Epilogue - Harper #2
The world moves around us slowly, gently, unrushed. Vienna means people: a family, a man, a woman, a child. Three beating hearts learning a new rhythm together.
The shadows stretch, evening approaching.
Eventually, Alexander drifts off, cheek pressed to Damian’s chest, thumb curled near his mouth. Damian stands carefully, as if afraid one wrong move will break the spell.
I loop my arm through his free one. “Home?”
He nods.
We walk quietly this time, the kind that grows between people who no longer fear silence. Our footsteps and breaths match. Our shadows merge and separate as we pass under lampposts lighting one by one.
My life has never been this simple.
My life has never been this mine.
When we reach our small and sunlit apartment, full of mismatched furniture we’re slowly deciding on together, Damian carries Alexander to the bedroom and lays him gently in the crib. He stands there for a long moment, watching the rise and fall of tiny breaths.
When Alexander has finally drifted into the cottony softness of infant sleep and the apartment has dimmed into the gentle hush of Vienna at night, Damian and I settle onto the balcony.
The wrought-iron railing is cool beneath my palms. Down below, the streetlights scatter gold onto the cobblestones like pocketed treasure.
Damian hands me my cup of tea, fingers brushing mine, deliberate and unhurried. The quiet between us stretches, full like a room with memories.
He exhales softly,
“You know,” he says, leaning back in his chair, “I keep thinking about the estate.”
I blink at him.
“Which part? The fire? The rebuilding? The emotional scarring?”
“All of it,” he admits, eyes glinting with a wryness that wasn’t available to him in the past. “Mostly the fact that I once thought walls meant safety.”
“And now?” I ask, tucking my knees beneath me.
“Now I know better. Walls only keep ghosts in.”
I hum, feeling that truth settle into me.
“And here we are,” I say, raising my mug slightly, “living in a third-floor apartment with more windows than structural integrity.”
He smiles.
“Weak walls but a stronger life.”
The cup in my hand feels like a toast. I sip to it. As the hum of the city creeps in, Damian asks, “Do you ever miss it?”
“The danger?” I ask, a corner of my mouth lifting.
He shakes his head.
“The… certainty. The clarity of purpose. Every day was a mission, every hour had an objective.”
My body remembers how I used to be in those days. Younger and more agile, far more temperamental. The angry crashing waves of the ocean in me have now mellowed out into calmer waves washing into a lake.
“I don’t miss the fear,” I say. “Or the exhaustion, or the constant calculations. But… I miss the feeling that I was good at something. That I knew my place.”
“Harper,” he murmurs, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “You still know your place.”
I lift a brow.
“Do I?”
“With me,” he says softly. “With him and the life we’re building. You’re not drifting. This is just… uncharted territory. It has been for a while.”
I look down at my mug. The tea ripples with the night breeze.
“Funny,” I say. “I used to navigate data streams and dark web back doors with more confidence than I now navigate grocery aisles.”
Damian snorts. “You aren’t the only one thinking that the grocery aisles are a labyrinth. Minotaurs are everywhere.”
“Especially in the baby food section.”
He nods gravely. “Terrifying beasts.”
We both laugh quietly, careful not to wake Alexander through the open balcony door.
My laughter fades into something softer.
“Do you remember,” I say, tracing the rim of my mug, “the night we saw each other after a while?”
“I remember,” Damian says immediately. “You were standing at Sera’s door, wondering what a sexy man like me was doing waiting for you.”
“I wasn’t wondering that.”
“You were.”
“Fine,” I concede, eyes narrowing playfully. “I was curious what you were doing there. You didn’t leave my life on exactly a friendly note.”
“That I did not,” he acquiesces, “but it made you want me more.”
“Like fuck it did.” I gape at him. “I wanted to never see you again.”
“Nah, you wanted answers. You wanted closure, and I knew you’d let me back in because of that.”
“You’re evil.” I shake my head. “I should have never taken up the job under you. Worst decision of my life.”
He presses his palm against his chest in faux hurt. “You hurt me. I think it was the best decision you made.”
I roll my eyes, biting back the smile our banter always puts on my face. “As if.”
He leans closer, lowering his voice.
“I think you liked me before you admitted it.”
“Please.” I wave a hand. “I tolerated you. Barely.”
“You patched me up in the middle of a gunfight.”
“That was pragmatism.”
He gives me a long, slow look.
“And Istanbul?”
I shrug. “I still tolerated you.”
He huffs a laugh, tipping his head back. The moonlight paints his throat, his jaw, the softened edges of a man who used to be sculpted solely for violence. He looks almost unreal like this, like an artist sketched gentleness over the shadows.
“I think about that night sometimes,” he says. “The masquerade. You stood there with your mask slipping, chin lifted, broadcasting the entire auction to Interpol like it was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing.” My voice falters. “I was terrified.”
“You didn’t look it.”
“That’s because you had my back.”
His eyes soften as they take me in.
“Harper,” he says quietly, “you saved me long before Vienna. Long before the estate burned. Long before Inessa was dragged away.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did.” His gaze pins me gently but firmly. “You’re the one who showed me I didn’t have to become what raised me. You’re the one who convinced me that the violence I carried wasn’t the only language I could speak.”
I blink away the sting behind my eyes. “I wasn’t trying to change you.”
“I know,” he says. “That’s why it worked.”
The wind picks up slightly, ruffling the leaves of the plant I nearly killed last week. Damian rescued it with the seriousness of a man defusing a bomb.
I set my mug down. “What about you?” I ask. “What would you tell the version of me who hadn’t slept in three days and thought everyone was out to kill her?”
Damian stands slowly, walks to my chair, and crouches beside me. His hand cups my cheek with the kind of care I never expected to be the recipient of.
“I’d tell her she makes it out,” he says. “And that she finds a life so bright she’ll squint at first.”
I swallow. “It still feels unreal.”
“It’s real,” he murmurs. “It’s ours.”
For a moment, I let my forehead rest against his. A habit formed in darker days, kept in brighter ones.
Then, because the weight of the moment is too much for my heart, I clear my throat and say, “Did you ever imagine you’d be assembling a crib at three in the morning?”
He groans dramatically. “That crib had too many pieces.”
“It had… twelve.”
“It had a thousand.”
“And the instructions—”
“Were written by demons.”
I laugh so hard I snort, earning a contented smile from him.
“And the baby monitor?” I tease.
Damian straightens, looking affronted. “It was compromised!”
“It was brand new.”
“I don’t trust corporations.”
“You ran a global underground empire.”
“Exactly.”
The warmth in my chest deepens, settling like a stone made of sunlight.
We talk until the streetlight below flickers, until the city softens into deeper blue, until my tea cools and Damian forgets to drink his.
Eventually, I place a hand on his knee. “Are you happy?” I ask, the vulnerability slipping out before I can tame it.
He doesn’t hesitate.
“Yes,” he says. “With you, Harper… happiness isn’t a question anymore. It’s a place.”
My breath catches.
“And you?” he asks.
I look toward the open balcony door, where the faintest wisp of baby breath carries into the night.
“Yes,” I whisper. “For the first time, yes.”
Damian exhales, long and shaky, like he’s been holding that breath for years.
“I love you,” I say.
He closes his eyes for a moment, as if bracing against the force of it. Then he opens them again, gaze steady.
“Harper,” he murmurs, voice thick, “I love you more than anything this world has tried to take from me.”
He lifts my hand, kisses my knuckles, warm and slow.
Spring in Vienna tastes like beginnings.
I finally believe we deserve them.
*****
THE END