A/N: First of all, thank you to those who truly embraced this story and lived it along with the characters. Many of us don't want it to end and maybe the ending of this book isn't totally the end.

I wrote an epilogue I didn't plan on writing but it felt right to do it. It's a little bit different but I thought I would cap this off nicely with the same person and place where it all began.

I hope you like it. This gives you a bit of a peek into the lives of the other Cobalt Bay Billionaires who will be getting stories of their own. I figured it couldn't hurt because I guarantee a happily-ever-after anyway. I'm more interested in how they get there. =)

PS: Thank you to Fourthaxis for inspiring me with Robert Frost.

As always, vote and comment! =)

***

I hated birthdays.

Since my sixth birthday, I started to regard them as a day from memory hell that I would prefer to skip each year.

I couldn't recall any birthdays before that. I'd been too young.

I tried to forget the ones that came after it but they resisted my absolute neglect. I'd been too scarred.

I learned to cope with each year until it no longer bothered me as much—until I managed to simply treat it as a mere technicality that was essentially trivial.

I only felt this way about my birthday though.

My wife's birthday, from the first time I met her that one unforgettable summer, had always been special to me.

Even in the four years we'd been apart, I remembered each birthday fondly. The watercolors of daisies I'd sent each year were the most I could do to let her know that I didn't forget—I couldn't forget.

I could defend myself and say that great loves were simply one of those things people would never forget for as long as they lived, but I wouldn't.

I'd only ever loved once and I hadn't once stopped or given it up.

I wouldn't know if I would forget other great loves or not because there was only ever one for me—as I believed was appropriate.

After all, what credence could be given to a fickle heart?

Whatever doubts I may have had about my intentions towards Cassandra vanished that night I claimed her—body, heart and soul.

It hadn't been a smooth ride from there—in fact, our story had been wrought with secrets, lies and painful mistakes—but I wouldn't have changed a thing.

It could've been easy but then, would it have meant as much to us?

"Why is my tie crooked? I did exactly as you told me."

I glanced down at my seven-year-old boy with a smile.

Rylan Alexander Vice.

He was tall for his age, already past my waist, and with his dark hair and green eyes, I felt like I was staring at my younger self's reflection in the mirror as we stood side by side.

"It looks good but it'll take practice before it's perfect," I told him as I hunched down on my knees and fixed his blue-green tie. "Remember, Daddy's been practicing for almost thirty years."

Rylan bit his lip in contemplation. "I've only been practicing for two."

I smiled and ruffled his hair lightly. He hated having to fix it back but he didn't avoid it.

He just wrinkled his nose and smiled crookedly, showing dimples that were very much like his mother's.

I felt my chest loosen with a near sigh.

Rylan was a bit of a serious child—pensive, focused, and studious about learning his responsibilities very early on.

He was extremely bright and curious—the fact that he could recite John Keats by heart was my fault—but unlike other kids his age, Rylan's days didn't simply revolve around playing for hours.

He liked to sit down with me in my office after dinner and watch patiently as I did a little bit of work. He asked about the business, my responsibilities and he soaked up the knowledge with clear-eyed understanding.

When Cassandra joined us after putting our daughter Mariella to bed, when she was still just a baby, the three of us would move on to read some poetry and just talk until it was time for Rylan's bedtime. The three of us would go upstairs and stop by Mariella's room to kiss her goodnight. Rylan would lean over the cradle with my help, murmur a particular verse he'd learned that night to her, and then kiss his baby sister's cheek.

Cassandra and I would walk him to his bedroom and tuck him in.

Before we turned the lights off, he would always say I-love-you to us and give us a dimpled smile.

I loved my son with intense devotion and I was proud that he was intelligent and seemed older than his age. The fact that he seemed too serious and somber worried me occasionally—because I'd only been that way after the trauma of my mother's death when I was a young boy.

Cassandra told me that Rylan wasn't an unhappy boy simply because he wasn't a typical rascal child.

I knew she was right.

I just had to constantly remind myself of that.

When Rylan came out to play, whether it'd be with us, or his sister, or his childhood friends and cousins, who were also children of my best friends, he would be smiling and laughing out loud, his eyes bright and sparkling, his face youthful and free of any anxiety.

I always felt a tremendous amount of relief at that sight.

While I knew that I was never going to be my father, I still worried that we wouldn't raise our children to be happy and well-loved enough that they would never have a doubt.

Cassandra often told me that we couldn't protect them from the world—that we were going to have to let them make their choices and learn to stand on their own two feet.

I personally had trouble with that concept because if I had the means and the ability to make sure their lives would turn out perfectly, why wouldn't I do it?

But I understood what she meant.

We had to trust our children, and guide and love them as much as we could without clipping their wings.

Butterflies had wings so they could fly wherever they choose to. They would wither away in a glass cage.

"That means you've still got a long way to go so don't be too hard on yourself," I said to Rylan as I rose to my feet and turned to the mirror again to inspect both our reflections. "I say we're ready, aren't we?"

He glanced at his watch and nodded. "I believe so. Mum said you should come down at six-thirty."

We walked out of the bedroom and made our way to the top landing of the stairs where we could see the party Cassandra had organized, assembled in the spacious main hall. It was filled with people in cocktail attire, talking, laughing and enjoying the food.

While there were a lot of important people invited to this event, I'd insisted on encouraging our friends and family to bring their children. They were all well-dressed in little dresses and suits but they still scampered about, playing with each other.

I scanned the crowd and caught the face I carried in my heart always.

Cassandra smiled up to me, her dimples deep and her brown eyes warm with love.

She was standing by a small podium set up for the musicians, a microphone in her hand.

She was exquisite, as always, clad in a shimmering bronze dress that brought out the copper tones of her auburn hair and the dark depths of her brown eyes.

Jack was standing just below the podium in front of her, holding up three-year-old Mariella in his arms.

She looked like a sweet angel in a frothy, pink gown. She followed her mother's gaze and saw Rylan and I, flashing us a gap-toothed smile.

My heart swelled and I grinned back at my little girl.

She had her mother's dark, brandy-colored hair and dimples, and my green eyes.

I feared the day when she would be grown up and a smashing beauty—and I would need to pummel every guy who didn't have noble intentions towards her. I was certain Rylan would help me.

"Good evening, everyone," Cassandra said into the microphone, directing her attention to our guests. "First of all, thank you for joining us this evening, here at Westerra Hall. We know it's a long way from home for a lot of you but there is a specific reason we are celebrating my husband's birthday here tonight."

I spotted Oliver's dark head right next to Vivienne's penny-colored one—they both glanced up at me in a nearly identical move that only people so in-tuned together could manage. They both gave me a smile and I smiled back and tipped my head at them slightly.

Just a few people behind them stood Stellan and his wife Kady. My friend's hand unconsciously rested on the swell of Kady's pregnant belly even though he was listening to his sister speak.

"Westerra Hall has been in the Vice family for as long as they've been in this country, and while it's a place of many memories—" I secretly applauded my wife for being able to say that line straight on without a catch in her voice. "—it's time that this grand estate become more than a mere vacation home."

Somewhere in the crowd, I picked out tall, blond Max who had one arm around his wife Aiko, and another holding up their daughter Sienna who was six months older than Mariella. The couple didn't see me looking their way but their little girl did because she quickly glanced at Rylan who was standing by my side, and stuck her tongue out at him.

Rylan must've already spotted her because his perfectly proper expression creased into a half-scowl first before he broke into a grin and stuck his tongue out at her as well.

I couldn't help an amused smile.

Little Sienna had Max's bold, playful personality and she'd devoted her time and effort since she could walk and talk, to exasperating my son every chance she could get.

Amazingly, for a boy with a sharp sense of focus, Rylan would merely tell her to be good and behave, and when she wouldn't, he'd drop whatever he was doing and turn his attention to her, listening patiently or doing whatever she needed done with no complaint or muttering.

One time, she needed her hair pinned with flowers she and the other little girls picked from the gardens at Cove Manor and insisted that Rylan do her hair because he was the tallest of the children.

Rylan was nearly done solving the rubix cube that had taken him an entire day to do, when she came bounding towards him. Instead of turning her away, Rylan set the cube down and asked her to sit. When he was done half an hour later, he gave her a half smile and told her she looked pretty before picking up his cube again to continue with it.

Max and I often joked that maybe we would become in-laws in the future but he warned me that if my son was anywhere near the womanizer either of us had been in our youth, I could just forget it.

"...it would be renovated to support many other facilities that the children and their families could enjoy during their stay," Cassandra continued. "The property has nearly forty acres of forested land with ponds and creeks running through it. In our initial plans, we've decided on putting some trails, playgrounds and mini-adventure parks—thanks to the valuable advice by our children who know best when it comes to making sure that Westerra Hall becomes a place of many happy memories."

Westerra Hall was going to become a retreat for some of the sick kids who were already part of the Saving Hope project. While we've made that housing facility top of the charts when it came to medical amenities, it still felt much like a hospital. Westerra Hall, with its beautiful, sweeping countryside, magnificent, castle-like house and the medical amenities already up to the standards of a small hospital, was going to offer these children and their families a chance to get away for some much-needed fun and solitude while still being looked after by a competent medical team.

Oliver looked after the renovation and operation designs, giving it the same feel and function as some of the best Yates hotels in the world. Max contracted a lot of the work and construction with many of Croft Industries' best vendors and suppliers. Jack created a cruise program for the children and families to travel from Cobalt Bay, California to Scarsdale, New York, while Stellan designed a small plane equipped with medical amenities to use for those who couldn't travel by sea and for emergency transport to the nearest hospital. Jared and Michelle would initially supervise the medical staff they were building to support Westerra Hall, and Natalie had already committed to moving to Scarsdale in the summer with her husband and son so she could run the board fully.

Charlie would train the kitchen staff and help create a menu rotation. Lexie, Marcus, Emma and Ty made up the marketing team for the project until it was fully transitioned to a firm when it was ready for launch.

"There will be a formal launch for the project but we thought we'd announce it tonight because it's a project that means a lot to our birthday celebrant. We hope that you'd be as excited as we are in making this dream come true and help support the cause."

Excited murmurs of approval swept across the room and I relaxed.

The project would've gone on with or without other people's support but a nod in the right direction was greatly appreciated.

"Now, to the fun part of tonight's festivities," Cassandra said brightly, turning her head up towards me with a smile. "Let's sing happy birthday to Sebastian—a good, generous man, a kind, supportive friend, a reliable son and brother, a loving father, and a wonderful husband."

My cheeks grew warm at the applause at the start of the happy birthday song as everyone turned to me when Rylan and I slowly came down the stairs.

I couldn't remember when I stopped hating my birthdays.

Exactly when it actually happened didn't matter to me as much as the fact that it did happen.

Cassandra was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs with Mariella in her arms.

"Happee buth-day, Daddy!" my little girl exclaimed as she stretched her arms out towards me.

"Thank you, sweetie," I said with a laugh as I took her in my arms.

I felt Rylan tug my hand and I looked down at him and saw him smiling at me. "Happy Birthday, Dad."

My heart felt like it couldn't swell any bigger inside my chest but it kept expanding with this nearly exhilarating sense of happiness. "Thank you, son."

"Happy birthday, love." Cassandra swept her hand up across my back as she leaned in to press a kiss on my jaw. "I have your present but I'll give it to you later, when it's just the two of us."

I tilted my face down to her and met her lips in a soft, sweet kiss.

I pressed my forehead against hers when we pulled away slightly, smiling as our noses touched. "Thank you, Cassandra. I love you, and our children. You're the best gift I could ever have."

It was true.

Westerra Hall was where the nightmares of my life had started.

It was a family home with no real family in it for as long I could remember.

It was a place of betrayals, ugly secrets and death.

Despite the closure I eventually found after my father's death, I knew without a doubt, that this could never be a home for me and my own family.

Cove Manor was where my real life began and where it would stay.

The most that I could do now with a fragment from my dark past was use it to bring about the very things it had lost in the rubble, at the aftermath of my family's devastation.

It would become a place of hope, happiness, children's laughter and families staying strong together for each other.

It reminded me of a poem by Robert Frost, which many of us may know:

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Westerra Hall, everything it represented, was like the woods—mysterious in its raw and rustic grandeur, secrets and possibilities lurking in the shadows under its canopy of trees.

I was like the traveler who stopped in its midst in the darkest evening of the year—an evening that lasted most of my life like a frozen moment in time.

It was someone else's home—my own father's. He would forever be a complex and distant stranger to me.

I had tarried enough in my own journey by staying too long in the woods, and letting myself become numbed by the cold and the snow that eventually covered the blood and ashes on the ground.

It was time I completely left the past behind and move on—to head home to my beautiful wife and our precious children, where I truly belonged.

-Sebastian Vice

****** So, what did you guys think?

There was never a Sebastian POV but the prologue was about him when he was very young, on the night of his sixth birthday—a night that will forever change his life.

This gives the story a mixed POV but if I keep it consistent for the rest of the other books, then it might make sense as a pattern.

Also, the real focus of the books are actually the Cobalt Bay Billionaires.

Throughout the book, we see how wonderful and terrifying it is to fall in love with one of them but we don't get to really peek into their minds.

Letting you in at the end of it all keeps the mystery going.

Doing the epilogues in their POV is going to be my standard from now on, I think. =) Thank you! =)

******