Epilogue
TAMARA
Four months later
The golf resort is suspiciously empty when Ivana and I arrive.
The foyer has been decorated with white and gold swaggers, the ceiling-high potted plants have been strung with hundreds of fairy lights, and more lights twinkle around the front desk, the carefully curated artwork, the white Grecian-style columns, and the windows.
But there is nothing to welcome visitors to the gala event taking place later this evening.
No one is bustling about supervising the catering, and there are no reporters hovering around hoping to snap the first photographs of celebrity guests as they arrive.
Leonid sent us ahead of the event to oversee security, but I don’t see any members of his team either.
“Where is everyone?”
Ivana looks equally as perplexed, her eyes scrunched up beneath lowered brows. “They must be arriving later.”
“Too late for us to check everything is in place.”
Uneasiness has settled in my gut where it frequently likes to live these days, and my hackles are up.
I check my weapons, run my hands over my pockets, and wriggle my feet inside my boots.
Everything is in place. My movements have slowed a little with my advanced pregnancy—I’m about to enter the third trimester—but Leonid still trusts me to lead the team on events like this one.
With Ivana by my side.
She is still pale. I’m starting to wonder if she will ever regain the olive complexion she had before she entered the Atlantic Ocean, and the wound around her neck from the rope Boris Petrov used to drag her around his ship has left a livid scar.
But she has worked tirelessly with a physiotherapist to strengthen her muscles and is stronger now than she was before she was attacked in Russia.
“I’m calling Finn.”
I slide the cell phone that Finn insists I carry around with me from my bra and locate his number while I wander behind the front desk. The computer screen is on but locked. The desk is immaculate as always. But nothing about this sits right with me.
Where are the welcome packs, the guest lists, the order of events?
Where is Patrice, the woman who is like a sheepdog when it comes to making sure that everyone is where they should be and no stragglers step out of line?
I look up to find Ivana watching me with a lopsided smile. “What?”
“Things are off kilter and your first instinct is to call Finn … from a cell phone.”
Heat floods my face, setting my already overheated skin on fire. “I’m pregnant. I need to be able to get hold of him when I go into labor.”
She sucks her lips so hard they disappear. “You still have three months to go, and you’re not having contractions now.”
I’m thinking of ways to justify calling Finn instead of Leonid, and I can’t.
Well, I can, but it means acknowledging that we’re going to have a baby together soon, and I’m more excited about it than I’ve shared with anyone.
Including my sister. Because I made this baby with the man I love.
The man who claimed my heart when he kissed me behind a shipping container at the wrong port one night, and shot wide to let me get away.
The man who taught me that miracles do happen, but we too often think of them as normal.
Like the life growing inside my belly.
I tilt my chin. “Finn was supposed to meet us here.”
“With Connor?” Ivana’s cheeks flush pink, and I smile to myself.
I’ve seen the way she looks at Finn’s brother, following him with her eyes as if they’re magnetized, lips parted, hardly daring to breathe until he is out of sight. But when I questioned her about it, she shut me down with an eyeroll and a flick of her black hair.
“It can be arranged.” I watch her closely.
She flicks her fingers at me in a small dismissive wave. “Are you going to call him before the event starts or are we handling this situation ourselves?”
She has less patience these days. Or maybe I’m the one with less patience reacting more quickly to situations and comments that would’ve once washed over my head.
“Both.” I step away from the desk and hit the green button on my phone.
The call goes straight to voicemail, and I don’t bother leaving a message.
“Finn must’ve gotten held up at the refuge.”
He has been helping out at the women’s refuge for the last few months, carrying out maintenance, painting rooms, even doing some plumbing when they had a leak in one of the bathrooms. When I asked him why, he said he was paying it forward and stopped any further questions with a kiss.
I haven’t pushed it. Working at the refuge makes him smile, and I get the best of him when I stay over at his apartment.
I walk past Ivana and check out the corridor leading from the foyer to the pool and spa area in one direction, and the ballroom in the opposite direction. It’s empty, but it isn’t the emptiness that’s making me feel unsettled, it’s the silence, the lack of business as usual, the stillness.
“Ready?” I raise an eyebrow at my sister.
The event is due to start in four hours.
Four hours!
Leonid isn’t here. I haven’t seen Andrej in days because he has been spending time with Cartier and their baby son, Maxim. Gianna isn’t even here adding the finishing touches to the decorations because she always knows what she wants.
“Are you?” Ivana smiles as she opens the door and enters the corridor first, her gun aimed at chest height.
I follow her, the only sound breaking the silence my blood gushing in my ears.
There is only one reason why Leonid would’ve left his resort deserted, and that is if Gianna and the children had been threatened. But we would’ve been the first to know about it.
Unless…
I touch Ivana’s arm to get her attention. She halts and turns dark eyes my way.
“This isn’t about Leonid,” I whisper.
I sensed it when we arrived, the way nothing added up, but I didn’t connect the dots because this event means a lot to Gianna and Leonid.
They’re promoting the women’s refuge, celebrating the wins so far, and generating interest for a second refuge to be built in the city in a nineteenth century property that recently came on the market.
But now it’s all slotting into place.
“This is about me and you.”
The Petrov family has been biding their time, lulling us into a false sense of security before they made their move. I’m not afraid to face them—we beat them once before—but I wish I’d gotten to speak to Finn before shit went down, just so that I could tell him I love him.
I see no fear in Ivana’s eyes either. Only resignation.
“Together?” she says.
I smile. “Always.”
Ivana doesn’t warn me to wait while she checks out the ballroom. She covers me while I kick open the door and burst into the room to find it empty apart from a familiar face standing underneath a simple white arch in the middle of the vast space.
Finn.
I linger in the doorway, gun aimed at his chest, my heart thudding so heavily I can’t fill my lungs.
He smiles, and his beautiful face lights up, his dimples sending ripples of anticipation through my body. He’s wearing a gray suit and pink shirt, my favorite colors on him, not that I’ve ever told him this, and he has never looked more handsome.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” he says.
“The gala event…” My brain is still a few beats behind, and I don’t even catch on when Ivana sneaks up behind me and links her arm with mine. “What are you…”
“Your man is waiting for you, Tamara. Let’s go.”
I pocket my gun and walk with her towards the white archway, leaning on her because my legs are trembling. “You knew?” I ask her without taking my eyes off Finn.
“Yes. Finn asked me to help, and how could I refuse?”
“By saying no,” I suggest.
“No chance.” We stop in front of Finn, and Ivana takes my hand in hers. “Listen to your heart,” she says before stepping aside and leaving me alone with him.
Connor appears from nowhere and stands beside my sister, grinning as widely as his brother.
For a fleeting moment, I hope that he and my sister will find happiness together.
Then, Katya peeks out from behind the arch with an apologetic smile on her face, and she stands in front of them, completing the picture of joy and contentment.
But then Finn takes my hand, and I know where this is going.
I pull my hand from his and shake my head, panic taking over the way it always does whenever Finn tries to talk about the future.
“Finn, what are you doing?”
“Hear me out, sweetheart. Please?”
I hear the plea in his voice, and I glance at Ivana and Connor, who both nod encouragingly, and Katya who is watching this unfold with wide eyes.
Ivana and I have been teaching her some English words.
She’s a fast learner, bright and curious, but she won’t be able to follow everything that is being said.
I smile at her and turn back to face Finn, quelling the irrational urge to flee.
“Okay, I’m listening.”
Finn takes my hand again, and I don’t pull away.
“I love you, Tamara,” he begins. “You already know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you and our child, but sometimes, when I say the words out loud, they sound just like that, words, and I don’t want them to lose their meaning.”
“They won’t,” I interject. “I know how you feel.”
He smiles wistfully. “I don’t think you do. I would climb to the top of the tallest tower and tell the entire city about my love for you, but I know that isn’t what you want. I would stand in front of everyone we know and vow to love you until death do us part but…”
“I don’t want that,” I whisper.
“So, I found a compromise. I asked the people we care about the most to witness my vow to you.”
A door opens, and a woman I’ve never seen before joins us underneath the arch.
“Finn, I don’t—” My heart is racing. I never expected him to ask me to marry him, I’m not prepared for this, and I don’t want to say no in front of my sister and his brother.
“This isn’t a proposal,” he says. “This is me standing here and telling you that I love you.”
My eyes fill with tears. Now is my opportunity to tell him that I love him too. What am I so scared of? Would Ivana be scared to tell Connor that she loves him? After what she has been through, I don’t think she would.
But Finn is still talking. “Without you, I am nothing. Without you, I have no reason to go on living, and I will make the same promise to our child when he or she is born. You make me whole, Tamara. I will do whatever it takes to make you and our child happy.”
The celebrant watches us without speaking.
On our other side, Ivana and Connor appear to have moved closer together, Ivana’s arm around Katya’s shoulders.
I know that I’m expected to say something, but I can’t find the words.
“A ring would be conventional,” Finn says, “but when have we ever followed the rules?”
I peer up at him, and I can’t contain my smile. “Never.”
“So, I got you this instead.” He offers me a key ring with a silver key attached.
“What’s this?” I take it, feeling the weight of it in my hand.
“It’s your new home. If you want it.”
I blink, waiting for the statement to land. Which it does with a jolt.
“I can’t… I don’t know if I can…”
“This key is for the property next door to Leonid and Gianna. It’s registered in your name. I meant what I said, mo féileacán. I want you to be happy, and if that means you live with Ivana and Katya, then I’ll respect your wishes.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Where will you live?” My heart is racing.
I haven’t moved my stuff into Finn’s apartment, not because I don’t want to live with him, but because I’m torn between the man I’m in love with, and the sister I love. Now, it feels as if he is offering me a world without him in it because he believes that will make me happy.
“I have an apartment.” He shrugs. “But if you want me to stay over, I’ll be there.
I want to be a part of your life and the baby’s life, but we’re doing this on your terms, Tamara.
I just want you to know that it doesn’t alter how I feel about you.
You are and always will be the best thing that has ever happened to me. ”
I glance at the celebrant with her non-committal smile.
She’s here to celebrate Finn’s love for me. He knew that a wedding ceremony surrounded by people would push me away, and instead of a wedding ring, he gave me a key ring.
The absurdity of it builds inside my chest like a volcano threatening to erupt in bubbling laughter.
I palm the key, stand on tiptoes, and kiss him on the lips. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me too because you choose to let me be me.”
His arms wrap around my waist, pulling me against him. “Is that a yes?” I can feel the excitement buzzing through his veins, and it’s contagious.
“Yes. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Finn. I want you to stay in this house with us. I want you…”
Finn lifts my feet off the floor, careful not to crush my swollen belly between us, and kisses me slow and deep. I forget that we’re not alone and kiss him back because in the moment, we are the only two people in the world. Three, including our unborn child.
When he releases me, his eyes are wet with tears. “One more surprise, sweetheart.”
I glance at Ivana, and she shrugs.
“Should I be afraid?” I ask.
“Do you trust me?” Finn’s lips curve upwards.
“Yes. I trust you.”
His grin breaks free. “Do you have any idea how happy that makes me?”
“I think so.”
“Sweetheart you don’t. I could burst right now.”
“Please don’t do that,” the celebrant says. “It would be a terrible mess to clear up.”
We all chuckle, and it’s like we all collectively step into a patch of golden sunshine.
Time seems to slow down as Connor steps forward and places a tiny metal object into Finn’s palm. My heart somersaults. He said this wasn’t a proposal, I’ve said no vows, but there’s a celebrant in the room, and she’s here for a reason.
“Finn…”
“I love you.” He shows me the white gold ring. “This is a symbol of my love for you, nothing more. It’s my promise to love you and our child for the rest of my life.”
I chew my bottom lip and stare at the simple band. It isn’t scary at all when I think about what it represents. Love. His love for me and our child, and my love for them.
I don’t want to live without him in my life. Perhaps it’s time to stop letting my past dictate my future and live for the moment.
Holding my breath, I offer Finn my hand and watch him slide the ring onto my finger, huffing out a small laugh when I realize the sense of freedom that comes with it when I’ve always thought it would bring entrapment. Finn loves me. He loves me just the way I am, and this changes nothing.
I wrap my arms around his neck and whisper, “I love you, Finn Twomey.”
Thank you for reading Possessive Mafia Bodyguard and for spending a little time in Finn and Tamara’s world.