66. EPILOGUE
alistair
ONE YEAR LATER
My entire life was spent believing love is simply another weakness waiting to be exploited.
A flaw in human design.
A lapse in judgment.
An irrational attachment that made intelligent people stupid and dangerous people predictable.
Every subject I ever studied, manipulated, or dismantled under the clinical eye of the Triarch Dominion possessed one fatal weakness. Someone they couldn’t afford to lose.
I looked at them with detached curiosity from behind the high walls of our compounds, secure in the knowledge that I was the engineered anomaly—the perfect biological creation devoid of such pathetic tethers.
Then Ariella Keinston lied to me.
The truly unfortunate thing is that I wanted her lie to become true.
The garden beyond our bedroom balcony glows beneath the Australian sunset, painted in deep shades of gold and amber.
A warm breeze stirs the climbing roses she insisted on planting herself, completely ignoring the fact that Keinston heiresses aren’t supposed to ruin their manicures with dirt.
She smiled and did it anyway.
I’m watching her through the open glass doors from my study desk, where the scattered, encrypted documents of CynoTech sit mostly ignored.
She’s sitting beneath the old jacaranda tree with a book resting on her lap, although she hasn’t turned a page in nearly twenty minutes.
One hand absentmindedly traces small circles over the very real, gentle curve of her stomach, carrying our child, while the other brushes through the fur of the enormous black cat stretched across her legs.
Little Kitty.
The ridiculous name somehow suits the equally ridiculous, oversized Kuromi plushy she named and kept in our room—the only thing I bought from England.
Surprisingly, I found out that Ariella also brought a similar one back when she was just a stalking student.
Now the name little kitty also belongs to the stray animal she took in the second we arrived in Sydney.
I hate that I have to share the nickname I have for my wife with such another creature.
The equally ridiculous woman.
The equally ridiculous life I somehow found myself living.
I once believed the world could be reduced to mathematical equations and frequency responses. People could be understood. Controlled. Predicted.
Then she walked into my lecture hall at Oxford wearing an oversized hoodie, carrying enough secrets and local tracking data to dismantle everything I thought I knew.
The very first time I noticed her spamming my channel, CoreCircuits, with comments from PhaseVariance on my videos, I thought she was just another crazy fan. Little did I know she’d take it too far to be a reckless girl on a motorcycle circling my perimeter.
The last time I looked at her in the wreckage of England, I realized she solved me instead.
And now, a soft giggle escapes her lips when the cat rolls over on its back, demanding more attention.
Then she glances toward the house.
Toward me.
Even from this distance, I recognize the sharp, knowing expression in her hazel eyes.
She knows I’m watching. She always knows.
Perhaps that was my first mistake. Believing I could ever hide the darkness of my history from the girl who spent months learning the rhythm of my breathing, tracing my lectures, and matching my steps.
The girl who knew exactly how I take my coffee. The girl who could identify every lie I told but somehow believed I wouldn’t recognize one of hers.
I remember that quiet morning in that sterile London hospital room when she slipped that absurd, hastily signed marriage certificate to me. Her hands were steady, but her voice wasn’t.
I was still processing the fact that I was surrounded by people because they were worried about me.
“I’m pregnant,” she spoke the words with a perfectly straight face, weaponizing her family’s leverage to force me into staying.
I looked at her. Really looked at her. The same girl who turned crimson after asking for our first kiss.
The same girl who hid behind library books whenever she was embarrassed.
The same girl whose heartbeat accelerated every single time she attempted to deceive me.
So yes, I knew, of course.
I knew there was no tiny apocalypse growing inside her yet. Even so, with a smile, I signed the document anyway, watching her brothers look at us like we were unexploded bombs.
Leaving England was surprisingly easy.
Oxford offered prestige, security, and a carefully constructed identity built over years to keep the world looking at the professor rather than the asset. None of those titles followed me onto the plane.
The transition hasn’t been without its variables.
Interpol notices, blurry security feeds, and red-flagged government databases kept my photograph circulating across multiple continents the second the Dominion’s main compound erupted.
I was a ghost wanted by multiple intelligence agencies—a walking piece of classified, dangerous research that foreign departments wanted locked in a cell or dismantled entirely.
But a ghost is exceptionally hard to track when he’s buried deep inside the corporate shield of CynoTech.
Adrian and Asher built a fortress around us. As Chief Research Officer, my location remains scrubbed, my data routed through untraceable local servers, and my legal existence protected by the massive financial and political machinery of the Keinston empire.
They didn’t hide me out of altruism—they did it because I’m family now, and Keinstons don’t let the state touch what belongs to them.
Though Ariella’s brothers watched my every movement after we arrived in Sydney. Rightfully so. I’ve given them every reason to believe I’m a threat to her safety.
So I surrendered the remnants of my old empire. I not only left the ashes of the Triarch Dominion behind but also my left my internet influence—letting my past burn to the ground, and officially transferred my intellectual data into CynoTech’s localized network.
It took time. Long conversations. Uncomfortable silences. A great many threats from Asher regarding windows and high elevations.
One memorable afternoon, Adrian calmly informed me over coffee that financing an operation to turn my remains into an unfeeling Synthète won’t be particularly difficult if I ever broke her heart.
Eventually, they stopped waiting for me to fail. Eventually, they realized I really abandoned the only kingdom I ever ruled.
There was nothing left for me in England anyway. Not after she dragged me out of it.
Months later, after the dust of the Triarch Dominion’s collapse had settled, we got married officially.
Our wedding had been small, private, and deeply protected under the southern sky while Ariana Grande literally sang Fantasize, The Boy is Mine and 34+35—exactly the way Ariella wanted it.
Well, there were obviously more tracks, but I only remember specifically these three because of the lyrics and how Ariella kept grinning at me, dancing around me while mouthing the songs.
When the celebrations ended and the world finally left us alone inside our new home, I remembered every word of that ridiculous contract.
She’s standing near the edge of our bed, her bridal silks casting long shadows in the dim light as her eyes nervously track my movement.
“You’re smiling,” she notes, a tiny tremor in her breathing. “I don't trust that expression.”
“A very wise decision,” the smile only widens.
She tilts her head, her hazel eyes searching mine for a crack in the logic, trying to find the clinical professor but finding only the man who belongs to her.
“You knew I lied to you.”
“Yes.”
“You still signed the marriage certificate.”
“I did,” I murmur, closing the distance between us until the space between our bodies evaporates.
She swallows hard, looking up through her lashes.
My hand moves before she could think of an escape, fingers wrapping firmly around the delicate curve of her throat—not to hurt, but to anchor her, to claim every frantic beat of the pulse that always betrayed her secrets to me.
And I tilt her face up, my thumb resting right against the hollow of her jaw. “And now, let’s make you true to your word.”
Her cheeks turn a beautiful, burning pink.
A gasp caught right beneath my lips as I lean down and kiss her.
It’s a possessive, a dark promise that leaves no room for calculation as I pull her narrow frame completely against mine.
With that, the last of our secrets dissolve into kisses and me coming inside her on repeat for the rest of the night.
Each time she complains that she can’t take it anymore, I remind her the exact line she sang along with Grande, “I’d give this pussy to you nine-to-five, five-to-nine.”
Life possesses a deeply ironic sense of humor. Ultimately the lie became reality.
Ariella is still sitting beneath the jacaranda tree out in the garden. Her book remains forgotten. One hand rests over the child growing safely beneath her heart.
Our child.
The concept still refuses to fit inside any formula I know.
There’s no theorem capable of measuring the weight of a future that suddenly contains another heartbeat. No logical principle that justifies how a tiny pair of shoes waiting by our front door can feel infinitely more valuable than the decades of sterile control I abandoned.
For the first time in my life, I possess something I cannot quantify. A family.
She finally notices that I’ve stopped pretending to read the encrypted CynoTech updates scattered across my desk but watching her.
Our eyes meet through the glass. She smiles—that bright, uncurated smile that used to exist only behind screens and shadows—then she slowly stands and walks towards the house, her eyes never leave mine as she disappears inside.
A familiar anticipation settles beneath my skin. The kind that has nothing to do with research reports or encrypted files.
I remove my reading glasses and set them aside on top of the files. Leaving the paperwork scattered just as it is, I head straight for the bathroom.
I need a shower. The work can wait.
After stripping out of my clothes, I step inside the glass stall and start the shower, letting cold water rain down over my heated body.
A few moments later, I hear the faintest sound of our bedroom door open down the hall. A smirk finds its way on my face.
Soon, a familiar, curved shadow lingers just beyond the frosted glass. The smirk turns into a wicked grin.
“Come inside, little kitty.”
Her silhouette emerges through frosted glass before she steps fully inside, naked.
For a moment, I simply look at her.
Pregnancy has changed her in ways I never anticipated myself noticing.
The soft swell of her breasts has deepened since the first time I had her, fuller now, impossibly distracting. The gentle curve of her stomach carries the undeniable proof of a future neither of us was supposed to have.
Our son.
Life, it seems, possesses a vicious sense of irony.
Yet standing here now, watching her walk toward me, I find myself grateful for every bullet I took for her.
She’s breathtaking.
So breathtaking, in fact, that I suspect she could convince me into giving her as many children as she desires with little more than that smile and a poorly constructed argument.
Once, I would’ve dismantled entire civilizations in pursuit of knowledge. Now I’d gladly spend the rest of my life worshipping at the altar of her beautiful lies if it meant keeping this version of our future.
If it means Ariella Hertley will be my goddess.
I spent my entire life believing love was simply another weakness waiting to be exploited. It turns out, it was the only thing worth surrendering to.
She steps out of the shadows and into the shower with that same mischievous, obsessive expression that has ruined every carefully constructed equation I’ve ever made.
The woman who dismantled me. The woman who lied to me. The woman who somehow gave me everything I never realized I wanted.
With a knowing smirk, she closes the distance between us and takes my face in her hands, lowering me to her height.
As natural as breathing our lips find their way to each other as we kiss under the makeshift downpour.