Epilogue
ANYA
The hospital releases me four days later.
Not because the doctor thinks I’m perfectly fine. He makes that very clear. He says I’m stable, not recovered. He says I need rest, no stress, no unnecessary walking, no emotional shocks, and absolutely no arguments.
Yaromir listens to all of this with a face so serious the doctor starts repeating himself, as if he has found the one man in Russia who might actually enforce medical instructions like military law.
I sit on the edge of the hospital bed, dressed in a soft gray sweater dress Nina brought from home, and try not to laugh.
The doctor notices. “This is not amusing, Mrs. Volkova.”
“I know.”
Yaromir looks at me.
I stop smiling. Mostly.
By the time we leave, I’m exhausted from doing almost nothing. My side still aches under the bandage. My ribs hurt when I breathe too deeply. My body feels slower than it used to, as if it’s reminding me with every step that surviving is not the same as being healed.
Yaromir helps me into the car himself. He doesn’t let the nurse push the wheelchair past the entrance. He doesn’t let Viktor open the car door for me. He does everything with that silent, stubborn care that makes arguing feel ungrateful and accepting feel dangerously tender.
When he slides in beside me, I look at him. His side is bandaged too. He pretends it’s nothing. It’s not nothing. I saw the blood on his shirt. I saw him wince once when he thought I was not looking.
We are both stitched together badly.
“You’re staring,” he says.
“So are you.”
“I’m making sure you’re not in pain.”
“I’m always a little in pain right now.”
His jaw tightens immediately.
“That was not an invitation to look murderous,” I add.
“I will decide how to look.”
“Of course you will.”
The driver pulls away from the hospital. Viktor sits in the front passenger seat, silent as usual. There are two cars ahead of us and two behind. Yaromir thinks I don’t notice the extra men.
I notice everything now.
The city looks ordinary through the window. People walking with shopping bags. A cyclist arguing with a taxi driver. A woman in a red coat holding a child’s hand at a crossing.
Normal life continues even when yours has cracked open.
Yaromir’s hand covers mine on the seat. “We’re not going straight home,” he says.
I glance at him. “No?”
“There’s something I want to show you.”
I turn fully toward him. “A surprise?”
“Yes.”
“You hate surprises.”
“I hate receiving them.”
“That sounds fair.”
His thumb moves once over my knuckles. “You may like this one.”
I look down at our joined hands. My wedding ring is back on my finger.
He put it there himself at the hospital, once I was well enough to sit up.
He had cleaned it, but I could still imagine the dirt from the river, the mud, the blood, the terrible hours when he thought it was all he had left of me.
I touch it with my thumb. “There’s somewhere I want to go first,” I say.
Yaromir watches my face. He knows before I say it.
“Katya.”
The name sits between us.
Not like forgiveness. Not like hatred either. Something unfinished.
His expression doesn’t change much, but his hand stills over mine. “You are not well enough for a long visit.”
“It won’t be long.”
“Anya.”
“I need to go.”
He studies me for a few seconds. In the front, Viktor doesn’t move, but I know he’s listening.
Finally, Yaromir looks toward the driver. “Change route. Novodevichy Cemetery.”
The driver nods.
I let out a breath. “Thank you.”
Yaromir’s gaze returns to mine. “You don’t have to thank me for mourning someone complicated.”
My throat tightens.
Because that’s exactly what Katya is.
Complicated.
At the cemetery, the air is cold and wet, with a thin mist clinging low to the ground. Yaromir insists on helping me out of the car, then keeps his arm around my waist as we walk slowly along the stone path. I know he’s supporting more of my weight than I want to admit.
For once, I let him.
Katya’s grave is new. The soil is still dark and unsettled, flowers gathered in careful arrangements around the marker. White roses. Lilies. A wreath from her family. Another from someone who didn’t sign their name.
I stop a few feet away. For a moment, I can’t move closer.
I see her at lunch by the pier, laughing with her phone hidden beneath the table. I see her in silver at the auction. I see her in my dream, standing by the river, trying to speak.
My hand moves to my stomach. Yaromir notices but says nothing.
“I hated her,” I say quietly.
His arm stays steady around me. “I know.”
“I still do a little.”
“That’s allowed.”
I look at the grave. “She betrayed me. She smiled at me on my wedding day. She let me walk into that house and believe…” I stop, swallowing hard. “She let me believe everyone was happy for me.”
Yaromir says nothing. The mist collects in his dark hair. There’s still bruising near his jaw. His scar looks more gruesome in the gray light.
“But she tried to stop him,” I say.
“Yes.”
Yaromir lowers his voice. “You don’t have to make her one thing.”
I look up at him.
“She was cruel to you,” he says. “And frightened. And selfish. And in the end, she tried to stop Dmitri. All of those can be true.”
My eyes sting. “I don’t know if I forgive her.”
“Then don’t lie to the dead.”
A small, broken laugh leaves me.
Only Yaromir would make that sound almost comforting.
I step forward slowly, leaving his arm only when I reach the grave. He watches every movement like he’s ready to catch me if my knees give.
I take the small bouquet we picked up on the way here. Pale pink tulips. Not white. White felt too clean. I set them beside the stone.
For a few seconds, I just stand there.
Then I whisper, “I wish you had told me.”
The wind moves softly through the cemetery.
“I wish you had been better to me. I wish I had understood you more. I wish…” My voice breaks. “I wish you were alive enough for me to still be angry properly.”
Yaromir comes closer then, not touching me at first.
I reach for his hand. He takes mine.
“I’m sorry,” I say to her grave.
I don’t know what part I’m apologizing for.
Maybe all of it.
Yaromir bows his head slightly. Not deeply. Not dramatically. Just enough to acknowledge the dead. For a man like him, it feels like a great deal.
After a minute, he says, “We should go.”
I nod.
My side is starting to hurt more, but I don’t tell him. He already knows. His hand shifts at my waist, firmer now, and he guides me back toward the car without comment.
On the drive home, I don’t speak much. Neither does he. His thumb keeps moving over my hand, slow and steady.
The estate looks different when we arrive. Not physically. The same gates. The same long drive. The same severe house waiting at the end of it.
He told me Larisa was the one who tried to kill me. He told me he had exiled her.
Now the house belongs to just the two of us.
“Welcome home, madam.”
I smile at Nina. “Thank you.”
Her gaze drops briefly to my stomach, then returns to my face with a softness that almost undoes me.
Yaromir notices. Of course he does.
“Food,” he says.
Nina nods. “Already prepared.”
“And tea.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And soup.”
I look at him. “I’m not an invalid Victorian child.”
“You were shot.”
“Your answer to everything for the next few weeks is going to be ‘you were shot,’ isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Nina turns her face away, but I see her smile.
Yaromir does too and chooses, mercifully, to ignore it.
“I thought you had something to show me,” I say.
He looks at me then. For the first time since the hospital, something almost uncertain crosses his face. It’s gone quickly, but I see it.
My heart shifts. “What is it?”
He holds out his hand. “Come.”
I take it.
He leads me upstairs slowly, matching my pace without making it obvious. We pass our bedroom, then continue down the hall toward the east wing. That part of the house has always been quieter, partly unused, with rooms I’ve never had reason to enter.
At the end of the corridor, he stops outside a half-open door.
I smell paint. Fresh paint.
I look at him. “Yaromir?”
He pushes the door open.
The room beyond is bright with afternoon light. At first, I only see the drop cloths on the floor, the ladder near the wall, the paint cans lined along the skirting board. Then the rest of it comes into focus.
A crib still in pieces near the window.
Shelves newly installed but empty.
A rocking chair covered in cloth.
One wall painted a soft green. Not blue, not pink, something gentle and warm that makes the whole room feel like spring even in the middle of cold weather.
I stare at Yaromir. “You did this?”
“I started.”
“You painted this?”
“Some of it.”
“Yourself?”
His mouth tightens slightly. “Yes.”
I walk into the room slowly.
The paint smell is strong but not unpleasant. The walls are only half-finished, one side still taped off, another waiting for a second coat. There’s a small brush lying across the tray, abandoned as if he left in the middle of working.
The image forms in my head.
Yaromir Volkov, feared across the city, standing in this room alone with a paintbrush in his hand, painting a nursery for a child smaller than a secret.
My throat closes. “You said surprise,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“I thought it would be jewelry.”
“I can still buy you jewelry.”
I turn to him. He looks almost defensive.
That makes me cry.
His face changes in alarm. “Anya.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re crying.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re painting a nursery.”
He looks at the wall, then back at me, as if trying to understand whether this is a complaint. “I can hire someone.”
“No.” I wipe at my face. “Don’t you dare.”
He goes still.
I step closer to the painted wall and touch it lightly with my fingertips. The paint is dry enough not to mark me. “When did you start?”
“The night after you told me.”
Something warm and painful blooms in my chest.
“What made you choose green?”
“Buran likes the fields in spring.”
I turn slowly. He looks at me with perfect seriousness. For a second, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry harder.
Both happen.
A small laugh breaks through the tears, and then I’m crying again, and Yaromir looks increasingly displeased with the entire situation.
“I thought it was neutral,” he says.
“It is.”
“Then why are you crying more?”
“Because you chose the color based on your horse.”
“He has good taste.”
I press a hand over my mouth.
He steps closer, cautious now, as if tears are more dangerous than bullets. “Anya.”
I turn and go to him. He catches me immediately, careful of my side, one hand at my back, the other behind my head. I press my face into his chest and breathe him in.
Home. That’s what he smells like now.
Not safety exactly. Yaromir will never be soft enough to mean safety in the simple way.
But home. A dangerous, scarred, impossible home.
“I love it,” I say into his shirt.
His hand stills. Then moves gently over my hair.
“I wanted to build something before the child came,” he says quietly.
I pull back enough to look at him. His eyes are on the unfinished room, not me.
“I have destroyed many things,” he says. “Some deserved it. Some didn’t. I know how to take apart a house, a business, a man. I wanted…” He stops, jaw tightening.
I wait.
He looks down at me. “I wanted our child to have something I made with my own hands that was not born from anger.”
The tears come again, but quieter this time.
I touch the paint on his thumb. “You are going to be impossible as a father.”
“Yes.”
“Overprotective.”
“Yes.”
“Controlling.”
“Probably.”
“Terrifying.”
“To others.”
I look up.
His mouth almost curves. “To the child, I will be reasonable.”
I laugh. “You don’t know how to be reasonable.”
“I will learn.”
The simple certainty of it breaks me more than any promise could. I take his paint-stained hand and place it gently over my stomach.
There’s still nothing to feel. No movement. No proof beneath our palms. But we both look down anyway. His hand spreads carefully, reverently, as if he’s touching something holy and doesn’t trust himself not to ruin it.
“You’re both home,” he says.
My chest aches.
“Yes, we are.”
The End.
My dearest reader, thank you for reading Marrying My Ex's Brother!
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P.S. If you enjoyed reading Marrying My Ex's Brother, then I think you’ll enjoy Marrying the Bratva King! Swipe to the next page for a quick sneak peek…