Epilogue - Tone
Marigold hated shoes.
This was the problem.
It wasn’t the weather. Nor the catering. It wasn’t the fact that half the men attending my wedding had collectively committed enough crimes to destabilize several governments.
No.
The problem was that my daughter had decided shoes were oppression.
“I don’t want them,” Marigold declared, sitting cross-legged in the middle of my dressing room floor, tiny arms folded over her chest, glaring at the white satin flower-girl shoes like they’d personally offended her.
“You need to wear them,” I told her.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
She had Archie’s stare. Which was unfortunate.
At two years, Marigold Popovich already possessed the unwavering conviction of a dictator and the negotiation tactics of an organized criminal. She also had my hair.
God help us all.
I crouched in front of her, wedding dress pooled around my feet.
The dress itself was simple. Not because I lacked options. But because this wedding wasn’t even my idea. I hated spectacle.
Today I was committing. It had taken him forever, but Archie had finally convinced me to commit to him and our new family. This, as he pointed out, was the only thing remaining to legally seal what Archie and I had built long before rings.
Long before the vows we would take today.
Wife.
Husband.
Mother.
Father.
Survivors.
“Goldie,” I said patiently, reaching for the shoe.
She narrowed her eyes.
“No shoes.”
“Your father won’t be pleased if you ruin his wedding photos.”
Her expression shifted. I finally had her attention.
Archie was wrapped around her finger in a way that should concern me more than it did.
“Really?”
“Yes. You know he’s been looking forward to this day since before you were born.”
Her mouth rounded.
Little monster.
Before I could continue, the door opened.
Archie stepped in.
And just like that, the room changed.
All these years later, and the sight of him still did something reckless to my nervous system.
He was in an impeccable black suit with a white shirt. He had ditched the tie.
His light hair was pushed back.
The scars were still there if you knew where to look. In the set of his shoulders. The occasional stillness in his eyes when memory dragged at him.
But he was whole. As whole as men like Archie ever got.
His gaze landed on me first. And stayed there.
Three years.
A child. A home. A thousand ordinary mornings.
And still… that look. Like I was the centre of every violent orbit in him.
Then he looked at Marigold.
“What’s happening, buttercup?”
Marigold pointed at the shoes.
“They’re bad.”
Archie crouched beside her immediately.
Traitor.
He picked one up, studied it seriously.
“Yes,” he said seriously. “They are terrible.”
I glared.
He ignored me.
Marigold nodded like she’d finally found an ally.
Archie leaned closer to her.
“But.”
Her little brows lifted.
“If you wear them for Papa’s wedding, I’ll let you eat cake before dinner.”
Her eyes widened. She gasped.
“You can do that?”
He looked offended.
“I own this grand estate.”
I snorted.
Marigold looked at me.
“Cake?”
I sighed.
“Fine.”
Archie smirked.
Ten seconds later, the shoes were on.
Witchcraft.
“That was the deepest betrayal,” I informed him.
He stood and kissed my forehead.
“That was the only strategy we had, my lovely. You know the way she gets about shoes.”
I looked up at him. And there it was again. That look. The one that still made me feel chosen.
His hand slid over the curve of my waist.
“You look beautiful.”
I studied him.
“You’ve already seen me in this dress. You helped me pick it out, remember?”
“Ahhh… the way I remember it, I picked it out for you without your consent because you insisted you didn’t want a wedding.”
“Same thing,” I scoffed.
Archie only grinned, completely unbothered, before steering our daughter—shoes and all—out of the room.
Outside, music carried across the hills, soft and warm in the late afternoon air.
The Tuscan estate stretched beneath the sun, gold light spilling over the vineyards and olive groves like molten honey, bathing everything in that strange, quiet kind of peace I’d once thought wasn’t made for people like us.
Getting married here, in our own home, had been the only real compromise I’d managed to drag out of Archie Popovich.
A small ceremony, with family only.
The people who mattered. The people who had bled beside us, buried our dead, and stood in the fire when it counted.
Somehow, Tuscany had become home in a way I never expected. Not just a place to hide. But somewhere we could build a life. Our life.
We’d built it together—piece by piece, scar by scar.
When I stepped out, Raze was waiting at the end of the hall, Marigold at his side, with his son Kai beside her—not much older, but already carrying himself with the same watchful stillness his father wore like a second skin.
Marigold went first.
She scattered flower petals down the aisle with the grave concentration of a tiny, slightly intoxicated empress, her little fist opening in uneven bursts.
Half the petals landed in one tragic heap by her feet. The rest barely made it past her shoes.
But she was trying. And somehow, that made it perfect.
Archie stood waiting for me at the altar beneath the old olive tree, and for one suspended moment, the world narrowed to just him.
When I reached him, his hand found mine. It was steady. Warm. Certain.
The vows were simple. We didn’t believe in grand speeches and theatrics. That wasn’t us.
Instead, we chose each other in front of the people who had watched us survive becoming who we were today.
And when he kissed me, Marigold shouted, “Cake now!”
The entire ceremony dissolved into laughter.
Later, after food and wine and enough whiskey to soften even Atlas’s edges, the family spread out across the terrace.
Marigold was asleep in Raze’s lap. Which was absurd. Raze looked offended by her unconscious trust in him.
Atlas sat beside Neve. They were married now. Settled. If Atlas Cavalho could ever be called settled.
Neve rested against him, visibly pregnant with their first child.
Atlas’s hand never left her. He was protective without making it obvious.
He was still a terrifying man, but somehow softer with her. Only her.
Gianni and Mikayla argued over dessert. Nothing had changed there. Except now that Mikayla was on her fifth pregnancy, Gianni looked marginally less homicidal on a daily basis.
Progress.
Marcello sat with Samira. Quiet. Solid.
Samira’s hand was in his. Marcello still carried grief in him like old weather, but Samira had taught him how to live beside it instead of destroying himself.
Atlas was saying something to Rasputin.
It was still surreal sometimes, that Archie had a whole family I didn’t know about at one point. A family he was murderously protective of, which was so at odds with the evil little villain he’d been when I’d first met him.
Rasputin sat with his wife, Yelena.
She was sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued, the Russian beauty just sassy enough to tame the beast in him.
Which probably explained why they worked.
Archie watched his brother laugh at something Bass said, and I felt his hand tighten over mine.
Anna was there too. She looked healthier, lighter than when I’d first met her when she’d come to visit two years ago when I’d given birth to Marigold.
Bass sat beside her. Close. Closer than “family friend” close. Which I found very interesting.
I leaned toward Archie.
“Are your mother and Bass sleeping together?”
Archie nearly choked on his drink.
Across the table, Rasputin laughed again.
Marigold stirred, blinking herself awake, her lashes heavy with sleep.
Without a word, she climbed out of Raze’s lap and straight into Archie’s as if it was instinct, her small hand reaching up to catch his jaw, anchoring herself there, knowing this was where she belonged.
“Papa.”
He kissed her hair.
“Yes, buttercup?”
“Cake?”
He laughed.
And that sound hit me harder than the vows we’d exchanged earlier.
Because there had been a time I thought I’d lose him and I’d never hear the tinkle of his laugh again.
And now here he was. Alive. Holding our daughter. Laughing beneath the Tuscan sun.
I looked around the table. At all of our family.
This strange, brutal family forged in blood and violence and impossible love.
Atlas and Neve.
Gianni and Mikayla.
Marcello and Samira.
Rasputin and Yelena.
Raze and Izzy.
And us.
Me. Archie. Marigold.
We were all beautifully ruined. Every one of us. But still here. Still choosing each other.
Archie glanced at me, catching whatever was on my face.
“What?”
I shook my head.
Nothing. Everything.
The wind moved through the olive trees.
The sky burned gold as the sun dipped low over the hills.
And for the first time in a long time, peace didn’t feel temporary.
It felt like forever.
There would always be enemies and shadows beyond the gates. Men with grudges. Blood debts. Old wars waiting for the right moment to wake again.
That was the nature of loving men like ours. The nature of being one of them.
And still—love had taken root here anyway.
Wild as ivy. Stubborn and impossible to kill.
Marigold yawned against Archie’s chest, her tiny fingers stretching toward me, heavy with sleep. I took her hand. Archie took mine.
And sitting there, between the man I loved and the child we had made from all the broken, jagged pieces of ourselves, something settled inside me. A truth, quiet and sharp.
My whole life, I had fought for control like it was survival. Like if I held on tight enough, I could outrun fate. But fate had found me anyway.
Not in the ruin. But in Archie. In Marigold. In everything we were.
Messy. Violent. Imperfect.
Ours.
Laughter carried through the house behind us as night folded itself over Tuscany, warm and endless, wrapping around the life we had built from our impossible devotion.
And looking at it, I understood that some loves do not save you.