Extended Epilogue
Maksim
The christening is ending when Nikolai finds me.
I’ve been standing at the edge of the gardens for the better part of an hour, which is long enough to know that I should have left already.
The Brennan summer estate sprawls behind me with manicured hedgerows and climbing roses. There are old stone paths that wind between beds of lavender and white hydrangeas.
The afternoon light is the particular gold of late summer, the kind that makes everything look like it was arranged specifically to be looked at, and the garden is full of people who have no idea I’m watching them.
Cillian Brennan stands near the fountain with his daughter in his arms.
The baby is in white lace, an enormous bow on her head. She’s already asleep against her father’s shoulder.
Her blonde hair moves gently in the breeze and Brennan gently moves it out of her face.
His wife, Valentina, is beside him, her hand on his back, laughing at something someone said. The way he looks at her when she laughs—
I look away.
Across the lawn, a small dark-haired toddler in a white dress is making a waddling break for the rose beds while her father, Leo Santoro, lunges after her.
“Seraphina!” He catches her around the middle and hoists her up. She shrieks with delight, kicking her small legs, absolutely thrilled with herself. I study the Santoro heir.
The resemblance to Leo is extraordinary.
Emma Brennan’s genes, apparently, did not even attempt to show up.
This child is Leo Santoro in miniature, down to the stubborn expression she’s currently wearing.
Santoro places a kiss on the child’s cheek before he sets her down and takes her hand.
She immediately pulls toward the roses again.
“We’re going this way,” Santoro tells her, steering her firmly in the opposite direction, shaking his head as he tries to corral his toddler. Seraphina looks up at him with his own eyes and his own expression and appears to be weighing her options.
Then she spots something else across the lawn and takes off toward it, dragging her father behind her.
Santoro goes, because apparently that’s what they do to you.
I look away.
Children. Unity. Peace.
Irrelevant sentimentalities.
“Ty gotov?” Nikolai asks in Russian, as he silently appears at my shoulder.
I don’t look at him, still watching Seraphina Santoro. “Almost.”
“Almost?” My brother asks, raising a brow.
“I’m close to finding the source.” I keep my voice low, letting the string quartet someone has inexplicably hired for a baby’s christening drown out our conversation to any eavesdroppers. “The irregularities in our accounts. The shell companies. All of it leads back to one person.”
Nikolai is quiet for a moment. “The traitor.”
I incline my head. “Da.”
“And the woman?”
I watch Seraphina make another break for the roses. Santoro catches her easily and marches her back toward Brennan and his wife, where Santoro’s wife stands as well. “I found her.”
Eight years of dead ends and false leads and wrong names and cold trails. Eight years. “She witnessed something eight years ago; she ran before I could reach her.”
Nikolai stills. “She knows who’s behind it?”
“She knows enough.” My jaw tightens. “She has answers I’ve been looking for a long time.”
Nikolai shifts beside me and I can feel him study me the way he’s been doing since we were children, like he’s reading something written there that I can’t see. “When are you going to move?”
“Tonight.” I glance at my watch in impatience.
There’s no point in waiting.
I’ve spent eight years hunting this ghost.
One more day doesn’t change anything except give her another opportunity to disappear.
And she’s already proven she’s very good at that.
Nikolai doesn’t argue. He knows better. “Be careful,” he warns, eyes roving over the gardens to make it look like we’re having a casual conversation. “Witnesses who survive this long usually have protection.”
“She won’t have it for much longer,” I remark grimly.
Philadelphia
9:30 PM
The gallery sits on a quiet street in an affluent neighborhood. I park across from it and cut the engine and watch through the front windows.
There.
Dark hair pulled back. White blouse. Moving through the gallery with a clipboard in her hand, cataloguing paintings like she has all the time in the world.
Aria Delano.
For eight years she’s been invisible. For eight years she’s hidden from questions she should have answered.
Not anymore.
I’ve spent the last few weeks learning her. She works late on Thursdays and lives six blocks north.
She walks the same route home every night—same turn at the corner of Walnut, same pause at the light on 4th. She buys coffee from the same place every morning and takes the long way to work when it’s not raining.
She has no idea that someone has been watching her do all of it.
She’s gotten too comfortable. Too careless.
Fatal mistake.
Through the window she moves toward the back office, and for a moment something on the desk is visible before she shifts and blocks it from view.
A child’s drawing. Bright crayon colors. Stick figures holding hands.
I go still.
My intelligence said she lived alone.
No family.
No connections.
No reason for anyone to look for her and no one to notice if she disappeared.
But there is a child’s drawing on her desk.
Another secret. Another lie.
It doesn’t matter. Tomorrow she’ll tell me everything—why she ran, what she saw, who she’s been protecting for eight years and why they were worth disappearing for.
The woman moving through that gallery has answers I need.
Whether she likes it or not, she’s going to give them to me.
TO BE CONTINUED.