Epilogue #2
The ice cream shop is a hole-in-the-wall we found by accident six months ago—Mila needed a bathroom, this place was open, and now we're regulars. The owner knows our orders. The booths are cracked vinyl that sticks to your thighs. The health code rating is probably generous.
It's perfect.
Mila orders something with seven toppings and no structural integrity. Sergei pretends to judge her choices. I sit in a corner booth with my bandaged hands wrapped around a cup of mint chip and try to remember how to exist in a body that feels three sizes too big.
"You're doing the thing," Mila says, sliding in beside me.
"What thing?"
"The staring thing. Papa does it, too." She takes a bite of her ice cream monstrosity, sprinkles spilling everywhere. "He stares at walls when his brain is too loud. You stare at nothing. Same thing, different direction."
"When did you get so observant?"
"Always was." Another bite. Chocolate sauce drips down her chin. "People don't notice because I'm small. But small people see everything."
Sergei settles across from us, coffee in hand because he's a sociopath who doesn't eat ice cream. "She's not wrong. I've learned more from watching Mila watch people than from most surveillance operations."
"Gross, Daddy. Don't make me sound like a spy."
"You'd be an excellent spy."
"I'd be a terrible spy. I can't keep secrets."
"Since when?"
"Since I told Mom about the surprise party you're planning for her birthday."
Sergei's expression freezes. "What surprise party?"
"The one you've been calling Andrei about every night after you think I'm asleep." She grins, unrepentant. "The one with the cake and the fireworks and the—"
"Mila."
"What? You said I can't keep secrets. I'm just proving it."
I should be annoyed. Should care that whatever plans Sergei's been making are now ruined. But instead I'm laughing—real laughing, the kind that loosens something that's been locked since I walked into that courtroom this morning.
"You're a menace," I tell her.
"I know." She steals a bite of my mint chip. "But I'm your menace. That's what families are. Menaces that belong to each other."
"Who taught you that?"
"Nobody. I figured it out." She shrugs. "We're weird, right?
Our family. Papa used to hurt people for money.
You shot a guy at a party. Grandma's in prison.
But we're still... us. Still together. Still getting ice cream on a Tuesday when you should be at work and Papa should be whatever Papa does. That's what menaces do. They stick."
Sergei catches my eye across the table. His expression is soft in a way that used to scare me, back when I thought soft meant weak.
Now I know better.
Soft is a choice. Soft is the hardest thing you can be when you've learned to survive through sharp.
"We stick," I agree.
"Forever?"
"Forever, sweetheart."
"Good." She finishes my ice cream—I let her, watching her scrape the cup with the dedication of a forensic examiner. "Now can we go home? I have homework and Papa promised to help me with fractions, and if I don't do them tonight, I'll forget and Mrs. Patterson will give me the face."
"The face?"
"The disappointed face. It's the worst. Worse than yelling." She shudders dramatically. "Come on. I'll race you to the car."
She's gone before I can respond, sprinting toward the door with the energy of someone who hasn't spent twelve months learning what it costs to win.
"She's something else," I murmur.
"She's ours." Sergei stands, offering his hand. "Come on. We have fractions to conquer and a surprise party to re-plan."
"You're really not mad she spoiled it?"
"Mad?" He pulls me up, into his chest, arms wrapping around me in the middle of this sticky-floored ice cream shop. "She saw through an operation I've been running for three weeks. I'm proud. Terrified, but proud."
"Our daughter the spy."
"Our daughter the survivor." He kisses my forehead. "Like her mother."
That night, after fractions and dinner and the elaborate bedtime ritual Mila's developed to delay sleep by maximum minutes, I stand at the window of our penthouse and watch Manhattan pretend to be peaceful.
Lights glitter. Traffic flows. Somewhere out there, my mother's being processed into a prison that will be her home for the next two decades.
Sergei finds me the way he always does—silent approach, warm hands settling on my waist, chin resting on top of my head. We've developed a language of bodies over the past year. Words for the things too heavy to speak.
"It hit yet?" he asks.
"Some of it." I lean back into him. "Not all."
"What part?"
"The part where she's actually gone. Where I don't have to wonder what she's planning. Where the monster under the bed is finally locked up and I can stop checking the shadows."
"That's a big part."
"It should feel bigger." I turn in his arms, facing him.
Silver threading through dark hair. The scar bisecting his eyebrow.
Grey eyes that have seen me at my worst and didn't flinch.
"I keep waiting for relief. For closure.
For whatever emotion you're supposed to feel when the person who helped murder your father finally pays for it. "
"What do you feel instead?"
"Tired." The word comes out small. "Tired and empty and like I spent a year running toward a finish line that doesn't exist."
"Because it doesn't." His thumb traces my jaw. "Revenge doesn't end things, kotyonok. Just changes them. You won. You survived. You built something they couldn't destroy. That's the finish line—not her in chains, but you still standing."
"When did you get wise?"
"Somewhere between my third murder and my daughter's first chess tournament." His mouth quirks. "Growth is nonlinear."
I laugh despite everything. This man. This impossible, dangerous, devoted man who makes pancakes and plans surprise parties and has killed more people than I've met at charity galas.
Mine.
Still can't believe it some days.
"Mila wants a sibling," he says quietly.
"She mentioned. Several times. With PowerPoint."
"She gets the presentation skills from you."
"She gets the persistence from you."
"Fair." His hands slide down my back, pulling me closer. "What do you want?"
The question lands heavier than it should. A year ago, I wanted survival. Six months ago, I wanted justice. Now...
"I want to stop running." The words surface without permission. "Stop fighting. Stop waiting for the next attack. I want to wake up one morning and not check the exits. Not calculate escape routes. Not wonder if today's the day someone finishes what Matthew started."
"And?"
"And I want—" My throat closes. I force it open. "I want to build something. Not just maintain what Dad left. Build. Create. Something that exists because we chose it, not because we inherited it."
His expression shifts. Opens. The Wolf showing his underbelly, which he only does in darkness when it's just us.
"A baby."
"Maybe. Eventually. If we're not too broken."
"We're exactly broken enough." He kisses me—soft, careful, the kind of kiss that asks instead of takes. "Broken people build the strongest things. We know what it costs to lose them."
"That's either profound or concerning."
"Both. I'm multifaceted."
"You're ridiculous."
"You married me anyway."
"Worst decision of my life."
"Liar." He grins against my mouth. "You'd do it again in a heartbeat."
"Prove it."
The words come out challenging. Teasing. I don't expect him to actually—
He drops to one knee.
Right there in our living room, with Mila's puzzle still scattered across the coffee table and the smell of burnt cookies lingering from my latest disaster.
He takes my hand—the one with the ring he bought me, the one I've worn every day since a bored judge made us legal—and looks up at me with those storm-grey eyes.
"Sergei, what are you—"
"The first time you proposed to me," he says quietly, "it was in my office. You were desperate. I was suspicious. Neither of us believed it would become real."
"It wasn't supposed to be real."
"No. It wasn't." His thumb traces my knuckles, the ring catching lamplight. "But somewhere between teaching you to shoot and watching you kill for our daughter, it became the realest thing I've ever had."
My throat closes. "You don't have to—"
"I know I don't have to. That's why I'm doing it.
" He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small velvet box.
My heart stops. "Isabelle Davenport. You walked into my life with an insane proposal and refused to take no for an answer.
You made me believe dangerous men could have good things.
You gave me a family I didn't know I was missing. "
He opens the box.
Inside is a ring. Not the one I'm wearing—something different. A band of white gold with a single diamond, elegant and simple and nothing like the flashy rock he bought to convince the courts.
"This one's real," he says. "No lawyers. No inheritance clauses. No judges who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else. Just me asking you to stay. Forever. Because I want you to, not because either of us needs you to."
I'm crying. When did I start crying?
"You're supposed to ask a question," I manage.
"Marry me, Isabelle." His voice is rough. Raw. "Again. For real this time. Because I love you, and I want the world to know it wasn't just survival. It was choice. You're my choice. Every single day."
I sink down to my knees in front of him, not caring about the hardwood or the puzzle pieces digging into my shins. My hands find his face, stubble rough against my palms.
"Yes." The word comes out broken. "Yes, you impossible man. I'll marry you again. As many times as you want."
"Just once more." He slides the new ring onto my finger, right next to the original. Two bands now. Two promises. "The first wedding was for the courts. This one's for us."
"When?"