Epilogue
LUKA
Two weeks later, I’m in my study going through Meredith’s file again, even though there is nothing new in it.
That’s the problem. There’s enough in it.
Access logs. Deleted passes. Calendar edits. Calls routed through office extensions that should have been inactive. Payments through companies that only existed on paper. Notes about my movements, my meetings, my security rotations, and, later, Nina’s routine.
Meredith had been close to everything because I had let her be close.
I close the file and push it away.
I mistook silence for loyalty.
I mistook competence for devotion.
And Nina paid for it.
My hand tightens around the glass.
The study door opens without a knock.
Misha walks in slowly, one hand braced against the doorframe, wearing loose black sweatpants and a grey shirt that hangs badly on him because he has lost weight in two weeks.
His face still carries fading bruises. His ribs are wrapped.
His left shoulder is stiff. He moves like every step personally offends him.
Alina is beside him, one hand hovering near his arm, not touching unless he actually needs it, which he does and refuses to admit.
“You look like shit,” I say.
Misha exhales through his nose. “Good morning to you too.”
“It is afternoon.”
“Then I’m ahead of schedule.”
Alina looks between us, nervous the way she always is when she finds herself within ten feet of me.
It’s awkward.
There is no other word for it.
She spends most of her days in the guest wing where Misha is recovering, reading beside his bed, arguing with him about soup, bringing him medicine he pretends not to need, and sitting silently with her hand on her stomach when he sleeps.
I let her stay because Misha wants her there, because Nina asked me not to make the house harder for them, and because Alina has told us everything she knows twice over, once shaking, once with Mirov glaring at her like he could extract truth by disappointment alone.
Still, when she and I run into each other in hallways, she looks like she expects me to change my mind and put a bullet in her.
I have considered it less often lately.
That is personal growth, according to my mother.
“Doctor said you are supposed to be lying down,” I say to Misha.
“Doctor also said I would not be allowed whiskey for a month, so his credibility is poor.”
Alina says quietly, “Misha.”
He looks at her. “What?”
“You promised.”
“I promised not to drink. I did not promise not to complain.”
She gives him a look.
He shuts up.
I watch it happen with mild irritation because Misha has ignored my orders for sixteen years, but one disappointed glance from the woman who nearly got him killed makes him behave like a chastised schoolboy.
He catches my expression and scowls. “Don’t start.”
Alina clears her throat. “We’re going to the garden nearby for a little while and thought of dropping by.”
I nod. I know she’s trying to make things better between us, but I also it’s going to take more time than two weeks. But I no longer hold any grudge against her.
At the door, Misha pauses and looks back at me. The irritation drops from his face for half a second.
We still haven’t spoken properly about everything that happened.
There are too many things between us right now, and most of them bleed if touched.
So he only says, “Stop staring at that file.”
I look at the desk.
“She fooled all of us,” he says.
“No,” I say. “She fooled me.”
Misha’s mouth tightens. “Fine. Be dramatic. Very on brand.”
Then he leaves before I can answer. Alina follows him. The door shuts.
I put the glass down before I crush it.
A minute later, my mother enters.
She is dressed to go out, which is unusual because my mother has spent the last two weeks ruling this house like a military hospital with better food.
She wears a cream blouse, black trousers, low heels, and the expression she gets when she has already made a decision and is only informing me as a courtesy.
“I’m leaving for the day,” she says.
I look up. “Where?”
“Out.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you are getting.”
I stare at her.
My mother walks to the front of my desk and adjusts one of the flowers in the vase because apparently even while delivering suspicious information, she has standards.
“I need your men for the day,” she says.
That gets my full attention.
“My men.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“All of them assigned inside the house.”
“Where are you going?”
She looks directly at me. “None of your business.”
I blink. It’s not often I’m surprised in my own study. My mother seems to enjoy it.
“None of my business,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“You live in my house.”
“I gave birth to you. I outrank the house.”
“That is not how security works.”
“That is how mothers work.”
I lean back in my chair and study her face. She looks innocent, which means she is absolutely not innocent.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Something useful.”
“Mother.”
“Luka.”
We stare at each other.
She wins, because she always does when she decides to stop behaving like a reasonable person.
“I will leave exterior guards in place,” I say. “Gate, perimeter, cameras. No one enters the property without clearance. You may take the interior detail.”
She smiles. “Good.”
The study door opens a little, and Nina steps in.
Everything in me shifts at once.
She’s wearing a simple pale dress that stops above her knees, soft enough to move when she walks, her hair loose over her shoulders.
The bruise near her temple is mostly gone now, but I still see it because I know where to look.
I see every mark she has carried because of me.
I see the faint shadows that remain under her eyes.
I see the way she pauses when she enters the room, checking my mood before she smiles.
That too is my fault.
Then she smiles anyway, and my chest tightens.
“Hi,” Nina says.
My mother looks between us and gives a small, satisfied smirk.
I immediately distrust everyone in the room.
“What is happening?” I ask.
Nina’s smile turns too innocent.
My mother says, “I’m leaving.”
“Yes,” I say slowly. “Apparently with half my men.”
“Not half,” my mother says. “Enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“None of your business.”
Nina bites her lower lip.
I look at her. “You know.”
“I know many things,” Nina says.
“That is an evasive answer.”
“I learned from you.”
My mother looks delighted. “She’s very good.”
“I’m aware,” I say.
My mother walks to Nina and kisses her cheek. “Call me if he becomes impossible.”
Nina says, “So immediately?”
“Probably.”
I look at both of them. “I’m standing right here.”
“Yes,” my mother says. “That is the problem.”
She turns to leave, then pauses at the door. “Also, I gave the household staff the day off.”
I stare at her. Nina looks down.
My mother says, “They work very hard.”
“They have suddenly begun working too hard today?”
“Yes.”
“Mother.”
“Be good,” she says. Then she leaves.
I stand behind my desk, watching Nina.
She listens too.
When the last car pulls away, she turns back to me. “Finally,” she says, “the house is quiet.”
“The servants are still here,” I say.
“No,” Nina says. “Your mom gave them the day off.”
I raise a brow. “Why?”
She walks toward me.
Slowly.
The softness in her face changes into something warmer, direct and deliberate, and my body understands before my mind lets itself.
“So that we can be alone,” she says.
My pulse drops low. “Nina.”
She stops in front of my desk. “What?”
“You’re still recovering.”
“I’m recovered.”
“Mirov said—”
“Mirov cleared me three days ago.”
“For normal activity.”
She places both hands on the desk and leans forward enough that the neckline of her dress shifts, showing the upper curve of her breasts.
My hand tightens at my side.
She notices.
Of course she notices.
Her eyes drop to my hand, then lift back to my face. “I missed you.”
“We have been in the same house.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I know exactly what she means.
For two weeks, I have slept badly with her in the next wing. I have touched her carefully, kissed her carefully, held her carefully, treated her like if I put my hands on her the way I wanted, I would become another danger she had to survive.
She rounds the desk. She steps close and puts one hand on my chest. “You keep looking at me like you’re sorry,” she says.
“I am.”
“I know.”
“I put you in danger.”
“I walked into danger too.”
“Because my world was full of it.”
“Luka.”
“No.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. “Meredith sat outside my office for years. She watched you. She hated you. She gave them timing. She gave them access. She knew your habits because I let her close enough to learn them.”
Nina’s hand moves up my chest to my jaw. “You didn’t make her betray you.”
“I made the room for it.”
“You also came for me.”
“I was almost too late.”
“But you weren’t.”
I look at her.
She says it like that should settle everything.
It does not.
But it does reach some part of me that has been standing in that warehouse for two weeks, listening to the gunshot before I knew whether she was still breathing.
Nina rises onto her toes and kisses me.
At first, I keep my hands at my sides.
I try. I make one honest attempt to be controlled.
Then she makes a small impatient sound against my mouth and bites my lower lip.
That’s the end of control.
I grab her by the waist and turn her into the desk, kissing her hard enough that she gasps. She opens for me immediately, her fingers gripping my shirt, her body pressing into mine like she has also been waiting too long and has no interest in patience.
I lift her onto the desk.
Papers scatter.
Nina laughs against my mouth, breathless and pleased, and the sound goes straight to my cock.
I shove her dress up her thighs.
She wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me in, already hot, already moving against me through the thin fabric of her underwear.
“Lock the door,” she says.
“No one is here.”
“Then don’t.”
I kiss her again, one hand sliding up her thigh, the other closing around the back of her neck. She moans when my fingers reach the damp heat between her legs.