Epilogue
ROLAN
She’s been awake for twenty minutes before she says anything.
I know because I’ve been awake longer. Usually I’m out of bed before six and busy with work before seven, the day organized and moving before the house has fully woken.
Today, I stayed.
She shifts beside me, slightly restless, and lets out a long sigh.
“What’s bothering you, my love?” I already know the answer, but ask it anyway.
The ring on her finger catches the morning light when she moves — a flash of green and white that I’ve been watching with quiet satisfaction. Mine.
“She’s still out there,” Ellie says. To the ceiling, not to me.
I don’t pretend I don’t know who she means. “I know.”
“I don’t even remember the last time it was actually her — how long she’s truly been missing.” Her voice carries a thread of pain. “All those messages. I thought I was talking to Maren, and it was Landon the whole time, and I—” She exhales. “I should have known. I know her. I know how she writes.”
“He had her phone. He had time to study the pattern. ”
“That’s not?—”
“It’s not your fault.” I say it flatly, not as comfort but as fact. She has a habit of absorbing blame that belongs to other people, and I’ve been working on interrupting it. “He planned it carefully and had help.”
The last report Dmitri filed arrived just a few weeks before Ellie was captured. He said everything was fine, but I don’t know how true that was. He could have been lying. He could have been compromised long before any of us realized.
I’ve been carrying this quietly for weeks — the guilt of a decision I made for the wrong reasons, and the consequences that followed. I sent Dmitri away to separate him from her.
After catching the two of them talking in the kitchen, the irrational, territorial part of my brain couldn’t tolerate watching her give her attention to anyone other than me.
I sent him because I was jealous. Which is not something I’d expected to be capable of feeling at the time.
And he took Maren with him. What he’s done with the woman he was assigned to protect, I don’t yet know, and watching Ellie carry that worry every single day is its own form of punishment.
I take Ellie’s hand, the engagement ring gleaming in the light, and bring it to my mouth, pressing my lips against it.
“You said you would marry me,” I say. “And you still haven’t kept your promise.”
She tilts her face toward me, a smile tugging at her lips.
“I already told you — Maren is going to be my maid of honor. I’m not getting married until that can be true.
” She pauses, drawing a breath that carries the full weight of the conviction behind it.
“It would break her heart. And it wouldn’t be the same for me if I couldn’t share that moment with the only person who’s been by my side through all of this. ”
“We are going to find her,” I reply, still holding her hand.
“You can’t guarantee that. ”
“I can guarantee that every resource I have is working toward it.” I hold her gaze. “Trust me with this.”
I watch the moment her expression settles, the tension easing, the doubt yielding to something steadier. She nods.
“The wedding,” I say. “Tell me again that you want it.”
She laughs — the small, slightly exasperated version. She turns to face me fully, her head on the pillow, the morning light illuminating her features. “Of course I want it. I just want Maren to be there too.”
I pull her toward me. “I know. And she will be.”
She comes, and I finally feel her body against mine, my hand finding its way into her hair.
“You called me your queen last night,” she says against my chest.
“You are my queen.”
“In Russian.”
“ Moya koroleva .” I say it into her hair.
She tilts her head up.
“I want to be,” she says. “Officially.”
“You can sit on the throne.”
Her brow furrows in confusion. I take her hips, pulling her up and over me, positioning her above me with the ease that still makes her eyes go slightly wide.
Months of this, and she still hasn’t fully adjusted to the disproportion of our respective sizes, which I find — satisfying , is not a sufficient word but will have to do.
“Rolan.”
“ Moya koroleva ,” I say, pulling her forward. “Sit.”
Understanding dawns. The color rises in her cheeks. She moves, her knees settling on either side of my face.
“This is—” She loses the sentence when my hands close around her hips and my mouth finds her. The sound she makes in the first second runs through me like a current.
Her hands bury themselves in my hair .
I take my time. I’ve learned her — the geography of her responses, the places that make her go still and the places that make her lose the stillness, the exact moment her breathing shifts to tell me she’s close.
She says my name when she orgasms. Not as a breath, not as a whisper — my name, clearly, fully, in the voice that has no composure left in it.
I bring her down. Hold her face in my hands.
“ Otkroi glaza ,” I say. “Open your eyes.”
She opens them. Hazel, green-heavy today, the gold submerged — watching me from the face I have memorized in every light this room has offered.
“I love you,” I say.
“I love you too.”
I position myself and enter her slowly, the pace drawing from her a long exhale, the full-body release of a breath held too long. Her hands find my chest. Her eyes remain on mine.
We move together. Not urgently, as we have the whole day, an extraordinary and unfamiliar luxury, and I intend to use every minute of it.
Her expression shifts with each movement, each subtle adjustment, and I absorb all of it and think that I could spend years studying this and never reach the end.
“I’ll never get enough of you.”
“Rolan... please.”
“Please, what?” I ask, needing to hear it from her.
“Please. I want to come.”
“Anything for you, moya koroleva .”
I quicken the rhythm. Her legs wrap around my waist as we reach the edge together and fall over it in unison.
Alexei and Mikhail are waiting in my office at eleven.
I’m ten minutes late, which Alexei registers with an expression that confirms he knows exactly why — and has chosen, wisely, to keep his observations to himself.
“Any news on Dmitri?” I say, settling behind the desk.
They exchange a glance. Mikhail reaches into his jacket and places a phone on the desk between us. Beside it, a folded piece of paper.
I open it.
I quit.
Two words and an irrevocable decision. I’ve known Dmitri for eleven years, and in all that time I’ve never seen him use more words than necessary. This is consistent with his character. It is not, however, sufficient.
“He has Maren Lavelle,” I say.
“We believe so,” Alexei says carefully.
“You believe.”
“We have no confirmed sighting since they departed the city.” He pauses. “The phone was recovered at a Greyhound station in Indiana. He didn’t want to be found, and he’s skilled at not being found. You trained him.”
The satisfaction of being correct is entirely absent when the thing you’re correct about is your own miscalculation. I lean back and breathe.
“Find him,” I say. “Additional resources, whatever the cost. My fiancée refuses to marry me until her friend returns, and my patience diminishes by the day.”
“Understood.”
“Landon Webb?”
Mikhail straightens fractionally. “Dominican Republic. He flew commercial, which suggests he’s not planning an extended stay. Too visible. He maintains accounts there, but nothing substantial. He’ll resurface.”
“When he does, I want to know before he clears customs.” I pause. “Don’t deploy anyone. He’s not worth the expenditure. But I want him flagged at every entry point in the continental United States.”
Mikhail nods. They file out, and as they clear the doorway, two figures appear in their place.
Ellie, wearing the pale yellow dress she’s favored lately.
Beside her, partially concealed behind her leg, is Anya — clutching the fabric of Ellie’s dress with one hand and her sketchbook with the other.
The sketchbook is her tell. She has something she wants to say and is gathering the courage to say it.
The expression on Ellie’s face is one I recognize immediately: negotiation. It’s transparent, and it’s always effective.
“What do my girls want?” I ask.
Ellie’s mouth curves, the smallest private acknowledgment of my girls.
“Anya has something to ask you,” she says. “Go ahead, sweetheart.”
Anya glances up at Ellie, who answers the unspoken question with a nod. Anya’s gaze returns to me.
She draws a breath. “I want to go to school,” she says. “A real school. With other children.”
The first response that forms in my chest is no . But I look at her face — the anxiety evident in the way she grips Ellie’s dress like an anchor — and I hold the word behind my teeth.
“It’s not safe to?—”
“She needs friends.” Ellie’s voice is quiet but clear. Not arguing but stating. “She needs to be around children her age, Rolan. She needs to discover who she is somewhere beyond these walls.”
“Papa.” Anya’s voice is very small. “Please.”
“Give me a moment with Ellie, malaya ,” I say. “Please.”
Anya reads my tone correctly and nods, stepping out of the office. Her small hands pull the door shut behind her with deliberate care .
Ellie bites her lip. I stand, rounding the desk and stopping in front of her. She takes a breath and begins.
“Okay, so I’ve been researching this.” She shifts her weight slightly.
“There are three schools in the greater Chicago area that specialize in gifted education. Not just accelerated curriculum — genuinely gifted. The kind of program that would actually challenge her instead of boring her into misbehavior, which, by the way, is exactly where we’re headed if we keep her home much longer. ”
I say nothing. She takes this as permission to continue.
“The first is Meridian Academy on the north side — small cohorts, individualized pacing, excellent STEM integration. The second is the Lakeview Institute?—”
I place my hands on her face, and she stops.
“I trust your judgment,” I say.
She blinks. “You?—”