Chapter 38
ELLIE
The days accumulate.
Rolan recovers with impatience, acting like rest is a personal slight against him, instead of what the doctor ordered.
Still, we settle into a routine, a life. All of us.
We share breakfast nearly every morning.
Rolan inquires about Anya’s lessons and listens to the answers with an attentiveness that would surprise anyone who knows only the public version of him.
He limps up the stairs at the end of the day, and I’m right there with him, providing whatever support I can.
It happens on a Tuesday, long past midnight.
The house has surrendered to silence. Rolan is propped against the headboard, his shoulder still bandaged. I’m beside him, my back against the pillows, my legs folded beneath the duvet.
The lamp on his side is off. Mine casts a low, amber glow that reaches just far enough to define the edges of his profile.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
He turns his head on the pillow. His eyes find mine in the half-light. “You’re going to regardless. ”
“Probably.” I pull the duvet higher. “Have you ever been afraid?”
The question settles between us. I expect deflection and raised eyebrows.
Instead, he stares at the ceiling for a long moment. His jaw works once, deciding whether to unlock a door he’s clearly kept bolted for years.
“Twice,” he finally confesses. “The night Anya was born. Her mother… The labor was complicated. Dangerous. There were decisions that had to be made in minutes that would determine whether?—”
He pauses.
“They brought her to me,” he continues. “This impossibly small creature. Her fist was closed around the edge of the blanket, and she was furious — already furious, already objecting to the indignity of the world she’d been delivered into.
” I catch the shadow of a small, almost reflexive smile on his face.
“I held her, and I remember thinking, I’ve built an empire and none of it matters.
This is the only thing that matters. And the fear didn’t leave.
It changed form. It became permanent, this awareness that the most important thing in my existence could be damaged, and that no amount of power or money or violence could guarantee her safety absolutely.
That fear has never left me. It lives in every room she enters. ”
The silence that follows is dense.
“And the second time?” I ask.
He turns his head and finds my eyes.
“The four days I spent not knowing where you were.”
The words arrive without decoration.
“I’ve been shot,” he continues. “Ambushed. I’ve buried men I considered brothers and negotiated with people who would have killed me if it served them better. None of those experiences produced fear.” He takes a breath. “But when you were taken, I couldn’t think clearly.”
I reach across the space between us and take his hand. He lets me. His fingers close around mine.
“I called you a mistake,” he swallows, almost like he can’t bear the memory.
“And then I spent four days confronting the possibility that I would never get the chance to tell you how catastrophically wrong I was. That you would disappear into whatever Landon and Dushku had planned, and the last thing you would carry from me, the final thing my voice put into the world for you was that lie . ”
His jaw tightens.
I don’t speak. I don’t need to. I shift closer to him — carefully, mindful of his shoulder, mindful of the ribs — and I press my forehead against the side of his jaw.
I feel the tension in him release by degrees, the slow unbuckling of armor that he maintains even in sleep.
“You found me,” I whisper against his skin. “You came for me, that’s what matters.”
His arm tightens around me. I melt into him. We stay like that until our breathing starts to match. Perfectly in sync.
Maren.
Even with everything else going on, I haven’t forgotten about my friend. Her name arrives each morning with the reliability of the cold.
I haven’t heard from her since before everything collapsed. Though I can’t be sure when that was. I still don’t know when Landon got her phone.
“Dmitri’s also missing,” Rolan tells me one evening, standing at the bedroom window with his recovering shoulder silhouetted against the light .
“I had him watching Maren. He was supposed to look out for her safety. I should have…” He drifts off.
“The assignment carried complexities I did not adequately convey to him. His history and his personal circumstances made it more volatile than a standard protection detail. I should’ve made different decisions. ”
I cross the room and take his hand. “We need to find them.”
“I will.”
I believe him.
But the dread in my gut won’t go away. Something went seriously wrong between those two, and the fact that we don’t know what yet means my happiness can’t settle. Not until I find my friend. Not until I know she’s safe.
And she will be safe. I demand it.
April arrives wrapped in blue skies. The spring sun illuminates the estate in a beautiful brightness.
But even on clear days, there’s a cloud.
Rolan says his people are getting close. He keeps me updated in fragments — a location narrowed, a sighting confirmed, a timeline beginning to crystallize.
The words Dmitri and Maren appear in the same sentence more frequently now, paired together in a way that suggests their disappearance was not coincidental, but entangled.
How is anyone’s guess. Until…
It’s a Saturday when everything shifts.
Rolan, Anya, and I are on one of our weekly outings. Today it’s the botanical conservatory, requested by Anya following a biology lesson about plants.
Anya ranges ahead of us through the orchid pavilion with intent. She carries a small notebook that she’s been using to record species names, sketch petal structures, and take notes .
Rolan walks beside me.
We move slowly. He still favors his shoulder when he thinks no one is watching. The conservatory air envelops us in the warm, lush fragrance of the blooming flowers.
“She’s going to demand one of everything,” I predict, watching Anya take a picture of an orchid with the gravitas of a documentary filmmaker.
“I’m aware,” Rolan says with a chuckle. “I’ve already consulted with the groundskeeper regarding the east greenhouse.”
I turn to face him. “You’re building her a greenhouse?”
“Expanding an existing structure, technically.”
“Rolan.”
“She asked,” he shrugs.
I study Anya, now intensely studying a butterfly flitting through the greenery ahead. Then I look back at Rolan, who’s watching his daughter with a completely undefended expression.
The beauty of it — the ordinary, extraordinary beauty of this moment — catches in my throat and holds.
“I need to ask you something,” Rolan says.
He’s no longer watching Anya. Instead, his gaze is fixed on me.
He reaches into the interior pocket of his jacket.
The box is small. Dark velvet, slightly worn at one corner, as though it has been carried for longer than today — transported, consulted, returned to its pocket, carried again.
He opens it. The ring inside intercepts the conservatory light and scatters it in every direction. My breath flushes from my lungs in a single, quiet gasp.
The center stone is a deep, saturated green, and it’s flanked on all sides by diamonds that capture the ambient light.
“Elizabeth, I’m not a man who does things… conventionally. I am aware of this. You are aware of this. ”
“I am,” I manage. The words arrive on a breath that barely qualifies.
“I am also not a man who—” He stops himself and regroups.
“I’ve spent fifteen years constructing what I believed I understood the value of.
I was wrong. I understand it now.” His gaze moves briefly toward Anya, who is now studying soil with the tip of her index finger.
“There is nothing more important than this… than us.”
I press my lips together. The pressure behind my eyes intensifies.
“Elizabeth Calloway. You were never a mistake. In truth, you are the greatest certainty I have.”
“Rolan—”
“Let me finish.”
I close my mouth. The tears are staging a full-scale insurrection, and my defenses are crumbling.
“I want you to be my wife,” he says. “I want you to be Anya’s mother — which you already are, in every way that matters.
I want you to argue with me and challenge me and enter my office without knocking and occupy the chair across from mine at breakfast and sleep beside me for every remaining night I’m granted.
” He swallows, composes himself, then continues.
“I want you to be my queen. Not because of a contract or a debt. Because I?—”
He stops.
“Because I love you.” The words emerge as though released from prolonged confinement. “And I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
The tears prevail as I feel the relief of hearing this man, this impossible, infuriating, extraordinary man, say the words I wouldn’t let myself need until this exact moment.
“Yes,” I say. Before he completes the thought. Before he arrives at the formal question. “Yes, Rolan. Obviously, irrevocably, without a single reservation — yes. ”
The smile that crosses his face is fuller than any I’ve ever seen on him. Complete, unguarded, unmistakable.
He stands.
He frames my face in his hands, and he kisses me, unhurried.
For a fraction of a second, we’re the only two people in the world.
Then, from behind us, Anya’s voice pierces the moment: “Papa, did you know that some orchids can survive for a hundred years? That’s older than Mikhail.”
He pulls back, resting his forehead against mine, and laughs. “I know.”
I laugh too. The sound emerges slightly wrecked but entirely genuine.
He slides the ring onto my finger, and it fits perfectly.
Anya appears at our elbows, demanding an explanation for the disruption to her botanical research.
Rolan meets her gaze and says, simply, “Ellie is going to stay.”
Anya’s eyes travel to me.
“Forever?” she asks.
I bend down to her level and take her tiny face in my hands.
“Forever.”
She takes a moment to evaluate the promise before launching herself into my arms.
I hold her as tightly as I can, feeling the weight of Rolan’s ring on my finger. He quickly joins the hug. It feels like home.
Finally. Completely. Irrevocably home.