Epilogue 1 Riley
TWO MONTHS LATER
I read the note pinned to the blindfold.
Tonight, Zapretnaya.
My, my, my… aren’t we the persistent little stalker?
Two months of silence, and suddenly he wants a date.
Not a whisper. Not a peep. Just those cold, clinical emails?—
Mila is safe. Your sister is safe. Do not reach out to them.
Which, let’s be real, is exactly what I’ve done.
I’ve tried slipping messages to Kennedy. Nothing obvious. Just quiet little breadcrumbs I pray she finds.
I don’t exactly know how to train carrier pigeons, but I’m working on it.
And Mila…
I’ve tried looking for Mila. Hence the new tracker tucked somewhere neatly inside this stupid fucking necklace.
Maybe she’s safe.
Maybe she’s not.
Zver could be lying through his perfect fucking teeth, and that’s the part that guts me the most.
But he hasn’t touched me. Not yet.
Though somehow, the fucker still finds time to slip into my room and watch me sleep.
Somewhere, a therapist weeps, denied the privilege of dissecting that sick, fucko mind.
My breath deflates and I look around. Technically, it’s not my room.
None of them are.
They’re all his.
Twelve rooms by my count, but that’s just in the half I’m allowed to see.
Though from the yard, I can factor in the other wing. The basement. The guest house. The other guest house. The boat house. And the attic that always feels like it’s watching me back.
By my count, there’s easily three times more.
His estate.
His rules.
His chessboard.
And I’m the piece he refuses to move. The pawn he owns, just waiting in place.
The worry and fear I’ve swallowed every day for two months finally snaps.
I crush the note in my fist, extra violently, then shove it deep into the trash.
I hope he sees it. Let him.
When he’s tiptoeing through the dark to watch me get myself off.
Because yeah.
I know. But— ugh . Two fucking months.
And all this pent-up rage? It has to go somewhere.
When he said the East Wing was mine and the West Wing was his, I assumed “off limits, no exceptions” went both ways.
And for a minute, I thought I could live with that.
Sorely, I was wrong.
The house is vast— gargantuan , really.
Old stone. Vaulted ceilings. With a messy forest wrapped around it like a mom bun on day three.
Charming in the way isolated seaside mansions tend to be. With haunting acres of craggy cliffs that drop straight into black water.
No neighbors. No traffic.
No rescue.
Hiking trails carve like arteries into the woods, and I’m free to use any of them, and I have. I’ve wasted entire days out there only to realize it never freaking ends.
Remember The Shining?
Yeah. Exactly like that.
Snow maze optional. Axe murderer probably included.
I cross to the window and stare out. Big, pillowy clouds drifting across a bruised gray-blue stretch of sky.
Other than the groundskeeper, his exhausted wife, and their three kids playing somewhere out on the grounds, there’s no one here.
Just us—and enough electronic security to rival Fort Knox.
Which reminds me.
I flip off camera number three—one of four mounted like smug little gods in every corner of the room.
A knock at the door snaps me out of the spiral.
“Come in.”
The man enters with quiet efficiency, sets the daily flower vase on the nightstand with the reverence of holy offering.
Today’s are peonies. Deep red, nearly black.
Fitting.
“Will you be going anywhere today, miss?”
He knows me so well.
Technically, I can come and go as I want—within a specific radius known only to my captor, while flanked by two guards and him. The grounds keeper. Or maybe house manager is more correct?
After my eighth escape attempt—maybe my tenth, it’s hard to keep track—and all of them to find Mila, the necklace was… reimagined.
Now?
It’s my own personal ankle monitor.
I cooperate, I get books.
I don’t, I get clouds.
Freedom, gift-wrapped in surveillance.
Fancy.
“I will,” I say. “The same places, please.”
Yes, I say please.
Because unlike my lord-of-darkness captor, I’m not an asshole.
And because his hand is a mess of old burns—twisted flesh and shiny scars, the kind that pulls tight when he grips anything at all—I will be kind.
I don’t need to give him another reason to clench.
He said it was an accident.
I wonder if it’s the same kind of accident I’ll be gifted if I ever step too far out of line.
He glances at the untouched tray on the table and frowns. “You should eat.”
“I am eating.”
His mouth quirks—wry, a little sad. “My babushka’s cookies don’t count.”
His great-grandmother, technically.
But dementia’s stripped her of time and titles.
She’s all Russian fire and Italian chaos. And nearly every day, a storm—baking through the madness like sugar might reglue a mind unraveling thread by thread.
I don’t complain.
Sometimes I help her.
Play with the kids. Clean what’s already spotless.
Because I need something to do besides sit here like a doll. Dressed nice and locked up, just waiting to be moved.
“The cemetery?” he asks.
I nod, a little too quickly. My obsession with all things gothic slipping through. “I found one yesterday. The tiniest headstone from 1798.”
I thumb through my notebook and try to say the name.
The syllables twist in my mouth like a curse. “S… Svyat—Svyatoslav… something.”
The groundskeeper, sweeping nearby, leans in just enough to glance over my shoulder.
“Svyatoslav Mstislavovich Vasilenko.”
He says it slow. Patient. A quiet kind of reverence curling around every syllable—so much pride in his mother tongue.
In exchange, I throw the occasional bit of Scottish Gaelic his way.
The little I recall.
“1761–1798. Forever My Beloved. ”
It’s the smallest headstone in the cemetery. And somehow, it manages to hit the hardest.
I swallow the tear before it can fall and shut the book.
I found it on the way to Dante’s mausoleum—though I don’t dare say that out loud.
The D’Angelos made it a fortress. One I break into.
Every. Goddamn. Day.
In two months, I’ve left more flowers than I can count.
Evil master leaves them for me.
And I leave them for Dante.
Because grief is just love when it has nowhere to go.
And it’s fucking overflowing.
“And the pharmacy,” I add, slipping it in like an afterthought.
He tilts his head, frowning. “You were there yesterday. Are you sick?”
“No, Dominic” I say, without hesitation. “Just a stomach bug.”