Epilogue
Claudia
Three months later.
The test is positive.
I sit on the edge of the bathtub and look at the two pink lines and feel the world tilt, gently, irrevocably, into a new configuration.
The house is different now. Not physically, although some things have changed.
There are books on the coffee table, mine, stacked and dog-eared because I've never been able to treat books gently.
There are photographs on the shelf, one of our wedding, taken by Volody on his phone, slightly blurry and absolutely perfect.
There's a throw blanket on the sofa that I brought from my old apartment, soft and worn, and Rovin pretended to hate it for three days before I caught him asleep under it on a Sunday afternoon.
The library I built from the storage room is my favorite place now.
I sit there in the evenings with a glass of wine, and read while Rovin works at the dining table, papers spread around him, his pen moving in quick decisive strokes.
Sometimes he looks up and catches me watching him through the open door, and a quiet understanding passes between us.
The shared understanding of two people who chose each other completely and would do it again.
Akyl has started bringing me documents to review.
Real ones. Property acquisitions, contract language, the financial structures that form the skeleton of the Mostovoi empire.
Rovin resisted this for two weeks, then relented when I presented him with a revised contract that saved one of his legitimate companies four hundred thousand dollars.
"She's better at this than you are," Akyl told him, with the faint smile that is the Akyl equivalent of a standing ovation.
Rovin looked at the contract, then at me, then at Akyl. "I know," he said. And the pride in his voice was unmistakable.
Volody comes for Sunday dinners. He brings his wife, Liv, wine, chaos and stories from parts of the Mostovoi world that Rovin would prefer I didn't know about, which is exactly why Volody tells them.
The youngest brother has a gift for making darkness entertaining, and he watches me with an expression that I've come to recognize as protective affection.
The specific fondness of a man who has seen his eldest brother alone for too long and is deeply grateful that it's over.
The empty rooms are still empty, but they don't feel empty anymore. They feel like potential. Waiting.
I stand and wash my hands while I look at myself in the mirror. I look the same. The same dark hair, the same brown eyes. The same woman who made something huge happen when the entire world was against her.
But I’m not the same. I am Claudia Mostovoia. I am the wife of Rovin Mostovoi. And I am carrying his child.
I find him in the kitchen, where he’s always found in the mornings, standing at the counter with black coffee and the focused expression of a man who is planning his day the way a general plans a campaign. He looks up when I enter.
"Morning," I say. My voice is steady. My hands, holding the test behind my back, are not.
"You're up early," he says. "How was your run?"
"I didn't run today."
He sets down his coffee. Turns fully toward me. Reads me the way he reads everything, quickly and thoroughly and with complete attention.
"What's wrong?"
Greta takes this as her moment to give us some privacy, and I’m grateful for her quiet understanding that this is a moment just for Rovin and I.
"Nothing's wrong." I bring the test from behind my back and set it on the kitchen island between us.
He looks at it.
He looks at me.
He looks at the test again.
I have seen Rovin Mostovoi in many states. Controlled. Commanding. Furious. Tender. Possessive. Passionate. I have seen him negotiate with killers and comfort his brothers and defend my name.
I have never seen him like this.
His hand reaches for the test. He picks it up with fingers that are, for the first time in my experience, not entirely steady. He holds it in his palm and stares at the two pink lines, and pure, unfiltered emotion moves across his face.
"Claudia," he says. His voice is raw. Stripped.
"Yes."
He sets the test down. He walks around the counter and takes my face in his hands. He looks at me with eyes that are shining, and Rovin Mostovoi doesn’t cry, has probably never cried, but the brightness in his eyes is very close.
"You're carrying my child," he says.
"Yes."
"Our child."
"Yes."
His thumbs trace my cheekbones. His forehead drops to mine. His breathing is unsteady but his hands are warm and his body, this massive, powerful, dangerous body, is trembling.
"I wanted this," he says, and his voice breaks. "I wanted this more than I have ever wanted anything, and I didn't know how to say it because saying it made it real and real things can be lost."
I cover his hands with mine. "This can't be lost. I'm here. I'm staying. And our child is going to grow up in this house, surrounded by his family, and he is going to be loved, Rovin. Completely and permanently loved."
"Or she," he says.
I smile. "Or she."
He kisses me. It is the gentlest kiss he has ever given me, barely a press of lips. Then he pulls me against his chest, wraps his arms around me and holds me so I can feel his heartbeat through his shirt, rapid and fierce.
"I need to call my brothers," he says, but he doesn't let me go.
"In a minute."
"In a minute," he agrees.
We stand in the kitchen, in the morning light, in the home we have built together inside the fortress he built alone. His arms are around me and my cheek is against his chest and our child, the size of a seed, is growing in the warm dark space between us.
There will be complications. There always are. The Bratva world isn’t gentle, and the life we've chosen isn’t safe, and the challenges ahead are real and significant and I am under no illusions about any of them.
But I am Claudia Mostovoia. I chose this life with open eyes and an unbroken will, and the man holding me is the most powerful, most dangerous, most devoted man I have ever known.
And now he is going to be a father, and I am going to be a mother, and the legacy we build together will be permanent and unbreakable and ours.
I chose this.
I chose him.
And I would do it again, every time, without hesitation, for the rest of my life.