Epilogue - Harper
One Year Later
Spring in Vienna smells like forgiveness.
The world thaws in uneven strokes, and the café terrace hums with the kind of laughter that doesn’t know ghosts. Or maybe it knows them and laughs anyway.
I sit with my laptop open, sunlight dripping over my hands as if trying to gild me.
It never quite manages to make me look like someone untouched by the darker parts of the world, but it tries, and I let it.
The keys are warm under my fingertips, the cursor blinking with the impatience of a child tugging a sleeve.
Across from me, Damian is pretending he’s not melting under Alexander’s weight.
Our son sprawls lazily against his father’s chest, tiny hands fisting Damian’s shirt, drooling with absolute disregard for the man who once terrified entire underworld councils with a single raised brow.
Now? Alexander has claimed him like a small, chubby conqueror who smells faintly of milk and triumph.
Damian doesn’t resist. He wants to, but I know he can’t.
I try to focus on the sleek, sharp lines of code in front of me, winding into the beginnings of some legal jargon. Our cybersecurity startup is still a baby too, just a few months old, born in tandem with Alexander. Born from the same yearning for a future that doesn’t require blood offerings.
We’ve chosen new names that sit strangely on our tongues but settle warmly over our lives.
My passport now calls me Eva Vetrova, a nod for old times’ sake.
Damian had raised a brow when I had shown him my passport.
“You are a creature of sentiment,” he had remarked fondly.
“It’s called humor, actually,” I had replied haughtily.
Damian is Markus Adler, a man who might calmly fix a roof leak instead of being the sole heir of a crime syndicate. He is trying very hard to live up to that.
“Your face is doing the thing again,” I say, sipping my coffee. It’s rich and velvety, the kind of coffee that should only be sipped slowly. I fail that rule every time.
Damian lifts his eyes.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you pretend you’re not watching me and watching me at the same time.”
He smirks, caught.
“Your focus is attractive. Distracting.”
I arch a brow.
“My focus is on writing code for firewall reinforcement protocols.”
“Still distracting.”
Alexander shrieks a single delighted note, as if casting his vote in the matter. Damian shifts him higher, kissing the top of his head. The gesture is… soft for a man once sculpted entirely out of tension and quiet violence.
Spring has softened him more than Moscow’s winter ever could.
I glance around the café. It’s a quaint and romantic place with its small tables, ironwork chairs, and tulips hanging from planters with shameless optimism.
Spring has slithered in like a fresh confession. Couples stroll past with pastries, tourists take pictures of buildings older than half the countries in Europe, and children chase pigeons with unearned confidence.
No one looks at us twice. No one squints or whispers or tries to place a face from a news article.
Our past is a folded map we’ve shoved into a drawer no one opens.
That doesn’t mean it still doesn’t live in my bones.
The phantom weight of that life lingers at the edges. It doesn’t scare me, not anymore. It just stands there, respectfully distant, waiting to be acknowledged. Some memories cling like smoke, some like cold metal.
They don’t vanish simply because you’ve been living in a city that smells like apricot pastries and music for a year.
But that’s okay. I don’t need them gone, I just need them quiet.
I stretch, closing my laptop halfway, letting the wind skim my cheeks.
“He’s almost asleep,” I murmur, nodding toward Alexander.
Damian’s arms tighten instinctively.
“Traitor,” he whispers to the baby. “You said you’d stay awake.”
Alexander gurgles in a tone that is distinctly unapologetic.
Watching them together, the two halves that make my whole, does something to me that language struggles to shape. I think of stained-glass windows, the way light transforms when pressed through something fragile.
That’s what they are. A mosaic of fractures that somehow formed a picture instead of a ruin.
Damian glances at me, a question in his lovely eyes before the words arrive.
“You finished the encryption layer?”
“Almost,” I say. “But I keep thinking about integrating an adaptive algorithm into the triage sequence—like… an immune system, not just a shield. Something that learns. Something alive.”
“You mean, like you.” His mouth tilts. “Always learning. Always adapting.”
I snort. “Always stubborn, you mean.”
“That too.”
His hand rests over Alexander’s back, large enough to nearly cover it entirely. Protectiveness radiates from him like heat, subtle but constant.
A part of me wonders if he fears how easy it is for happiness to be undone. Even if he does, he hides it beneath that new calm he wears like armor of a different kind.
I close my laptop fully and slip it into my bag.
My shoulder aches from sleeping wrong; motherhood has rearranged my posture in ways I wouldn’t have believed a year ago.
The ache is oddly comforting. It’s a reminder that my life is full of small, benign pains now, that survival isn’t always violent.
“Let’s walk,” I say.
We weave through the café crowd, Alexander bouncing gently in Damian’s arms, the stroller abandoned for now because Damian insists on “keeping him close.” His voice gets soft when he says it.
If anyone had told me, two years ago, that Damian Ignatov would one day coo at a six-month-old, I would’ve recommended a CT scan.
The street is alive with movement of cyclists, violinists, and a couple arguing passionately about the correct pronunciation of “Sacher torte.” I can feel Vienna’s heartbeat through the pavement, syncing with mine.
As we walk, Alexander grabs my hair with grabby hands that have absolutely no respect for style or comfort. I wince, gently untangling him. Damian chuckles.
“He’s strong,” he says proudly.
“He’s destructive,” I correct. “Which, considering who his parents are, is truly unfortunate.”
Damian hums. “He’ll be gentle. If we teach him to be.”
A breeze carries the scent of roasted chestnuts and blooming trees. The world feels… wide. For the first time, wide in a way that invites instead of threatens.
We take the long route through a nearby square, where a street musician plays something bright enough to tug people into tiny dances. An old woman twirls a little dog in her arms; a teenager tries to impress a group of friends with footwork that is mostly flailing.
Alexander watches all of it with solemn fascination, eyes wide, drinking in colors and movement like he’s memorizing the world so he can dream about it later.
Damian kisses my temple as we pass a fountain. “He gets that from you.”
“What? The staring?”
“The need to understand every world he walks into.”
I elbow him lightly and he pretends it hurts.
We reach a park edged with chestnut trees just beginning to leaf. Damian lowers onto a bench, settling Alexander on his knee. I sit beside them, leaning into his shoulder, letting gravity choose us together.
It still amazes me how natural all of this feels—leaning, not watching my back, not preparing to run. The kind of closeness I used to treat like borrowed luxury, has now become regular, unremarkable, essential.
Alexander grabs Damian’s nose.
Damian winces.
“He is ruthless.”
But there’s pride in his voice, the kind that sits warm and heavy in the chest.
“Told you.”
I allow myself a moment to just… watch them.
The sunlight catching Damian’s lashes; the way Alexander squeals without restraint; the way Damian laughs, nothing like the quiet, careful slips of sound he used to give, but real laughter, like he learned it late in life and can’t stop admiring it.
For the first time in years, maybe ever, I imagine birthdays and school pickups and scraped knees and arguments about vegetables. A future that is not sharpened like a blade but shaped like a home.
Damian glances at me. “You’re thinking something.”
“Dangerous,” I say.
He freezes. “What kind of dangerous?”
“Domestic dangerous.”
He exhales. “Terrifying.”
I grin.
We sit like that through the slow slide of afternoon into gold.
A cyclist rings his bell. The distant rumble of a tram seeps into the air.
A bakery around the corner opens its windows to cool racks of bread, and the smell makes me consider imploring Damian to acquire a loaf with the desperation of a cartoon character floating toward a pie on a windowsill.
Alexander babbles at a pigeon with all the confidence of someone who thinks communication is a simple, universal thing.
And suddenly, without planning it, without ceremony or fear or the reflex to flinch at wanting something too much, I say quietly, “We did it.”
Damian’s hand finds mine.
“We did,” he agrees.
Not the kind of “did it” that implies victory. Just… a door closed behind us. Completion. A new door open.
He rubs circles on the back of my hand.
“You ever think about what you’d tell your past self?” I ask.
He considers. “Which past self? There are too many.”
“All of them.”
He shifts slightly, adjusting Alexander before answering.
“I’d tell him he survives.” A pause. “That he becomes someone his child will never fear.”
My chest tightens with affection.
“And you?” he asks.
I look at our son, then at him.
“I’d tell her that peace isn’t something you earn by bleeding for it. It’s something you practice, even when your hands still shake.”
He nods, accepting it like truth.
A couple walks past, smiling at Alexander. He returns it with the toothless brilliance of a baby who believes every stranger is a friend. Damian lifts him higher, enough for his small legs to kick at the air.
“Should we head back?” I ask.
“Not yet.” Damian’s voice is soft. “Let him enjoy the world a little longer.”
So we stay.