EPILOGUE I RAE
ONE MONTH LATER
SOTHEBY'S — PRIVATE SALE / APPRAISAL
Client: Lazarev, Lukas A.
Item:
- Art Deco engagement ring, circa 1925.
- Platinum (hand-forged, showing natural patina).
- Centre Stone: 3.2ct old European cut diamond, G colour, VS1
- Setting: Milgrain bezel with channel-set sapphire accents
Estimated Value: $1,985,000
I wake up whenever I want to these days. No matter what time that is, it always smells like coffee.
The brownstone is much brighter than it used to be.
Light is always pouring through the windows and the curtains stay pulled back.
All the white sheets have been folded up and stashed away.
Dead flowers were swapped out for live ones, refrigerators and pantries filled, paintings and photographs hung back up on the walls.
Little by little, it’s returning to life after a winter that lasted eighteen years.
I stretch out in bed and burrow down in the warm impression Lukas left on his side.
The sheets still smell like him—sea salt, mint, skin.
My skin probably smells like that, too, at this point.
We’ve been sleeping wrapped up in each other—often literally—every night for a month.
I’ve gotten so used to his scent now that it’s a miracle I ever lived without it.
Through the bedroom skylight, January light pours in.
It’s not quite summer sunshine, but it’s nice and unseasonably bright for the time of year, so I’ll take it.
I can hear the muffled sounds of Lukas moving around downstairs—cabinet doors opening and closing, the clink of ceramic, the hiss of the espresso machine, the low murmur of a news broadcast he’s almost certainly frowning at.
I can guess why: The trial started two weeks ago. That’s fast as hell by American judicial standards, but I think everyone involved agreed that it’d be nice to get this shit over with. Paparazzi are unbelievably annoying.
Therefore, things are at a bit of a fever pitch. The story dominates every news cycle, along with every front page and blog—and, if I had to guess, every dinner table conversation in at least a fifty-mile radius.
Lukas’s legal team, a bloodthirsty phalanx of razor-sharp attorneys who bill at rates that make my eyes water, filed a motion arguing compassionate circumstances.
They presented Elena’s medical records alongside expert testimony from oncologists who confirmed the severity and terminal trajectory of her illness.
Pretty compelling argument, in my opinion.
Of course, the prosecution pushed back hard. They painted a picture of Lukas as a ruthless, maniacally controlling husband who made a unilateral decision. The first few of those accusations are hard to deny.
Then Elena’s journal excerpts were released.
The lead defense attorney read Elena’s words aloud—”He keeps begging me to try another round of treatment.
He doesn’t understand: I’ve already decided”—and by the time they got to the final entry, half the jury was crying.
One woman had to be excused so her fellow jurors weren’t washed away in a flood of tears.
The tone of the headlines shifted after that. BILLIONAIRE MURDERER became A HUSBAND’S HEARTbrEAKING SECRET became THE LAZAREV LETTERS: INSIDE ONE WOMAN’S HEARTbrEAKING FINAL WISH. Public opinion, that fickle, bloodthirsty animal, rolled over and showed its soft underbelly.
So now, Lukas’s lawyers are cautiously optimistic. “Cautiously optimistic,” of course, is lawyer-speak for “we think we’re going to win, but we’d rather swallow glass than say so on the record.”
But that’s okay; I’ll be optimistic enough for all of us. I just can’t help feeling these days like better times are right around the corner.
I grab my phone from the nightstand and prop myself up against the headboard.
9:49 A.M., goodness gracious! I must be the laziest girl alive.
I have three texts from Jillian. One is a meme about lawyers, another is a link to some podcast episode she wants me to listen to, and then there’s a simple I love you, call me later.
I smile at that last one. It still hurts a little, the memory of everything that happened between us. Too many things went awry.
But at least we’re talking again. We’re doing it carefully, both of us learning to walk on a bridge we each set fire to.
Last week, she won a National Press Club award for the Elena story.
I sent her a huge bouquet of flowers as congratulations.
She sent back a voice note of herself ugly-crying in the newsroom bathroom, which is a brave new step in terms of my armadillo-esque friend showing a wee bit of emotional vulnerability.
We’re rebuilding. Brick by brick. It’s slow and sometimes awkward and, occasionally, one of us says something that lands wrong and we have to back up and try again. But we’re doing it. That counts.
Speaking of things being rebuilt, I open FaceTime and call Gideon.
He picks up on the second ring, and my whole chest unspools at the sight of him.
God, he looks happy and wholesome. He’s in the common room at Westgate, sitting cross-legged on a beanbag with a book open in his lap.
Behind him, I can see the big window that overlooks the garden, bare trees and frost-tipped grass under a pale sky.
“RaeRae!” He grins. It’s our mother’s grin, wide and unreserved. It makes his whole face rearrange itself around its own happiness. “You look disgustingly well-rested.”
I hide my face in shame. “I slept twelve hours.”
“Brag about it, why don’t you?”
He looks better than ever as he nears the end of his stay at Westgate. There’s color in his cheeks, clarity in his eyes, weight on his frame that speaks to regular meals and actual sleep.
That’s not to say he’s ready for Milan Fashion Week, per se: His hair badly needs a cut, as it’s begun curling past his ears, and he’s growing what can only generously be called a beard.
No matter how many times I tell him it makes him look less like my baby brother and more like some scruffy grad student who very performatively reads David Foster Wallace and Dostoevsky in coffee shops, he refuses to shave.
“How’s the program?” I ask.
“Good. Great, actually. Chef Martín let me run the kitchen for lunch service yesterday. I made this mushroom risotto that he described as ‘not terrible.’” He beams. “From Martín, that’s basically a Michelin star.”
The in-house culinary program at Westgate was Lukas’s idea.
He made a few calls—though he swears none of them involved threats of bodily harm—and arranged for a professional chef to visit Westgate twice a week and work with the residents who showed interest. Gideon was the first to sign up.
He’s been obsessed ever since, texting me photos of his creations at odd hours, calling me to debate the merits of shallots versus onions, sending me videos of himself attempting knife techniques that frankly terrify me.
Lukas also insisted on paying for Gideon’s remaining treatment. I fought him on it for a little while before he pointed out, in that infuriatingly calm way of his, that arguing about money when someone you love needs help is a luxury neither of us can afford.
I hate it when he’s right.
“Tell your boyfriend his risotto book is a game-changer,” Gideon says.
“He’s not my—” I stop. Because, well… “I’ll tell him.”
Gideon’s grin softens. “You doing okay, Rae? For real?”
“For real,” I promise. And mean it.
We talk for another few minutes—before he has to go.
“Love you, G,” I tell him.
“Love you more,” he replies. “Don’t forget to eat breakfast. Granola bars don’t count.”
I blow him a kiss and hang up.
When the call ends, I just sit there, phone warm in my hands, sunlight on my face. Gideon is alive and healing. Jillian is safe and thriving. And Kir—
Well, Kir is Kir.
He stepped down as CEO right after everything hit the fan.
The press release cited “personal matters requiring his full attention.” Nobody’s seen him publicly since.
The tabloids claim he’s in Europe—Monaco, some say, or maybe the south of France.
I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, I kinda hope he’s at the vineyard.
I hope he’s walking through that village square and eating almond croissants at Madame Savatier’s and finding whatever peace that place has left to offer a Lazarev.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, steal one of Lukas’s T-shirts from the chair, and pad downstairs.
Lukas is at the kitchen counter, reading the news on his tablet, coffee steaming beside his elbow.
He’s wearing gray linen trousers and a white henley with the sleeves pushed to his elbows.
His silver hair is still damp from the shower.
He’s barefoot, relaxed, looking less and less like a man facing a murder trial and more like a man who’s learned, after a very long time, how to exhale.
He looks up when I enter.
And his whole face changes.
I don’t know how else to describe it. The granite softens. The ice behind his eyes melts into something warm and liquid. The hard set of his jaw releases, and the corners of his mouth curve upward, and a light comes on somewhere deep inside him that wasn’t there a second ago.
“There she is,” he purrs.
Three silly little syllables. That’s all it takes to make my knees go stupid.
He pushes the stool back, opens his arms, and pulls me onto his lap. His hands settle on my waist and he kisses me like he hasn’t seen me in years.
I melt into it, into him. My fingers find the damp silver at his temples and I hold his face while he kisses me like we have all the time in the world. Maybe we do. Maybe that’s what this is: time, finally, stretching out before us instead of running out beneath our feet.
When he breaks away, he’s smiling. The rarity of those grins hasn’t changed, despite everything else taking a turn for the better. I treasure each and every one of them.
When I look down, I realize why.