Epilogue
TWO MONTHS LATER
Kira has stolen Tony’s sunglasses and is wearing them upside-down while she explains to Alexei why a Tyrannosaurus could beat a lion in a fight.
The Kozlov estate is louder than I’ve ever heard it.
Sasha and Tony’s first anniversary party has taken over the grounds, with lanterns hanging from the garden trellises, and a string quartet playing Tchaikovsky near the fountain while forty-some guests mill between the terrace and the dining room.
Sasha chose the music, which doesn’t surprise me. A woman who authenticated art at Christie’s would, of course, have a curated soundtrack for her celebration.
I’m standing near the bar with a glass of champagne I’ve barely touched, watching Pyotr across the garden.
He’s leaning against one of the stone pillars with Boris, and the two of them are deep in a conversation that involves very few words and a lot of mutual staring.
A brief exchange, a nod from Pyotr, and then Boris claps him on the shoulder and walks toward the kitchen.
Despite his black suit and tie, he still looks like he could disarm someone between courses.
Katya appears beside me and links her arm through mine. Dmitri’s wife has a talent for materializing at the moment you need company and didn’t know it.
“You doing okay over here?” she asks.
“I’m enjoying the music.”
“You’re hovering near the exit.” She steers me toward the center of the terrace, where Mila is arranging dessert plates with the focus of a battlefield surgeon. “Come. Eat cake. Be social.”
“I am being social.”
“Standing alone at a party does not count as socializing.” She releases my arm and hands me a plate with a slice of something layered and obscene. “Sasha will kill me if her cousin doesn’t eat.”
I take a bite because arguing with Katya is pointless. The cake is extraordinary, and I say so.
“Mila found the bakery,” Katya informs me. “She taste-tested nine before settling on this one. Alexei claims he gained four kilos during the selection process.”
Mila rolls her eyes without looking up from her plates. “He ate every reject. Nobody forced him.”
I’ve come to learn that this is what family sounds like. Not the version I grew up with, where silence meant safety and laughter meant someone was about to get hurt, but easy and warm and full of people who argue about dessert and say what they mean without consequences.
I’ve spent months circling the edges of this family like a stray. Pyotr brought me in. Dmitri vouched for me. But belonging is harder than access. It requires the kind of trust I forgot how to give a long time ago.
Tonight, for the first time, I’m standing in the middle of it. And nothing hurts.
Kira races past with Tony’s sunglasses now perched on Rex’s plastic snout, and Tony is trailing behind her with the patient resignation of a man who has realized that arguing with a small child is a losing battle.
Sasha intercepts them near the fountain, scoops Kira onto her hip, and whispers something that makes my daughter dissolve into giggles.
I watch Sasha hold my kid like Kira belongs here, and something deep in my chest unknots.
“She’s good with her,” Pyotr muses as he appears beside me.
“Sasha is amazing with everyone.”
He takes the champagne from my hand and sets it on the nearest table. “Dance with me.”
“You don’t dance.”
“I do tonight.”
He leads me to the small dance floor that’s been set up between the terrace and the fountain, where two other couples are swaying to the quartet.
His right hand settles on the small of my back, and I rest my palm against his chest. We move in a slow circle in tune with the music, lost in one another.
“Are you happy?” he asks.
I sputter my lips and reply, “Disgustingly.”
“Good.” He chuckles.
We dance through one full song and halfway through the next before Dmitri’s voice cuts through the music from the terrace steps. He’s holding a glass of vodka and wearing the closest thing to a smile I’ve ever seen on his face, which is to say his jaw has relaxed approximately two degrees.
“If I could have everyone’s attention.”
The garden goes quiet. Sasha leans into Tony’s side, and he wraps his arm around her waist.
Dmitri raises his glass. “To my sister and the man who dares to love her. Tony, you are either the bravest or most foolish person I have ever met, marrying my sister a year ago. Either way, we’re thrilled you’re part of the family.”
The crowd laughs as Tony kisses Sasha’s temple, and she smiles up at him with something so open it makes my chest ache in the best possible sense.
Pyotr’s hand tightens on my waist. I glance up and find him watching Tony and Sasha with a look that I’ve learned to translate over the past two months. A man imagining a future and being terrified of how badly he wants it.
I squeeze his hand. He squeezes back.
The party continues for another hour. Kira falls asleep on Mila’s lap around ten, and Pyotr carries her inside to the guest room Katya prepared. I’m refilling my water at the bar when Dmitri appears at my elbow.
“Walk with me.”
Dmitri doesn’t ask questions. He issues invitations shaped like commands.
I set down my glass and follow him along the garden path that leads away from the terrace toward the east wing of the estate. The music fades behind us. He stops when we’re out of earshot.
“I need to ask you about Polina.”
My stomach drops. I’ve been waiting for someone in this family to bring up my sister. Polina’s silence has been gnawing at me for months, and I’ve run out of excuses for why she won’t return my calls.
“What about her?”
“When did you last speak with her?”
“Four months ago. Maybe five. Polina answered one of my calls after I’d tried her a dozen times. We talked for ten minutes about the hospital working her around the clock. She sounded fine, but the conversation felt rehearsed. My sister used to be a terrible liar. Now, I can’t tell anymore.”
Dmitri reaches into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and produces a photograph.
It’s a surveillance shot, grainy and taken from a distance with a long lens.
Two people at a restaurant table. The woman on the left is Polina.
Her dark hair is shorter than the last time I saw her, cropped just above her shoulders, and she’s wearing a black dress.
She’s leaning across the table toward a man I’ve never seen.
He’s broad-shouldered, dark-haired, and in his late thirties. His hand is covering hers on the tablecloth, and they’re both smiling.
“Who is he?” I ask.
“Lev Morozov.”
The name means nothing to me, but the way Dmitri says it tells me everything. He speaks it the way other people say “cancer” or “foreclosure.”
“Who is Lev Morozov?”
“Third-generation bratva. The Morozov syndicate has been systematically dismantling Kozlov operations across Moscow for the past eighteen months. We’ve lost eleven ventures and two district alliances since they started.
” His voice drops half a register. “Lev is his father’s right hand.
Educated, patient, and very good at getting close to people who have information he needs. ”
“You think he’s using her.”
“Your sister is in a romantic relationship with a man whose family is at war with ours, and she hasn’t told you or anyone else in this family about it. It’s a reasonable conclusion.”
The photograph shakes in my trembling hands.
I stare at Polina’s face, at the way she’s smiling at this man, and try to reconcile it with the sister I know.
A woman who buried herself in medical textbooks after our parents died, stopped answering my calls, changed her voicemail, and built walls so high that even I couldn’t find a way over them.
“Tony’s team flagged a series of inquiries Lev has been making through back channels,” he continues. “Questions about your parents’ deaths.”
“Our parents died in a car accident. Black ice. The police report—”
“The police report tells one story.” Dmitri acknowledges.
“Lev Morozov is looking for a different one. He’s asking about your father’s business dealings in the months before he died and about connections between your parents and certain members of the Kozlov organization who are no longer alive to defend themselves. ”
I stare at the garden path beneath my feet, made up of gravel and moss, with the faint impression of footsteps from guests who wandered this direction earlier in the evening.
My mind is racing through every conversation I’ve had with Polina about our parents.
The questions she asked that I was too young to understand, and all the times she said she’d dropped it, and I’d believed her.
“Polina was sixteen when they died,” I tell him. “She never believed it was an accident. She dug through police reports, talked to witnesses, and drove our relatives insane with questions.”
“Did she find anything?”
“She told me she stopped looking.” I swallow against the knot in my throat. “But Polina keeps things close. Always has.”
“Then we need to find out what she knows.” Dmitri straightens his cufflinks. “And what she’s told Lev Morozov.”
From inside the estate, the sound of the string quartet drifts through the open doors. Pyotr is somewhere on the grounds, probably checking a perimeter that doesn’t need checking, because that’s who he is.
This family, the one I just learned to belong to, is built on something I don’t understand. And my sister might be the one handing a stranger the tools to tear it apart.
“What do you need from me?” I ask.
“Call your sister. Get her to Moscow. Whatever it takes.”
I nod. Dmitri holds eye contact for a moment, then turns and walks back toward the party.
My sister is out there somewhere, sleeping with a man who wants to destroy everything I just fought to keep. And she has no idea.
Or maybe she does. Maybe that’s why she stopped answering.