye to our light, our angel, our Stephanie. That day came less than a year after we lost Ranger. Rangeman Trenton has not been the same since those fateful days. Six months after Stephanie's death, the Core Team decided to move our headquarters to Princeton. We were still close enough to handle our Trenton clients, but we're not faced with Stephanie's and Ranger's ghost daily. Don't get me wrong, they are always with us, but we don't see them in the elevator or their empty parking spaces.

Lester took Steph's death the hardest. I know that he loved her, and wished for a future with her. But once she gave her heart to Carlos, no one else stood a chance. We locked the door to the penthouse a week after her funeral and cleared it out two months later. We donated her clothes to a woman's shelter, and any mementos of her life and Carlos' life together were given to Julie. I keep a bottle of Bulgari Green, the scent that Steph loved so much as a way to remember them always.

When Tank cleared out the safe, we found a letter that Carlos wrote to Stephanie. From the wear of the paper, it was a letter she read often. I had Hector scan the letter, and we framed it before placing on the wall of our memorial garden in our new headquarters. It read:

Babe,

Last night you made me the happiest man on Earth when you agreed to become my wife. I never thought the day would come when I would want to be a husband. After Rachel, I vowed to never open my heart again to a woman. But then you entered my life with your crazy, sexy curls, brilliant blue eyes, and sassy personality and swept me off my feet.

I never thought that I was a good enough man for you. I did a lot of things that I'm not proud of in the name of my country. I don't regret doing what I did, but I felt that those deeds blackened my soul too much ever to be redeemed. But, as you weaseled your way into my life, your light vanquished the darkness.

I thought I would never be able to give you a ring, the house, the white picket fence and 2.5 children that I thought you needed. Never, in my wildest imagination, did I think that you would be fine without all of those things. When we agreed to love each other unconditionally, we agreed that we didn't need a title or papers to justify our feelings. Since being with you, having you in my life without the title isn't what I want. I want you to be mine, officially, for the world to know, and if one of my enemies decides to come after you, it will be the last thought he will ever have because I will gladly take him down to protect you, my life. Babe, I want it all with you. The title of Husband, our very own Batcave with a wrought iron gate and security cameras, and not 2.5 children, but as many as you are willing to give me. If that is one child or six, I'll love them and you completely.

So, I am writing this as I watch you sleeping in our bed, your body limp and relaxed as a result of us making love, with your hair spread out like a halo around your head. I want to spend every night with you beside me, in my arms, wrapped around me until the day I take my last breath. Stephanie, you are mine, and I am yours. Te quiero, mi amor.

With Endless Love,

Carlos

The love that they felt for each other was all-encompassing that we know they are together in death.

About eighteen months after Steph died, Bobby met a nurse at the orthopedic office when he accompanied Hal after he broke his arm. They started to date, and he proposed to her five months later. They married quickly and now have two children.

Tank listened to Stephanie and avoided Lula. She tried to get together with him, but he quickly realized it was only for his money, not for love. When we went home to visit his family after Bobby's wedding, he bumped into a girl he knew back in high school. They started dating and are getting married in three months. Tank now runs the Atlanta office, because his fiance wanted to stay close to her South Carolina roots.

Then there's Lester. My poor Lester. He was lost for so long. For the first two years, he spent every night office in bars drowning his sorrows. He was an even bigger player, sometimes bedding two or three different women in one night. Then one day, he happened across a bad car accident on I-95. A tractor-trailer jack-knifed and hit three vehicles. One of the vehicles was Stephanie's friend Mary Lou's husband, Lenny's work van. He died on scene. Lester knew that Mary Lou had three boys and started to stop by to make sure she was okay or to help with chauffeuring the kids to and from practice or school. Mary Lou helped Lester to heal, and in turn, he helped Mary Lou to keep herself together. They started dating a year after Lenny's death and married last month. Mary Lou is six months pregnant with her first daughter. They already agreed to name her Stephanie Carla, in honor of their friends.

The Burg is still the Burg; nothing changed. Mrs. Plum and Mrs. Kloughn continue to sully Stephanie's name while enjoying their "iced tea" more frequently. Albert Kloughn and Mr. Plum managed to contact Valerie's ex-husband, informing him of Valerie and Mrs. Plum treat Mary Alice. He immediately flew to Trenton and sued Valerie for custody. When he arrived, we discovered the truth. Valerie was the one who had an affair with the pool boy. She emptied their accounts and used the money to set up her boy toy in a nice house that she naively thought he would share with her. Once Steve revealed her past, the judge granted him full custody of both Mary Alice and Angie. Albert divorced Valerie, taking his two daughters with him.

Frank Plum died two months after his granddaughters left, of natural causes, in his sleep. Edna Mazur didn't last two months after Stephanie. She blamed herself for not protecting Stephanie from her mother, for not being there for her baby granddaughter, and for feeding the Burg gossip for too many years. She would visit Steph's grave daily until she failed to wake up one morning. She requested that Steph's "friends with the nice packages" be her pall-bearers, and my boys did their job to honor her request.

Bobby allows me to be an honorary grandmother to his kids, and I am already a grandmother to Mary Lou's. I love having the little ones around, but I swear, some days I still can see Steph and Ranger together, looking at their friends, watching over them. I know that they are watching our backs because, since their deaths, there have been no life-threatening injuries to anyone in Trenton. I hope they continue to be our guardian angels for years to come.

INLA

A/N: Okay, I swear, this is it. I read this story again today and felt that I needed to end it on a high, well, as much of a high as I could get with Ranger and Stephanie still dead. So I added this little chapter to show that life moves on and that our star-crossed lovers were not forgotten. Yes, I cried when I wrote each chapter of this story, and yes, I've cried the three times I read it. I hope that you are crying with me. If Stephanie and Ranger being together in heaven for eternity is your idea of a tiny HEA, then I guess they got it. The ending of Wuthering Heights featured in my mind when writing this story. Thank you to all of you who read the story. Once again, I'm sorry!