Extended Epilogue
EVGENY
“The cake is here, Eva.”
My wife is in the middle of a dizzying collection of what I can only call madness, one she orders with an alacrity fit for the wife of a pakhan. The way she’s navigating the insanity might put even me to shame.
People swarm through our newly rebuilt residence, risen over the ashes of the old one like a phoenix. It is a home Eva and I planned together, with the library at its center. Except today, bright yellow has taken over what is usually decorated in soft grays and creams with dark wood accents.
Bright yellow streamers, cheery decorations, and balloon arches festoon the kitchen and terrace.
Bright yellow ducks of different sizes bob up and down in the pool, and yellow balloons twist on the lawn in the breeze, the ocean shimmering beyond.
A stack of multicolored presents towers beside one of the outdoor couches, and various children’s games litter the shaded spots.
The chaos is enough to send me fleeing to the shelter of my office as we wait for the party to begin.
It’s nearly a copy of my old one, down to the color on the walls and dark wood.
Except now my desk and my wall are covered in picture frames, containing all sorts of pictures of Eva, pictures of Eva and the twins, pictures of the twins by themselves, and pictures of Eva, the twins, Marco, and Katie.
My family.
The family I never once dreamed of, expected, or even thought I deserved. Even now, there are moments I half believe I’ve been living a dream, and I’m afraid I will wake and find it all gone. That is why I hung the pictures. They keep me grounded in reality.
Then there are moments when I am in such fear of losing the three most important people in my life that my chest is tight. In those moments, I find myself seeking refuge in the beast Eva first met, becoming obsessive about protecting them until Eva pulls me back to her light.
I would never admit it to anyone, but Vasya’s betrayal still haunts me after all this time.
The man with whom I grew up, who had been my only friend for so long, had stood by my side while secretly despising me and then tried to destroy my life.
He nearly took Eva from me in the process.
The worst part was I never knew. All my well-honed instincts had failed me, and danger had come from right beside me.
And now he is dead and buried, and I will never get a chance to ask him why. I understand revenge for his family, of course I do. But I don’t know if I will ever understand brotherly affection becoming seething hatred. Hatred enough to kill.
A knock on the door pulls me back into reality. “Come in.”
Dmitri peeks around the corner, and a grin splits his face. “Is this where you’re hiding?”
I make a noncommittal noise in my throat, returning to the reports on my desk that have taken a back seat to the twins’ first birthday weekend.
My second-in-command closes the door behind him and drops into the chair opposite me at the desk with a sigh. “And I thought Bratva business was difficult to sift through. Most vory couldn’t handle a kids’ birthday party.”
Another noncommittal noise tells him I agree, just not how much. This is Eva’s turf, not mine.
Eva continues to amaze me every day with her brilliance, the way she loves the twins and me, the way she navigates the world around her and shapes it to her liking.
My wife has also settled admirably into her roles in my very different businesses. She shines when she is on my arm at some high-end function, the light to my dark, the one to whom everyone gravitates.
“Here. I brought you something.” Dmitri pushes an old, dented shoebox across my desk to me.
“The gifts are for Jordan and Eliana today, not me.”
He doesn’t laugh at my halfhearted attempt at a joke, only shrugs and settles back to wait for me to go through the box.
I open the top and stare at the contents before anything inside makes sense. My gaze flicks up to Dmitri. “Is this?”
“I found a key to a safe deposit box when we were cleaning out Vasya’s stuff. There were a few things inside, including this.”
To anyone else, the contents of the old Air Jordan shoebox wouldn’t seem worth protecting in a bank vault.
To me, it contains the remnants of our childhood together, like a baseball from the first time Ivan took us to a Dodgers game, his mother’s rosary and another necklace with a pointed star and diamonds, a box office ticket from our favorite movie when we were teenagers, along with a few other odds and ends.
A folded piece of paper flutters out as I lift a creased and worn Russian-English translation book.
“What’s this?” I ask Dmitri, who shrugs again. But there’s a light in his eye as he watches me unfold the sheet to see it littered with Vasya’s messy Cyrillic letters:
Evgeny,
Forgive me. I wish every day that Maslov hadn’t told me what he had before he died, that he hadn’t given me the letter from my father telling me I have a duty to fulfill.
I burned it, tried to forget it and deny all knowledge of it; your father is no longer with us, and so I have tried to let it die.
But my father comes to me in the night. He is burnt and angry, shaming me for not taking revenge, for not taking the Kucherov Bratva for myself, for not furthering our family name and his designs.
He has cursed me, and now I fear I hear him during the day, hear his curse and his wails as he burns, and I know he will not leave me.
He drives me to vengeance, to seek what is mine, to see the injustice you and your family brought upon ours corrected. Evgeny, you are my brother and my tormentor. I am trying to keep the demon my father has become at bay, but every day, it grows harder.
Whatever happens, whether the demons possess me or not, know you are my brother. Know I fought against them for you. Know I forgive what happened. And I forgive whatever happens. Know I love you as my own blood.
The letter isn’t signed or dated, but I don’t need it to be to feel its impact, to know Vasya is talking to me from beyond the grave. From beyond time.
As I forgave him, he forgave me.
“The knowledge of what your father did, what his father was about to do, drove him mad,” Dmitri says quietly. He and Vasya never got along, but I still hear sadness in the big man’s voice.
“The stress of dueling loyalties to his father and me,” I add, wishing, yet again, he had said something. Something at all. Then, maybe he would still be here.
This letter is a treasure. It contained Vasya’s last words to me, the words that reveal his heart and his true nature. The words that ease my heart so I can finally, finally, let my brother rest.
My phone buzzes, and I take it out of my pocket to see a message from Eva.
Where are you? The guests are here.
“We’re being summoned,” I say, cringing as I push to my feet.
Dmitri’s big paw of a hand slaps my shoulder, and we return to the maelstrom of children, noise, and bright yellow.
Eva, surrounded by other parents and a sea of frothy balloons and streamers, beams as she turns and sees me, a twin juggled in each arm. She’s wearing the Fabergé rose pinned to her sundress, and it glints in the bright sunlight.
Jordan gives me an enormous smile that mirrors his mother’s. Eliana reaches for me, her small, chubby hands opening and closing until I have her in my arms, where she curls into me. Like me, the noise, color, and attention overwhelm the little girl, and I hold her small body close.
The other parents Eva has befriended in their mommy-and-me and music groups don’t seem entirely at ease around me, either. Eva doesn’t seem to care, since her grin is enormous as she floats from guest to guest, Jordan still in her arms, ever the glowing hostess.
I stand back from the crowd, holding my daughter, watching the woman who has helped me find the greatest version of myself, one who sees and appreciates me for the man I am.
The woman who has stayed with me, though I snarled and growled at her, tried to scare her off, who sat by my side in the hospital and came back to me, and who was almost taken from my arms. The woman whose hand I held as our children came into this world, the children who are such a light in both of our lives.
Never once did I think I deserved such blessings. Two years ago, I could not have imagined my life now and the light and happiness that chase my dark away.
The beauty to my beast.
The love of my life.
The End