Epilogue Two #2
Her attention shifts over my shoulder toward the long table near the windows where the last of the food is being picked through by lingering guests.
“I’m gonna steal food first.”
I glance over. “Of course you are.”
She points. “The empanadas.”
My mouth twitches. “You know what those are?”
“I know Luciano’s mother made them, and I know I had one earlier, and I know they’re fucking delicious.”
Fair.
She starts to rise, but I catch her wrist first and tug her between my knees.
She gives me a look. “What?”
Instead of answering, I drag her closer by the hips and kiss her hard.
Her breath catches against my mouth, fingers landing on my shoulders to steady herself as I kiss her like I’ve been sitting here watching her all night and I’m done pretending that doesn’t do something soft to me. Her lips part. I take what I want. Slow enough to feel, rough enough to remind.
When I finally pull back, her eyes are bright and annoyed in that way that usually means she liked it.
I smack her ass once, firm enough to make her jolt.
She glares down at me. “You’re annoying.”
“Go get my empanadas.”
Her mouth drops open a little. “Your empanadas?”
I lean back in the chair, completely unbothered. “Whatever you get, get me some.”
She stares at me for one long beat, then mutters, “I should poison you.”
“But you won’t.”
“No,” she says, already turning away. “I won’t.”
She takes three steps before I call after her, “More than two.”
Without looking back, she lifts one hand and flips me off over her shoulder.
I grin into my drink.
Yeah.
I love her.
***
By the time we get to the car, the night has thinned into something quieter.
The estate is behind us now, swallowed by distance and dark, and the city opens ahead in streaks of gold and glass.
Ayla is already halfway into an empanada by the time I pull away from the curb.
I glance at the paper napkin in her hand, then at her.
“That’s not mine, right?”
She keeps chewing, eyes on the window. “They’re all mine.”
I scoff. “I told you to get me some.”
“Well,” she says, licking a bit of flaky crust from her thumb. “I didn’t hear that.”
“Liar.”
She shrugs.
I shake my head and glance over again. “So you brought me nothing.”
“I brought myself joy. You’re welcome to admire it from a distance.”
A laugh almost leaves me before I kill it.
She settles deeper into the seat, one leg folding under her, dress gathered carelessly over her thighs like she stopped giving a fuck the second we left.
Her heels are off. One is tipped over near the floor mat. The other somehow made it halfway under the seat. She catches me looking and lifts a brow.
“What?”
“You’re a mess.”
“And yet,” she says, taking another bite, “you’re obsessed with me.”
That gets a smirk out of me. “Obsessed is a strong word.”
She turns her head then, slow and unimpressed. “Maksim. Lies don’t suit you.”
“Fine,” I say, reaching over to drag my thumb across the corner of her mouth where a few crumbs clung. “Maybe a little.”
Her eyes hold mine for a beat too long. Sharp. Amused. Warm in that guarded way she gets when she doesn’t want to show too much of anything.
Then she looks down at what’s left of the empanada and says, “Still not sharing.”
“Selfish.”
“Survival instinct.”
I huff and look back to the road.
The city slides by outside in long ribbons of light. For a minute, that’s all it is. The hum of the engine. Her beside me. The taste of whiskey still low on my tongue. Her perfume mixing with fried dough and meat and the faint sweet scent of marshmallow.
Mine.
My phone lights up across the dash.
LUCIANO.
I answer without thinking. “Aren’t you suppose to be on your honeymoon?”
“Turn around.”
Every part of me stills.
Cold.
I glance at Ayla, then back at the road. “Why?”
A beat.
Then Luciano says, flat and vicious, “Valentina’s been taken.”
My grip tightens around the wheel. “How?”
“She was taken right after Santo and Vasilisa left.”
Ayla straightens beside me, the empanada forgotten in her hand.
“You got footage?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Send it.”
“Get back here first.”
He ends the call.
I just cut the wheel hard and make the U-turn so sharp Ayla’s hand braces against the door.
“Valentina is Luciano’s sister right?” she asks.
I press harder on the gas.
“Yeah.”
The warmth in the car dies so fast it feels like someone cracked a window straight into winter.
By the time we reach the mansion, most of the guests are gone.
The place looks wrong now. Too bright. Too empty. Wedding flowers still crowding the entryway. Champagne glasses abandoned on side tables. Staff moving quickly with tight faces, clearing the remains of a celebration that died in the span of one phone call.
I kill the engine and we’re out of the car fast.
Luciano’s men are already moving with purpose, murmurs snapping through earpieces, shoes striking marble, hands near weapons. I barely make it three steps inside before I spot Angelo.
He turns at the sound of us coming in, his expression hard and flat in that way that means whatever softness existed earlier left with the wedding.
“Damn,” I say, not slowing. “You got here fast.”
Angelo’s gaze flicks past me once, toward the open doors behind us. “It’s my wife’s sister.”
That’s all he says.
It’s what we do hangs in the air anyway.
Only then do I see Adriana.
She’s sitting on one of the pale couches near the center of the room, one hand pressed low over her stomach, the other twisted tight in the fabric of her dress. Her face is drained of color. Eyes red-rimmed. Like someone sat her down before her legs gave out and she hasn’t moved since.
Ayla sees it too. I feel the shift in her beside me, that small tightening in the air around her.
Then more footsteps hit the marble behind us.
I turn and find Santo coming through the door with Vasilisa at his side, one hand braced at her lower back while the other carries a bag big enough to survive a fucking war.
She’s so pregnant at this point she looks like she could go into labor out of pure spite, but there’s nothing soft or hesitant in the way she walks in.
Deteremined. Her face is tight, eyes already scanning the room.
Ayla glances at the bag. “What’s with that?”
Vasilisa barely looks down at it. “This baby could drop at any time.”
Then she sees Adriana. Everything in her changes at once.
Whatever else she was about to say dies as she crosses straight for the couch, and Adriana looks up just in time to catch her before she folds into her.
Vasilisa crouches awkwardly as hell with that stomach, one hand going to Adriana’s shoulder, then her cheek, speaking low enough I can’t hear it from here.
Santo watches for half a second, jaw hard, then looks at Luciano.
“Where?”
As he enters, Luciano jerks his chin toward the hallway. “Downstairs.”
I glance at Ayla. “You wanna stay with them?”
She looks at me like I’ve lost my fucking mind.
“Fuck no.”
My mouth twitches.
She jerks her chin toward the hall. “I go, you go.”
“Got it.”
Luciano leads the way, and the rest of us follow him through the house and down a narrow hall I didn’t notice earlier, past one locked door, then another. He punches in a code, opens reinforced steel, and I stop short just inside.
Blyad.
The room beyond looks less like security and more like paranoia had a baby with a military contractor.
Screens. Rows of them. Walls full of camera feeds from every angle of the estate, inside and out. Backup monitors. Locked cabinets. Concrete. Steel. Enough surveillance equipment to make Santo’s place look charming.
I glance sideways at Santo. “Damn. Thought you were bad.”
Santo’s eyes sweep the room once, cool and assessing. “We’re going to have a conversation later about how you did this.”
Luciano doesn’t even blink. “Get in line.”
His wife is already in there.
She stands near the far wall in a pale dress that should still belong to a wedding night, except her face is too tight and her eyes are too sharp for anything romantic.
She’s one hand on the table, the other wrapped around a glass she hasn’t touched.
Her gaze cuts to Luciano the second we enter, then past him, checking all of us like the answer might be written on someone’s face.
It isn’t.
Luciano moves to the main monitor. “This is from ten minutes after Santo and Vasilisa left.”
The screen changes.
Footage from one of the outside corners of the property. Dim, but clean in that expensive-camera way that still catches too much. Part of the side drive. A curve in the landscaping. A stretch of wall. The kind of place someone would mistake for a blind spot if they were stupid enough.
Valentina comes into frame.
She’s walking quickly, one hand lifting her dress slightly at the hem as she moves, like maybe she was trying to get a minute alone. Maybe air. Maybe a call. Maybe just out of the noise.
A man steps into view.
My eyes narrow.
Suit. Security. A guard.
“Isn’t that your guard?” I ask.
Luciano’s face goes dead. “Yeah. New guy I hired back in Florida.”
The footage rolls.
Valentina stops in front of him. Says something. I can’t hear shit, but she doesn’t look scared. Just annoyed or questioning.
Then the bastard moves.
Fast.
He grabs her, opens the trunk of a black sedan parked just out of frame, and throws her in hard enough that her legs disappear in one violent blur of fabric and hair. The trunk slams. He gets in the driver’s seat. The car tears off.
No hesitation. No panic. Planned.
Angelo steps closer to the screen. “Is that one of your cars?”
Luciano’s jaw flexes. “Unfortunately, no. So there’s no tracker on it.”
Santo mutters a curse in Italian under his breath.
The room goes still in that dangerous way it does when every man inside it is already thinking in blood.
Then I feel it. Ayla’s hand on my forearm.
Light. Barely there. But enough.
“Can you rewind that again?” she asks.
Luciano does it without a word. The footage jumps back.
Valentina. The corner. The guard. The trunk.
Ayla steps closer to the screen this time, her body going strange beside me. Not scared. Not shocked. Something else. Her face empties in a way I don’t like. Her eyes sharpen so hard they don’t even look like hers for a second. Like something old just woke up behind them.
The video plays again.
Grab.
Trunk.
Slam.
Gone.
She stares at the frozen frame after Luciano stops it.
I look at her profile. At the tension in her mouth. The flatness in her stare.
“Beda,” I say quietly. “What’s wrong?”
She turns her head and looks at me.
There’s something in her eyes I’ve never seen before—guilt, pain, something dangerously close to fear.
Recognition.
“I know him.”