Epilogue Timur
"We are not inviting Kazimir's ex-girlfriend to our wedding."
"I mean, she's one of the towel girls... And I like her." Kira shrugs a shoulder and lifts an eyebrow at me. She's been hanging around the gym too much.
"Two dates and she keyed his car, Kira. She carved a word into his hood that I'm not going to repeat at this dinner table. We're not inviting her."
"I already told her she could come." The matter-of-fact way she says it is frustrating, but I love this spitfire and if she's that insistent, I don't know what I can say to stop her.
"Then un-tell her."
Kira twirls her fork through the pasta Sonya made us and smirks at me.
She's already won this argument and she's just letting me flail around for entertainment.
I've been seeing that look a lot since she moved in properly, and I still haven't figured out a defense for it. I don’t think there is one.
She's so perfect just the way she is. I wouldn’t want to change a thing.
"Fine," I say. "But she sits on your side, far from any vehicles."
"Deal."
I take a sip of wine and lean back in my chair.
My shoulders are killing me from being hunched over my desk for the past ten hours running security overhauls on the club.
The new alliance with Victor means twice the infrastructure, twice the personnel, twice the headaches, and Roman has handed most of the technical coordination to me because apparently, I'm the only one in this family who understands how a firewall works.
"Oh, I talked to your brother today," Kira says, casual, like this is normal now.
And it is, somehow. My fiancée talks to my brother about alliance logistics, and Roman actually listens to her.
She's smarter than half the men at his table and he figured that out real quick.
Kira is more than the bridge that brought our families together.
She's a powerhouse. It's no wonder Victor had her working for him for so long.
"What did he want?"
"He wants to know if my uncle's men can help with security at the next invitational. Kazimir is stretched thin with Rostik's comeback fight on the same card."
"Rostik's fighting again?" This is news to me. Not even Kaz clued me in.
"Mmm," she hums. "Kaz cleared him this morning. His eye socket healed cleanly. He's been training for two weeks already."
"Nobody tells me anything." I shake my head and chuckle, but it's nice that someone is in the loop, even if I'm not.
"I'm telling you right now." She takes a bite and points her fork at me. "Also, your cousin Stepan called. He's got two more international fighters lined up for the fall card. One from Brazil and one from Japan."
"Stepan needs to call me directly instead of going through you." That one's annoying. I get a good woman and suddenly, I'm just the computer nerd.
"He likes me better. I don't yell at him." Kira snickers, and it makes me grin. I love that she fits in so well with my family and I love that they treat her like one of us.
"I don't yell at him," I say in jest, dropping my fork on my plate a little too loudly.
"You yelled at him last Tuesday," she points out, lifting both eyebrows.
"He had that coming."
She grins at me and I can't help it. I grin back. This is what our evenings look like now and I wouldn't trade it for anything. She's woven herself into every part of my life so naturally that I can't remember what the house felt like before she was in it.
But I'm bone tired tonight, fantasizing about a glass of something dark and an hour of silence without wedding plans or computer screens. I love this woman across the table from me, but I've been going nonstop since seven this morning and my brain is cooked.
"What about the venue?" Kira asks, scrolling through something on her phone between bites. "Dugan found this place outside the city with gardens and a terrace. It does fall weddings."
"Does it have adequate security access points?" She has no clue, but this is how I get her off the scent. I start talking logistics and safety and she gets annoyed. We're already an old married couple and our wedding is still months out.
"Timur."
"I'm serious. If we're putting both families in one location, I need to know I can cover the perimeter. Send me the floor plan."
"You're not turning our wedding into an operation," she snips, jerking her hand away when I try to reach for her phone. But I still have that stupid smirk on my face because I can't ever truly piss her off. She's too special to me.
"Every event is an operation. That's literally my job."
Both eyebrows peak in the center as she sets her phone down and looks at me. "You look exhausted."
"I am exhausted." I sit back and sigh, glad she recognized my misery.
"We can finish the guest list tomorrow."
"Thank God." I push my plate forward and rub both hands over my face. What I want right now is my study, my chair, and about three fingers of whiskey. Maybe four. Definitely four. "I'm going to head to my office for a bit to wind down. You good?"
"Not yet." She holds up a finger. "Dessert first."
"I'll skip it tonight... I don’t have the appetite. And I—"
"No, you won't," Kira snaps, cutting me off. It isn't often she gets pushy, but it appears on a night I really need to relax is right when she feels the need to dance on my boundary line.
"Kira, I love you, but I'm so tired I can barely taste anything right now. Whatever Sonya made will be wasted on me."
"I made it, not Sonya... Please..."
And now she's fidgeting, rearranging the used silverware and shifting her glass. She's been like this all evening, actually. Little things I chalked up to wedding stress. Adjusting her hair, checking her phone, bouncing her knee under the table when she thought I couldn't see it.
"You're being weird tonight," I tell her.
"I'm not being weird."
"You've reorganized the salt and pepper three times since we sat down."
"Maybe your salt and pepper needed reorganizing." She pushes back from the table. "Sit. I'll get it."
She disappears into the kitchen and when she comes back, Sonya follows behind her carrying a plate with a single cupcake on it.
Chocolate, from the look of it, with some kind of dark frosting swirled on top.
Sonya sets it in front of me and I swear she's about to vibrate out of her skin.
Her eyes are bright and she's pressing her lips together like she's physically holding back words.
Kira sinks back into her chair, and her eyes are misty. I look up at the maid, then at my wife-to-be, and wonder what these two have cooked up.
"Thank you, Sonya," I say, and I stare at the cupcake.
I don't love cupcakes. I've never loved cupcakes.
They're too sweet and they're too small to be a real dessert and the frosting always gets everywhere.
Kira knows this. She's watched me turn down cupcakes at three different events since we've been together.
"I know you don't like them," she says, reading my face. "But I made this one with my mother's recipe. The chocolate is from the good shop on Lenina, and the ganache inside is the same one my mom used to make for my dad's birthday every year. It's perfect, I promise."
"I appreciate the effort, but I'm really not—"
"Please." She puts her hand on my arm and her palm is sweaty. "Just cut into it—one bite. If you hate it, you can go to your office and drink whiskey until you pass out. I won't say a word."
Kira seems nervous now, but I'm getting annoyed. If she insists I take a bite, I'll take a bite, but my God, I need a drink. And with Sonya standing over us, the last thing I want to do is argue with her over a stupid cupcake.
"Alright," I say, picking up my fork, "one bite."
I press the fork into the center of the cupcake and it sinks through the cake easily.
When I pull the fork back, the center splits open and a thick, glossy chocolate ganache oozes out across the plate in a slow, dark river.
It looks incredible, I'll give her that. My mother couldn't have done better.
But sitting in the middle of the ganache, resting on the plate where it fell from inside the cupcake, is a tiny porcelain figurine. I set the fork down and pick it up between my thumb and forefinger and hold it up to look at it.
It's a baby. A tiny porcelain baby boy, no bigger than my thumbnail, painted in soft colors with a blue blanket wrapped around it, covered in ganache that clings to it.
I put it in my mouth and clean the ganache off it and then stare at it.
I turn it over in my fingers for a minute and then look up at Kira.
She sits across from me with her hands folded in her lap and tears already running down her cheeks.
She slides something across the table at me—a small black-and-white glossy image, printed on that flimsy thermal paper they use at medical offices.
I pick it up, and it takes my brain a few seconds to understand what I'm looking at because I've never seen one of these in person before.
But there it is, a grainy little shape in a sea of black and white static, with a head and a body and what might be an arm, and along the bottom of the image there's a date and a set of measurements and the word that rewires everything in my head at once.
"Are you serious?" I squeak. When I look up at her, she's crying and laughing at the same time, her hand over her mouth. "We're having a baby?" I can barely believe this. It's incredible.
"Oh, baby," I breathe, standing up and pulling her to her feet. Sonya takes a step back, clapping for us while I spin Kira around and set her down, kissing her unabashedly right in front of my maid. "I'm gonna be a dad?"
"Yes, and I'm due about three months after the wedding so I'm not sure how to do the dress, and what if I can't eat the dinner? You know we can't have red meat at the—"
I kiss her to shut her up. I can already tell she's going to be a worrier as a mother, and I love that about her. She's going to be a great mother.
When I pull back, she's quiet, and I'm able to say, "I love you," before she says anything else.
"Let me get you that glass of whiskey," Sonya says, nodding at us. Her cheeks are tinged pink as she backs away, giving us privacy. When she leaves, Kira tucks into my chest warmly and sighs.
"You're going to be an amazing father, Tim. I can't wait to start a family with you."
"Mmm," I growl, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "What will your father say?"
She sighs and looks up at me, propping her chin on my sternum. "He's not my king anymore. You are... But I think he'll be very happy to become a grandpa. Don't you?"
She winks at me and her eyes sparkle. I can't believe this woman is mine.
My whole life, I wondered if I'd find anyone half as amazing as my mother was. Now I know there are women in this life who surpass my mother's greatness, but not very many. And I, for one, am a very lucky man to have found one of those blessed souls, sent by God himself to be my bride.
"I love you, Kira," I whisper, claiming her lips again.
"I love you too, Tim." She owns this heart of mine, and if anyone tells you differently, they'll have me to answer to.