Epilogue
MAXIM
I don’t think a pakhan becomes accustomed to joy. But I’m trying.
I stand at the edge of my own garden on a golden September afternoon, and I watch it happen around me. My life has become a series of ordinary miracles I thought I would never have again.
We tore down much of the estate over the winter. The old rooms were demolished, and with them, their terrible memories. Now, there are wide windows. A kitchen Galina designed herself. A nursery painted the butter yellow Thea deliberated over in the paint aisle for a full hour.
I didn’t know paint took that long to choose, but according to her, it was all that mattered. Until the next decision, anyway.
On the lawn, sixty people have gathered to celebrate one year of our daughter, Valeria Rose Vernigora. She’s currently smearing lavender frosting into her own brown curls with the focus of a soprano at the height of her aria.
Everyone came.
Niklaus is here, thinner than before and quieter in a way that suits him.
He does card tricks for a cluster of delighted children.
His hands shook for months after the surgery, but he swears the tricks have helped them become steady again.
He lives in the city and calls every week if we do not see each other.
We argue about the business like men who are learning, with a great deal of profanity, how to be father and son.
Our relationship isn’t repaired. ‘Repaired’ is the wrong word for something that never truly existed initially.
Instead, it’s being constructed, plank by plank, for the first time.
Some weeks, the structure groans under the weight of decades of neglect.
But it still stands, and that resilience exceeds my expectations of what I thought I’d have with him.
As the children clear out for cake, I tell him, “I have a new daughter and an old son.”
He laughs heartily. “And this old dog learned some new tricks. Can I show you?” He holds up the deck.
“Certainly.”
He shuffles, creating a bridge in the air with the cards, before stacking them once more. “That’s a tough one. Needs a lot of dexterity.”
“Impressive. Still struggling with the nerve damage?”
He nods and sighs. “Yeah, I get that the doctors were more worried about the lung than my nerves, but if they had gotten to them faster…” He shrugs. It’s still a little lopsided, thanks to those damaged nerves. “But they kept me alive, and that’s what I try to focus on.”
“That’s the right attitude. Still going to Geneva for Doctor Mueller?”
His chuckle better. Firmer than before all the breathing therapy. “Never thought I’d voluntarily go back to Switzerland, but yes. Next Friday. Thanks for getting me in with him.”
“Of course. Get some cake. You’re too skinny.”
“Don’t gotta tell me twice.” With that, he’s off to the cake table.
Pasha is over by the drinks table, sharing a laugh. He’s standing quite close to a sharp-eyed, handsome young man from Osaka whom he hasn’t introduced me to yet. That’s alright—I can see the connection, and I’m genuinely happy for him.
But I’d better get an introduction if it turns serious. Pasha’s family is in Leningrad. Someone must grill his prospective boyfriend. It might as well be me.
Galina is omnipresent, overseeing the caterers, intermittently shedding tears into an elegant handkerchief while feigning indifference. As if she has not doted on Valeria at every possible chance.
The kumicho is seated in a place of honor, shaded and accompanied by a cool beverage, embodying the stillness associated with true authority.
He traveled across an ocean to celebrate my daughter’s first birthday, and we both know precisely what this visit signifies. Our mutual understanding requires no words. It’s a show of respect and the affirmation of bonds that preserved my family and have only intensified since then.
He raises his glass to me across the lawn, and I respond in kind. Everything that needs saying is said.
Lev should be here for this. He would be dry and unimpressed, telling me the lanterns are an extravagance and the band a waste and my daughter the finest thing this family has ever produced, all in the same flat voice.
Or, he would delight in surprising me by saying the party is not big enough for her.
That a garden party is beneath our princess.
Truly, I could see him taking either tactic to annoy me and make me smile at him.
It’s days like today that I miss him the most. We buried him in the plot with the old ones.
I gave a eulogy he would have called sentimental.
But I’ve not stopped talking to him since.
He’ll live on in our memories, the most loyal sovetnik who ever lived.
Thea calls him my best friend. A childish term, I tell her. But she is not wrong.
And I cannot stop watching her flow through the garden like wind.
Thea moves through the party like she was born to it, which she wasn’t. She was born in a small town in Pennsylvania, where most girls grew up to become teenage wives to men with name-tag jobs.
Where she was born and where she ended up could not be more different.
But she created a new life for us. Every table and every toast bears her signature. She did this the same way she once organized galas for a company that did not deserve her.
She tends the lawn in a blue dress the hue of deep water, with our daughter on her hip for half the afternoon, laughing, sharing stories, and recalling every name. Somehow, she avoids getting Valeria’s hair frosting on herself. Another miracle.
She guides the kumicho’s translator toward the fine whiskey, directs Klaus away from topics that still cause pain, and encourages Galina to sit down for a brief five minutes.
Even her sister Tiny came. It’s not the first time we’ve met, but she’s quite busy with her children, so she doesn’t travel much. She does live up to the name. Or rather, down to it.
Clementine was a premature baby, so she is smaller than Thea even now. Barely five feet tall and curvy, with the same coffee-brown locks as Thea, but curly instead of straight. We assume that’s where Valeria got her curls. All three have Thea’s minty green eyes, too.
The two of them together are a gas, constantly joking and teasing each other the way only sisters can. They have their own shorthand in conversation, and I don’t know how to keep up, but I will one day. I’m determined to know everything I can about the woman I intend to marry.
Thea is the sun this day orbiting, and she doesn’t appear to recognize it.
She notices me watching, then approaches and hands me the baby without breaking her stride.
“You’re brooding in the corner like a gargoyle.
People are going to think you’re plotting, and with you, it could be true. So, stop scaring the guests.”
“I’m always plotting. They are wise to suspect it.” I settle Valeria against my chest, and she grabs my collar in one frosted fist, and somehow, I’ve failed in ten seconds at what Thea has managed for hours. “At the moment I’m plotting out how a man came to deserve any of this.”
“Don’t do that.” Thea’s voice becomes gentler as she gently raises her hand to touch the faint scar along my cheekbone.
Anya’s scar. She was right—it does suit me.
I prefer not to think about her. Especially now.
Thea smiles up at me. “Today your job is to enjoy it. Not to brood. That’s an order from the event planner. ”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The afternoon fades gently, and Valeria casually demolishes her cake to loud applause.
Klaus lifts his glass over the wreckage of frosting and declares, “To Valeria Rose,” which sixty voices echo back.
My son and I exchange a long look over our glasses, feeling an entire hard year pass in that moment.
The kumicho, in surprisingly careful English, says, “She has a warrior’s grip. She will cause trouble for many.”
“Thank you for such a blessing, Sensei.”
The sun finally sinks behind the trees, and with it, the mood of the party shifts entirely.
Galina carries my exhausted, frosting-encrusted, triumphant daughter up to the nursery. To my surprise, Valeria goes without protest, asleep on Galina’s shoulder before they go inside. Something in me eases the way it always does when she is safe under my roof for the night.
The lanterns make the dance floor glow. The band shifts their set to something low and warm. The older guests drift home, and the rest drift closer together. They dance on the flagstones under the paper lanterns, couples turning slow in the amber light.
It’s beautiful.
My home is full of music, and my people, and no one is bleeding anywhere in it. Another miracle of joy.
I find my almost-wife by the roses, watching the dance, holding a mostly untouched glass of wine. I take her glass and place it on the wall, then gently pull her into the blue shadow of the arbor away from the light.
“Maxim.” She’s laughing. “We have guests.”
I back her gently into the cool stone, both hands framing her face, and I kiss her the way I’ve wanted to since she came down the stairs this morning in that blue dress, slow and deep and without any of the restraint the daylight required of me.
She melts into it, her hands fisting in my shirt, and when I finally pull back, we are both breathing harder, and her eyes have gone dark.
“Upstairs,” I say against her mouth. “Now.”
“We’re the hosts—”
“Or, right here. Right now. Choose.”
She gasps and smiles, scandalized.
“The house can host itself for an hour.” I take her hand, and we go up the back stair like teenagers, barely stifling laughter. I shut the door behind us and lock it and turn to the woman I would tear the world apart for.
A year of marriage in every way but the paperwork, and I still cannot get enough of the sounds she makes when I reach my hand up her dress.
I cup her sex over her underwear, and she grinds against my hand as I kiss her roughly.
I love the way her hands pull me closer even as her mouth teases me for being greedy.
Me. I’m the greedy one, meanwhile, she’s the one who is wet and rolling her hips on my palm.
I lay her back on our bed, and I map her with my hands and my mouth, every soft and changed lovely inch of her, until she is arching up off the sheets. “Max,” she breathes, and there is no more laughing in it now, only want. “Stop making me wait.”
Any other day, and I’d go even slower after that order. But today, I need her more than I need the game. When we come together, it is the way it has always been between us, from the first anonymous night to this one. A homecoming.
I lose the careful control and give it all to her, all of me, every inch, and hold. We stare into each other eyes for a brief moment in time, before she takes it, and gives it back. The rest of the world ceases to exist, dissolved in the sensation of her body on mine.
I roll us over so she sits atop me, and I sit up to meet her there. Her breasts press against my chest, and I grab her ass for a handle, grinding her on me. Her body shudders hard, but she never breaks our kiss. Not even when she comes screaming in my mouth and takes me over that edge with her.
After, she lies sprawled across my chest, boneless, her hair a wreck. She traces idle shapes on my skin while the music drifts up faint from below.
“Okay,” she murmurs eventually, not moving. “That was amazing. Now, it’s time to go back and be respectful. Remember, you’re the pakhan of the world, a gracious host, and all that jazz.”
“No.”
She lifts her head, grinning. “Max, the kumicho flew in from Japan.”
“Sensei is a grown man with excellent whiskey and forty new friends to talk to. He, of all people, understands a man wishing to be alone with his wife. He and Mei are disgusting together.” I roll her under me, and she squeaks.
I pin both her wrists in one hand over her head and look down at her, flushed and laughing and mine.
“I’ve nothing respectful in mind for the next hour.
Possibly two. The party does not need to see that. ”
“Two hours. But you’re old!”
“And I’m extremely motivated, bratty girl.” I lower my mouth to the soft spot on her throat that I know undoes her. Her breath hitches, her body arches up under me all over again, making me hard once more. “Now stop managing the event, Mrs. Vernigora, and let me disrespect you properly.”
“Not Mrs. yet,” she gasps, even as her legs wind around me. “You still haven’t asked me.”
“Tonight I intend to make my case for marriage. Brace yourself.”
The End.
Dearest reader,
Every love story deserves one more kiss… so I wrote one more chapter just for you.
P.S. Looking for your next binge read? I have a feeling you’ll love Claimed by the Ruthless King! Swipe to the next page for a little sneak peek…