Epilogue Jillian
THREE MONTHS LATER — OCTOBER
“Type to risk my life, not afraid to die / Type to make you cry, type to put a price / All up on your head, do just what I said / I’m a straight up villain, straight up villain”
— “Villain” by K/DA, Madison Beer, Kim Petras
Three months later, I’m standing in front of my bathroom mirror trying to glue a pair of fake eyelashes onto my left eye and failing spectacularly. The right one went on fine, but the left one keeps sliding down my cheek like it’s trying to escape my face.
“Come on,” I mutter, pressing it into place as I plead for mercy. “Stay. Stay. Good lash. Very good—”
It drops into the sink.
“… Goddammit.”
I fish it out, wipe it on a towel, and try again.
It’s Halloween. I’m already in my costume with only the makeup to go. I’m meeting Rae and Lukas at the party tonight. Rae is so pregnant that she’s going as an avocado, and she somehow convinced her smitten husband to dress as toast. Unreal.
Kir was supposed to come with me, but he got called away for a last-minute work thing, so I’ll be making the trek there solo.
He’s been doing a good job balancing his different priorities lately, so I’m not too mad about it.
Hopefully, he’ll get out of his meeting early and be able to join us.
He won’t have a costume, technically speaking, but “Rich Hot Guy in a Very Expensive Suit” is a timeless classic that never gets old.
The only thing better than seeing him in a suit is helping him get out of one.
If I play my cards right, I’ll get both experiences tonight.
Kir being a staple in my life isn’t the only thing that’s changed since he came home. There’s another staple that’s just as important.
I see my daughter every Saturday. Her name is Lily.
She’s five and a half, and she has my hair and my freckles and, unfortunately and/or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, my motor mouth.
She talks nonstop about everything. Every bug, cloud, cat, person she meets is the most fascinating thing that’s ever existed in the whole recorded history of human civilization, and boy, would she like to share her thoughts on the matter.
She still lives with her adoptive family.
I wouldn’t have it any other way. Javi and Arabella Cohen might be the nicest people who’ve ever lived.
They’re good, in a pure, bone-deep sort of way.
Better than good. They’re the parents I couldn’t be at nineteen, and I love them for it in a way that doesn’t have a name yet.
Saturdays go like this: I drive to Montclair, sometimes alone, sometimes with Kir.
Lily and I do whatever she wants. Last week, it was the playground, down the slide again and again until I got burn marks on my ass.
The week before that, we made cookies and ate frosting straight out of the jar, and laughed and laughed and laughed together.
It’s not uncomplicated. There are moments where she looks at me with a question in her eyes that she doesn’t know how to phrase yet. Sometimes, I have to go to the bathroom for a moment to compose myself. But I always come back out. That’s the part that matters.
Arabella sends me photos during the week incessantly, but it’s never enough.
I always want more. Lily at the breakfast table.
Lily in her Halloween costume. Lily asleep on the couch.
Every photo goes into a folder on my phone that is no longer hidden inside “Tax Docs 2019.” It’s right there on the home screen, labeled with her name.
Work is good, too. Doug promoted me to senior investigative correspondent, which came with a raise and a desk by the window.
I’m covering financial crime full-time now.
The Lazarev story opened doors I didn’t even know existed.
Sources reach out to me these days instead of the other way around.
Doug still wears a permanent frown, but he calls me “kid” slightly more often, which is as close as he’ll ever get to a true expression of affection.
Everything else has mostly settled down into something approaching normal. Kir and Lukas are going to family therapy, if you can believe that, and they’re back to running the company side by side. It’s a legit father-and-son affair, and both the tabloids and the investors are eating it up.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to give up my apartment, even though Kir keeps saying I could move into his whenever I wanted.
This place just has memories in it. I’m not ready to let it go.
To my surprise, Elliot moved out. He got a girlfriend, a giggly brunette whom he adores and who adores him in return.
He was so proud to introduce her to me. I couldn’t have been any happier for him.
But I gotta admit, I do hate the nights when I’m here alone.
Kir fills it up with his heat, his smell, his touch.
Even, on occasion, his laugh. That’s another shocking thing that happens from time to time these days: The uber-serious, hyper-violent man I fell in love with descends into laughing fits that last for minutes on end, until we’re both teary-eyed and clutching our aching bellies on the floor.
Those are the moments I live for. They make everything we’ve been through feel worthwhile.
This moment, however, is sucking, because this damn eyelash extension just will not behave. “Listen here, you little shit,” I snap. “If you don’t get your ass in line…”
But just as I’m leaning toward the mirror, the lights go out.
Bathroom, hallway, kitchen—black. The whole apartment plunges into darkness so total I can’t see my own hand in front of my face.
My heart goes from resting to full sprint in about half a second. The old programming fires up instantly, muscle memory from a life I thought I’d left behind. My skin prickles. My breath goes shallow. Every sound in the apartment gets louder.
The Fear is never truly gone. It’s hard-wired into me, I think, and there’s no permanent purging of it.
But these days, it always brings its old friend with it.
The Fire.
That heat, that trickle of flame low in my belly.
My thighs press together as my mouth begins to water, a fucked-up Pavlovian response to terror that never fails.
My nipples pucker up in the cups of my bra, straining and achy already.
The grasping, clenching need in my womb roars to life.
Fight-or-flight-or-flee—or, preferably, fuck.
Then a leather glove closes over my mouth from behind.
“Hello, little fox,” purrs a dark, toxic voice. “You’re looking especially breakable tonight.”
In response, I bite down on the leather as hard as I can.
The Masked Man laughs and his gloved hand drops from my mouth to the curve of my throat, where he presses his lips to the spot just below my ear. The smell of him floods in. Cinnamon and sandalwood and musk. Home.
I spin around.
He’s in the mask. The real one, the O.G. It’s black and fitted, covering everything from the bridge of his nose to his jaw. For a second, it’s like we’re back on that first night almost a year ago, when he cut my power and pinned me to the wall and told me to kneel.
He’s tall enough that I have to crane my neck even in heels.
The suit he’s wearing is dark and exquisitely tailored, hugging shoulders that are too broad for a CEO and more suited to someone who breaks things for a living.
Which, to be fair, he used to. His hands are gloved, but in the gap above his cuff, I see tanned skin and the swirling ink of his tattoos.
He’s not for everyone; I get that. He’s got depraved fantasies, and he wants to hurt me, to make me beg and plead and cry.
He likes when he locks me up and edges me to the point of sobbing.
The more my body twitches and spasms, the brighter the red blooms on my skin where he bites or lashes me, the happier he is.
But that stuff makes me happy, too.
There’s nothing better than the feeling of utter helplessness that consumes you while a man you trust more than life itself looms overhead, masked and untouchable, swearing he’ll make you break and then promising to put you back together again.
And there’s nothing better than when he does exactly that.
Shatters you a thousand times over, then unlocks you from your cuffs or collar and pulls you into his arms to whisper tender sweet nothings in your ear until you fall asleep melted against him, with the hot candle wax still cooling on your ass and thighs.
He’s a temptation for all the wrong reasons.
But I love him for all the right ones.
My fingers reach for the fabric stretched across his cheekbone. He catches my wrist before I get there, and guides my hand back down to my side. “Can’t break the rules,” he chides.
I arch a brow. “We don’t have rules anymore.”
“For tonight, we have this one. The mask stays on.”
His thumb traces a slow circle on the inside of my wrist. I can feel his pulse through the leather. Or maybe that’s mine. Hard to tell anymore. The difference no longer seems that important. He is me; I am him; we’re two shadows swallowed up by the same warm, safe darkness.
I can feel the shift in the air as he switches to his dommy voice. “Tonight,” he growls, “I’m not Kir. And you’re not my girlfriend.” His gloved hand tightens on my wrist. “I’m the man who broke into your apartment. And you’re my puppet.”
He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a strip of black silk.
He spins me around and ties it over my eyes, knotting it snug at the back of my head.
It’s like I’m back in the darkroom at the newspaper.
Total nothingness. No shape, no shadow, no anchor point.
There is only his hands and his scent and the low rasp of his breathing.
“Here’s how this works,” he murmurs against my ear. “You don’t speak unless I tell you to. You don’t move unless I tell you to.” His gloved thumb drags down the side of my neck. “And you don’t cum until I say you can.”