Epilogue
One Month Later
The motorcycle hums beneath me, steady and alive, the vibration running up through my thighs and into my spine as the city thins around us.
I hold on to Maksim’s waist, my arms wrapped tight across his stomach while the wind presses hard against my helmet. He made me wear it. Insisted on it actually, like I had any chance of winning that argument.
Meanwhile, his own head is bare.
His hair catches in the sunlight every time we pass beneath an opening in the trees, the color long gone now, washed out and faded until his blond is on full display. Darker than I expected. Richer. It shines when the light hits it.
I love it.
He hasn’t touched it in a month. Not since I woke up in a hospital bed with him half-crushed around me like if he loosened his grip, I’d disappear.
I never asked why he stopped.
Maybe because I already know. Maybe because it feels like he’s done hiding himself. Done pretending to be anything but exactly what he is.
Pakhan.
Juggernaut.
Maksim.
Mine.
The thought slips in so naturally now it doesn’t even jar me.
The bike slows.
I lift my head just as he turns through iron gates and onto a narrow paved road lined with old trees and rows of pale stone.
My stomach tightens.
A cemetery.
I sit up straighter as he parks the bike beneath the shade of a sprawling oak. For a second, neither of us moves. The engine clicks as it cools, the sudden quiet strange after the ride here.
He taps my thigh and I swing off the bike. He gets off as I hand my helmet to him. He hooks it over the handlebar without a word.
Only then do I glance around properly.
Headstones. Flowers.
Wind moving softly through green leaves overhead. A crow somewhere in the distance.
My brows pull together. “What are we doing here?”
He looks at me, unreadable as ever.
I glance out over the rows of graves, then back at him. “Are you going to chase me in a cemetery?”
I lower my voice on the last word, like the dead might overhear me and take offense.
His mouth twitches.
“No,” he says. “But that’s a good idea. Maybe for Halloween.”
A small laugh escapes me before I can stop it, quiet and breathy in all this stillness.
Then he says, “Your mother is here.”
Everything in me goes still.
I stare at him. “Mama’s buried here?”
“Yes.”
The word leaves me before I can stop it. “Oh.”
I don’t even know what that means.
Oh, like that’s all this is.
Oh, like my whole chest didn’t just pull tight.
Oh, like I’m not suddenly fourteen again, standing at the bottom of the steps while Gabriel tells me no in that calm voice that always meant don’t ask again.
I hesitate.
“I’m not—”
Allowed.
The rest catches in my throat.
Maksim’s face hardens, not at me. At the ghost of something else. Someone else.
“You don’t have to worry about him,” he says. “He’s not part of your life anymore.”
The words hit low and deep. Not part of your life anymore.
Like it’s that simple. Like freedom can be spoken into being with one brutal sentence.
And maybe, from him, it can.
He glances toward the graves, then back at me. “You can come here whenever you want. Every day, if that’s what you need. I’ll bring you.”
Something hot presses behind my eyes so suddenly I have to look away. He doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t crowd me. He just starts walking, slow enough that I can follow if I want to. So I do.
The path curves under the trees, gravel crunching softly beneath our shoes. The air smells like cut grass and warm stone and something green and old. My pulse gets louder with every step.
Then he stops.
For a second, I can’t move.
The headstone is simple. Elegant. Pale gray, worn slightly at the edges by time.
Evelyn Smith
Beloved Mother
The dates beneath her name blur before I can take them in. My breath leaves me in a rush.
There are flowers on either side.
A vase of dandelions, bright and wild and a little uneven, like someone had to search to find enough of them.
And on the other side, a bouquet so lush and expensive it looks almost out of place here. Cream roses. White peonies. Something soft and spilling over in expensive green.
I look up at him.
He squints against the daylight, gaze shifting away almost immediately like he already knows I’m about to make this worse for him by noticing he cared.
“She needed proper flowers,” he mutters. “I know you like the weeds, but your mother needed something decent.”
My throat aches.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He gives one short nod like that’s enough of that.
I step closer to the grave, staring at her name again, at the proof of her, the stone making her real in a way memory never quite could. My mother. Not a story. Not a shadow. Not something Gabriel could lock away just because it hurt him to let me have it.
My mother was here.
My mother was real.
I bend my knees, starting to kneel, and I glance back instinctively. Maksim has already stepped away.
Not far.
He jerks his chin toward the motorcycle. “I’ll be over there.”
I look at him.
He shrugs once. “Not going anywhere.”
He moves back toward the bike and leans against it, broad shoulders lit by the afternoon sun, arms folded, posture loose in a way I know is fake. Watching everything. Watching me.
Giving me privacy without ever leaving me alone.
My chest tightens all over again.
Then I turn back to the headstone and lower myself to the ground.
The grass is cool beneath my knees.
Up close, I can see faint weathering in the carved letters. A tiny chip near the base. A thin line of dirt caught in one curve of her name.
I reach out and brush my fingertips over the stone.
“Hi, Mama.”
My voice breaks on the first word.
I let out a shaky laugh, wiping quickly at my face with the heel of my hand even though no one is close enough to see.
“I didn’t think…” I whisper, then stop and try again. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to speak to you like this.”
The wind stirs softly through the cemetery.
Behind me, somewhere near the bike, I know he’s still there.
“I’m sorry it took so long.”
The words come out small. Useless. Not nearly enough for years of not knowing where she was, for all the birthdays and winters and bad nights I spent pretending I didn’t care because caring hurt worse.
“I wanted to see you,” I say, swallowing hard. “But Baba thought I was too young and then after he passed… I just wasn’t allowed.”
My throat tightens.
“The first time I asked…it was brutal so I never asked again.”
That one tastes rotten.
Because it’s true.
Because I learned early that silence was safer. Easier. That wanting things in Gabriel’s home was dangerous.
I brush a thumb over her name again.
“I hated Gabriel for not telling me at least where you were,” I whisper. “I still do.”
His face flashes hot and ugly in my mind. The utility closet. The way he could make a whole life sound like a locked door with his fists.
My jaw tightens.
“He’s gone now.”
Not dead. Not gone gone. But gone from me. From my decisions. From the shape of my days.
There’s a savage kind of relief in that. It sits heavy and bright in my chest, right next to the ache.
I pull in a slow breath and let it out shakily.
“I almost died.”
The cemetery stays quiet. A breeze moves through the trees overhead, stirring the dandelions.
“I know that’s a strange thing to say first.” My mouth tips without humor. “I’m not very good at this.”
My fingers curl lightly against the stone.
“I got shot. Which feels dramatic, honestly. I think you’d tell me to stop being so stubborn about hospitals.” A beat. “He definitely did.”
He.
I glance over my shoulder before I can stop myself.
Maksim is still by the bike. Arms folded. Head slightly bowed like he’s giving me distance, but his attention never really leaves me. It never does now.
Not since the hospital. He stayed wrapped around me like he thought if he let go for one second I’d stop breathing. My chest does something strange and soft and painful all at once.
When I look back at the grave, my voice comes quieter.
“There’s someone.”
I let that sit there a second, absurdly aware of how stupid I feel saying it out loud to a headstone.
But also not stupid at all.
Because if there is anyone in the world I want to tell, it’s her.
“He’s…” I stop, because where do I even start with a man like Maksim Korsakov?
Terrifying. Violent. Loyal in a way that borders on madness. Tender in ways he’d probably rather die than hear said aloud.
Mine.
I press my lips together.
“He’s difficult,” I say finally. That almost makes me laugh.
“He’d hate that description, so I’m keeping it.”
The wind picks up, brushing hair across my cheek. I tuck it back and keep staring at her name.
“He’s not kind in the way people mean it when they say the word. He’s not gentle either. He’s possessive and infuriating and completely insane.” My mouth twitches. “Then again, you were with Baba, so you might actually like him.”
I lower my gaze to my hands.
“There are times he’s made me so angry I could barely breathe.” I huff a little laugh. “And there are times I look at him and think he’s shown me colors I never would’ve seen without him.”
The words settle over me softly.
It’s true.
Life always felt like survival before him. Gray. Hard edges. Something to get through. Then Maksim happened.
Violence and madness and a man with too much power and not enough sense.
And somehow, with him, the world stopped looking so dull.
“There’s hope with him,” I whisper, and the thought still feels strange enough to smile at. “Which is insane, considering who we’re talking about.”
I take a breath.
“He came for me.” My fingers curl against the stone. “And I knew he would.”
That’s the part that matters. The simplest part. The one my whole body understood before my mind could catch up.
“I knew he’d come.”
I smooth my palm over her name and blink hard once.
“I left him,” I admit. “I was trying to protect him, or myself—my heart. I don’t know. I keep thinking if I’d stayed, none of it would’ve happened.” I swallow. “But that’s not true, is it? Men like Gabriel or Arsen don’t wait for perfect timing. They take what they can.”
My voice goes flat on his name.
The memory comes back sharp anyway—darkness, bars, thirst, blood, the wet choke in that guard’s throat when I stabbed him.
My stomach turns, but not with guilt.
A humorless breath leaves me.
“I killed people.”
The words hang there. More honest. More mine.
“More than one person thanks to Gabriel.” I let out the smallest laugh under my breath, because of course that’s the part of this that sounds absurd said out loud at my mother’s grave. “It was survival. And I’d do it again.”
The cemetery stays quiet. No judgment, no lightening strikes.
“I think you probably already knew that about me.” My fingers trace the edge of the stone. “You tried to keep me away from the violence. I know you did. But I still saw it. I still felt it.”
My throat feels raw.
“I’m sorry if I’m not who you wanted me to be.” I pause, then shake my head a little. “No. That’s not right.”
I draw in a slow breath.
“I think you’d be proud of me.” My voice comes quieter, but steadier too. “I’m strong. You made me strong. Every time I ever felt weak, I thought of you.”
I shift on the grass, wincing where my side still pulls if I move too fast. Better than it was, but not gone.
I know even from the bike Maksim notices. He notices everything now. The slight catch in my breath. The way I press a hand to my stomach if I stand too fast. The nights I wake up suddenly and don’t know where I am for half a second. He notices and goes quiet around it. More careful.
He thinks I don’t see that.
I do.
I see all of it.
“I think he loves me more than he knows what to do with,” I tell her.
It’s the understatement of the century. My face warms anyway.
“He says it like it hurts him. Like the words have teeth and scrape up his throat.”
I trace the E of her name.
“I love him too,” I whisper. “So damn much.”
I let out a slow breath, staring at her name. “And if he asks me again, I’m going to say yes.”
My mouth twitches.
I brush my thumb over the stone one last time.
If Maksim Korsakov asks me to marry him again, I’m going to say yes.