Epilogue Two
Matvey
“Good boy, Mattie,” I say, looking down at my three-month-old grandson as he takes the bottle I’m giving him.
His eyes, the same blue-green as Alina’s and Ev’s, look up at me, watching me as he greedily sucks on the bottle Harper left with us.
She’s still nursing, but Ev insists they take a night away every once in a while.
It’s good for them, and it gives us a chance to bond with our newest grandbaby.
“He’s so beautiful,” Alina says, smiling down at him as she comes to take a seat next to me.
The familiar weight of her body against mine when she leans in still takes my breath away and still makes my heart feel like it’s skipped a beat.
My wife is still my reason for breathing.
She’s still my entire world, and I still wake up every once in a while from a nightmare that’s so vivid it causes an actual physical pain—a reminder of how close I came to losing her.
The memory still haunts me, even now, even so many years after the fact.
She leans closer and brushes her fingers along Mattie’s chubby cheek. He turns his eyes on her and smiles around the bottle. “He looks just like Ev.”
“He does,” I agree.
“I can’t believe how lucky we are.” Her words are heavy with emotion, and when I turn my head, her eyes are glassy.
“Malishka,” I murmur. “Don’t cry. You know it breaks my heart when you do that.”
“They’re happy tears,” she says, giving me a wobbly smile.
“They’re still tears,” I tell her. Leaning closer, I kiss her, because I want to, because seeing her cry, even if it is happy, hurts me, and because I can.
That simple pleasure was taken from me for far too long, and losing it taught me to never miss a chance to touch her or taste her when I have it.
She pulls back with a smile on her face.
I remember everything about this woman—from the little girl who snuck into the hospital to read to me after I’d been burned and was in so much pain I begged for death, to the teenager who used to watch my every move, to the young woman who decided to slip on a sexy black dress on her 18th birthday and ask me for a first kiss.
Now she’s a middle-aged woman with a little bit of grey in her hair and a few lines around her eyes and mouth, and still the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
“You’re beautiful, Alina,” I tell her. “You’re as beautiful to me now as you were on the night of your 18th birthday.”
“The night I tried to ravish you and failed?”
I grin at the memory. “You didn’t fail. You knocked me on my ass that night. I still haven’t recovered.”
She laughs and kisses me again. “You’ve always been the love of my life, Matvey. I’ve never wanted anyone but you.”
Every part of me softens at her words. “And I’ve never wanted anyone but you.”
She cups my face and kisses me again until Mattie starts to wiggle in my arms, demanding attention and probably a good burp.
“I love you,” she whispers once more before smiling down at Mattie. “Do you want Grammy to burp you in the rocker, Mattie?”
He kicks his feet and smiles up at her, and when I hand him over, I watch my wife’s face. I love seeing her light up, and she always lights up when she has a baby in her arms.
I tell her I love her and then give her ass a soft smack before she walks away, because I just can’t help myself. She drives me crazy. Always has and always will.
She looks over her shoulder to smile at me. “Your brothers will be here in a few minutes.”
Getting up, I head into the kitchen to get the bottle of vodka and five glasses before returning to the living room.
I’ve just finished pouring everyone a drink when I hear their heavy footsteps coming down the hall.
I get hit with déjà vu when my four brothers walk in, reminding me so much of when we were kids, crashing at whoever’s apartment was safest and had some food.
Roman is the first, always putting himself in front, not because he’s a domineering asshole but because he always feels the need to protect us.
Even after all these years, taking the lead isn’t something he can let go of.
Lev is right behind him. His face is still full of piercings, even if his hair is mostly grey now and he’s developing wrinkles just like the rest of us.
Danil walks in with a worn-leather messenger bag slung across his chest because he still likes to have his laptop close by, even if he is no longer using it to hack into places so we don’t starve.
He takes one of the glasses of vodka, raises it to me in a slight toast before sinking into one of the chairs and taking a drink.
Vitaly is the last one in. The reason is obvious when I see all the snacks in his arms he’s pilfered from the kitchen on his way in.
He gives me the same shit-eating grin that’s been on his face since he was a kid.
“You always forget to bring in snacks,” he tells me, like it’s my fault I thought a bunch of men in their late fifties could have a conversation without passing around a bag of chips or a box of Ho Hos.
“Well, I see you’ve gone and helped yourself to whatever the hell you wanted, so I guess the night is saved,” I say, making him laugh before he rips the first bag of chips open and reaches in for a handful.
“I did, yeah,” he says around the loud crunching. “You need to buy more fruit snacks. You’re out.”
“Probably because you ate them all last time,” Lev says.
“That was over a week ago,” Vitaly says, unable to comprehend going a whole seven days without his favorite fruit snacks. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring my own next time. I’d hate for something like this to happen again. I usually have a few extra packs on me, but I guess I ate them already.”
I look over in time to see Roman rolling his eyes at the dramatics.
“So what’s on the agenda for tonight?” Danil asks.
I can’t help but laugh, because calling it an agenda is being a bit generous.
We’re fully retired from the Bratva life as of a few months ago.
We keep up to date to make sure our kids are safe, but other than that, we stay out of it and let them do their thing.
More and more, our business is becoming what could be considered legit.
We own several nightclubs now, a few restaurants, and we still own Pink, the strip club that continues to rake in money, proving the predictability of horny men.
“Agenda,” Vitaly says with another loud crunch followed by a laugh. “You’re still such a dork, Danil.”
Danil, unfazed by the comment, looks over at the rest of us. “Any news?”
Roman takes another drink and says, “Luka says everything is going fine. The city’s been quiet, and it looks like DeMarco’s going to be convicted, so that’s one less thing to worry about. The only other news I have is that Leo just learned to ride his bike without training wheels.”
This starts a whole conversation about training wheels and bike helmets and whether there’s any way to add more reflective lights to their bikes.
“Nico wants one of those electric bikes,” Lev says. “You know how fast those things go? I might as well just put the kid on a motorcycle.”
I laugh at how overprotective he is, remembering all the stupid, insanely dangerous things he used to do when he was fifteen. “Now who’s the dork?” I ask, making everyone laugh.
Vitaly throws a chip at him and laughs while Lev scowls and says, “I’m just saying they’re really fast, and I don’t want my grandson getting hurt. If that makes me a dork like Danil, then I guess I’m a dork.”
“It definitely does,” Roman says. “But I guess that means we’re all dorks now. We used to be pretty kick-ass, if you all remember.”
“We’re still kick-ass,” Lev says, defending our honor. “We’ve just got a lot more people to keep safe now.”
“We do,” I agree, thinking about my three-month-old grandson in the other room. He won’t be the last either. I know Ev and Harper are going to have more babies. Hell, maybe the others will too.
“We have a dynasty,” Vitaly says, grinning at the thought. “Look how many Melnikovs we’ve brought into the world.”
“It’s impressive,” Danil agrees.
“Remember our broke little asses back in Moscow?” Roman asks, shaking his head at the memory. “God, I never thought we’d end up here like this. I thought we’d be lucky to make it through another year.”
“Yeah, I was more than happy to leave our shitty lives behind,” Lev says.
“It’s been one hell of a ride,” I say, looking around the room at my brothers, knowing there’s no one I’d rather have my back than these four.
“Ride’s not over yet, brother,” Vitaly says, helping himself to a refill while he clutches a Ho Ho in his free hand.
“Amen to that,” Roman says, raising his glass in a toast. “To the Melnikov brothers, the ones who started it all.”
“The OG motherfuckers,” Vitaly says with a grin while raising his freshly poured drink.
“To paving the way for our kids,” Danil says, joining in.
“To our well-earned retirement and golden years that are filled with grandkids and great-grandkids and all the happiness we missed out on as kids,” Lev says. He grins and adds, “And to a lot of retirement sex.”
We all laugh and nod in agreement while I lift my own glass and say, “To the family I chose, and the one I’ll always choose.
You four and Alina, we’re the family that started it all.
We went through hell together and survived it.
Everything we’ve been through has made us stronger, and now our family is safe.
Generations will be taken care of because of what we’ve built for them.
” I let out a soft laugh, a smile slipping through as I look at each of them in turn.
“I think we’ve done a pretty fucking good job. ”
The others laugh and grin, raising our glasses higher as Roman says, “To our retirement and our future.”
The vodka goes down easy, and several more drinks are poured as our agenda turns into sharing more stories about our grandkids.
When they all decide they’d rather be with their wives, we say our goodbyes, promising to meet up again soon, and after they’re gone, I walk down the hall in search of my wife.
I find her in the nursery we set up for our grandbabies.
She’s rocking Mattie. He’s asleep, but she’s having too much fun holding him to put him down.
Memories of her doing the same thing with Yel and Ev hit me hard.
We’ve built such a life, she and I. A life I’ve never once felt worthy of.
A life that I’m constantly overcome with gratitude for.
I step into the room, wanting to be with my wife and grandson, not wanting to miss a second of this time we have together.
Alina smiles up at me as I lean down to kiss her.
Running my fingers along Mattie’s dark hair, I can’t help but think about his future.
I don’t know what it will look like, if he’ll decide to join the Bratva or choose a different direction for his life, but I do know he’ll always be loved and protected and safe.
He will never know the harsh life that we grew up with.
He’ll never know what it feels like to be hungry or to feel the pain of his dad’s drunken fists.
He’ll be spared all of that, and that knowledge makes everything I’ve gone through in my life worth it.
Because family is everything.