Epilogue
Kiryan
I had lived almost forty years. Blades and gun barrels had never made me flinch. But when she frowned from pain, something invisible clenched around my ribs and wouldn't let go.
Her due date had been today. I had spent months getting ready—birth plan, backup routes, go-bag. I'd even forced Feodor to run damn drills.
Not one plan mentioned my heart would stop working the second the contractions started.
Elena watched me for a few seconds, her face softening. "You're scared."
"No."
"Your hand's shaking."
I looked down. The hand around her waist wasn't steady. Not even close.
"That's because you won't let me hold you."
"Bullshit."
She leaned into me anyway. Her young, soft body snapped tight when the next wave hit. I braced her lower back. "Breathe with me."
"I know."
"In. Hold. Now slow—"
"Kiryan." She fisted my shirt. "If you keep quoting those baby books, I'm gonna bite you."
The next second, warm fluid ran down her leg and splashed onto the floor.
She glanced down. "I think we're out of time."
I scooped her up and moved.
"I'm not wearing shoes."
"Don't need them."
Olga came rushing over with the bag, gray hair flying loose. "How far apart now?"
"Seven minutes," Elena said.
"Six twenty," I corrected.
Elena buried her face in my neck, shoulders shaking.
I lifted her higher. "Hurting bad?"
"No," she muttered. "Your face is hilarious."
The car rolled out of the manor.
Every contraction drove her nails deeper into my palm. Her eyes shone with tears, but she stayed sharp. Present.
"Look at me." I slowed my breathing, made her match it. "You're gonna be fine."
"The doctor said everything looked normal."
"I know."
"Then quit looking like you're about to kill somebody."
We got to the hospital. Everything checked out.
"Kiryan." From the bed, she reached for me.
I took her hand. "I'm here."
She wore the gown, pale as hell, freckles sharper than usual.
She had never looked more beautiful.
"Do I look like a mess?"
"No." I brushed her sweat-damp hair back behind her ear.
She grabbed my tie and yanked me down. "Say something useful."
"I love you."
Her breath caught. "That's useful."
I kissed her. Just a few seconds. Then she pressed her forehead to mine. "Don't go."
"I stay right here."
Labor dragged on forever. Time got chopped into pieces by pain. She damn near crushed my bones in her grip. All I could do was hold her and keep saying I was here. I was here. I was here.
"I can't do it." After a brutal contraction, she shook her head, tears sliding into her hairline. "Kiryan, I can't do it."
My lungs felt like they tore.
She forced her eyes open, teeth bared, spent every last scrap she had.
A thin, sharp cry cut through the room.
Everything went quiet. Even my heart missed a beat.
A nurse lifted a red-faced newborn, fists clenched, voice loud as hell.
"Healthy baby girl."
I forgot how to breathe.
My daughter.
"Kiryan." Elena's voice barely carried.
I snapped back and kissed her sweaty forehead. "You did it."
"We did it."
They laid the baby on her chest. The crying faded into a small, needy whimper. Elena stared down, hazel eyes drowning. "Tanya."
We'd picked the name together. I'd thought it was too soft. Now it hit harder than any order I'd ever given.
"Tanya Morozov."
Like she heard it, our daughter scrunched her face and made a little sound.
"Hold her," Elena said.
My spine locked. "I'll hurt her."
"You read five parenting books."
"Books aren't this fucking small."
The nurse showed me how to support her head and neck. These hands had held guns, snapped bones. Hovering over a baby shorter than my forearm, I didn't know what strength even meant.
They placed Tanya in my arms. She was terrifyingly light.
Her tiny hand slipped out of the blanket and curled around my index finger. My breath stopped, full stop.
"Hey, Tanya," I murmured. "I'm Dad."
I bent and kissed her forehead.
She gripped my finger tighter.
The first month after we got home, nobody in the manor slept through the night. Tanya woke every two hours, her cries carrying down the whole hallway.
"You've got a meeting tomorrow." Late at night, Elena sat up in bed nursing her, shadows under her eyes.
"Canceled."
"You canceled yesterday too."
"Feodor handled it."
"You never used to hand off route meetings to anyone."
"I didn't have Tanya before."
I set our full, sleepy daughter into the bassinet, then leaned down and kissed Elena. Her hand slid up my shoulder, her breathing quickening against my mouth.
A soft little hmph came from the bassinet.
We both froze.
Elena buried her face in the pillow, laughing without a sound.
"She did that on purpose," I said.
"She just wants Daddy to hold her."
That line undid me. I let Elena go and lifted Tanya. Sure enough, she quieted instantly.
Elena watched me. "You're done. She already knows how to play you."
"Only her."
Two months later, I called Feodor into my study. On the desk sat a stack of authorization papers—and every route, warehouse, and personnel file we had.
He eyed them. "Are you planning to kill me?"
"Starting next month, you handle the organization's day-to-day. All of it."
For the first time, his face went blank. "Including routes and negotiations with the families?"
"Everything."
"You plan to retire?"
"I keep what I need on the legal side. The rest is yours."
A cry rose upstairs. Two floors down, I still knew Tanya's hungry cry.
"That's why."
Feodor followed my gaze to the ceiling. "I thought you'd at least hold out until she walks."
"She rolled over for the first time yesterday. I missed it."
I had been down at the docks, dealing with an argument I could've dumped on someone else. When I got home, I watched the video of Tanya's clumsy little roll twelve times.
Still couldn't swallow the fact I hadn't been there.
My father had never cared about any of my firsts. I didn't want to become him—and I'd almost walked straight into his footprints anyway.
"I already missed too much before she was even born," I said. "I'm not missing what comes next."
Feodor opened the files. "If I take this, I'm not reporting to you every day. And I'm not handing power back because you wake up and change your mind."
"I'm not changing my mind."
"And if someone challenges the Morozov family?"
"Let them try you first."
He went quiet, then held out his hand. "Congratulations, Kiryan."
He rarely used my name. I gripped his hand. "Don't make me regret it."
"You should worry I'll do it better than you."
"Then prove it."
The crying upstairs got louder. I let go and stood.
"The meeting isn't over," Feodor said.
"It is now." I headed for the door.
"You just said this wasn't retirement."
"It isn't." I opened the door. "It is going home."
?????
Three years later, Elena's private studio took up an entire floor of a red-brick building in Manhattan. There was no Morozov name outside. The sign only carried her own—Elena Rossi.
Collectors booked months out. Young painters lined up to learn from her. She didn't have to hide behind a fake name anymore. She didn't have to prove her brush could buy anything for a family.
And she still carved out one afternoon every week to teach kids in the neighborhood for free.
I picked her and Tanya up after class every week. Today was no different.
The community studio was chaos—paper, paint, kids everywhere. Tanya wore a rainbow smock, two little braids, and she gripped a paintbrush almost as long as her arm.
"Daddy." She spotted me and held up her paper. "Look."
I crouched in front of her. Three blocks of color. The biggest was black, one beside it was hazel, and the smallest was a bright, loud yellow.
"What is it?"
She frowned, clearly pissed I didn't get it right away. "Us."
"Why am I black?"
"'Cause Daddy always wears black."
"Why is Mommy hazel?"
"Mommy's eyes are that color."
Elena crouched beside another kid, guiding his hand on the brush. She wore an old shirt smeared with paint, focused and quiet.
She'd made New York see her—then she still chose to teach a kid who couldn't pay.
Heat spread through my chest. "Then why are you yellow?"
"Because I'm the brightest."
At three, Tanya had grown up loved. She didn't hunch her shoulders waiting for permission. She didn't feel guilty for wanting things.
Elena had done that.
And I hadn't broken my promise.
"It looks perfect."
Tanya shoved the paper into my hands. "Hang it in the study."
"There's no empty wall in the study."
She stared me down. Big eyes like her mother's, but the look was pure Morozov—no negotiation.
"Fine. Daddy'll figure it out."
"Looks like your territory shrank again," Elena said as she came up behind me.
I stood, my hand settling at her waist like it belonged there. "Nothing matters more than our daughter's art."
"You've got one room left."
"Still got the bedroom."
My thumb traced slow circles along her waist. Her breath hitched, a faint flush rising in her cheeks. "The kids are right here."
Her spine shivered. She shot me a glare, but that familiar heat burned in her eyes. When she was younger, she'd buried her want so deep it almost swallowed her whole. Now she still blushed—but she didn't back down.
"Mommy." Tanya tugged Elena's shirt. "Grandpa's here."
Seamus stood in the doorway, holding a pink box that didn't match his hard face at all.
His hair was whiter than at the wedding, the lines in his face deeper.
Once, he'd walked into any room and searched for who could bring the family value.
Now his gaze skipped everyone and landed straight on Tanya.
"Grandpa!"
Tanya barreled into him. Seamus bent and scooped her up, letting an expensive suit take a bright yellow handprint.
"I brought you a gift."
"Mommy said not every day."
"Today isn't every day."
"You gave her one yesterday," Elena said.
Seamus didn't blink. "That was yesterday."
Inside the box sat a full set of children's paints. Elena picked up a bottle. "This is professional grade. She's three."
"Three still deserves the best."
Tanya wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. The man who'd once measured his daughters by value softened in a heartbeat.
After we lost Isabella, he hadn't turned into a new man overnight.
The first time he came to see Tanya, he'd only stood at the door for ten minutes.
The second time he'd brought a silver rattle so expensive it was stupid.
Later, he started remembering her favorite colors, the sounds that scared her.
He learned to squat down and actually listen until a child finished speaking.
Nothing could pay back the childhood Elena lost. I wasn't forgiving him for her. She didn't need forgiveness to buy peace. She just let Tanya receive a late kind of love in a place with no old debt attached.
"Grandpa, paint with me," Tanya ordered.
Seamus set her down immediately and took the brush. "Paint what?"
"You."
"Why am I green?"
"'Cause your tie looks ugly today."
Elena laughed and leaned into me. I tightened my arm around her. Seamus looked down at his sleeve, now smeared green, and he actually laughed too.
No gunfire. No deals. No one demanding the women in my life become whatever the family needed.
This was where I'd chosen to come back to.
After class, Tanya fell asleep in the car, one hand still clutching the paint set. Elena rested on my shoulder, fingers laced with mine.
"Are you happy now?" she asked out of nowhere.
"What kind of question is that?"
"Answer."
Time hadn't stolen the light from her eyes. She wasn't the bride at that first wedding who couldn't lift her chin. She wasn't the girl in the rain hunting for her art supplies, convinced she didn't deserve love.
She had her own name, her own work, her own choices.
And she still chose to sit beside me.
"I am happy," I said.
"That's it?"
My hand slid onto her knee. Her leg tensed instantly, her breathing tripping.
"I can get more specific at home."
"The driver can hear you."
The divider in the front rose without a sound.
Her face reddened, but her fingers hooked my tie.
She looked at me with those hazel eyes, the heat inside them unchanged from three years ago.
The car pulled into the manor. When Tanya woke up, the first thing she did was order me to hang the painting in my study.
I took down the last smuggling route map with my own hands.
As I pressed her paper to the wall, she suddenly rose on her toes and used her yellow brush to add three crooked little hands between the color blocks. Black held hazel. Hazel held yellow. And yellow, stubborn as hell, looped back and grabbed black again.
"Why did you connect them?" I asked.
Tanya tilted her chin up, pride all over her face.
"So nobody gets lost."
My chest clenched hard.
Elena stepped in close, her fingers sliding quietly between mine. I looked down at her. Her eyes were red, but she smiled anyway.
I squeezed my wife's hand and lifted my daughter with the other.
This time, none of us got lost.