Epilogue
Zara
I’m nine months pregnant, waddling like a duck. A very large, very hormonal, very over-it duck who has to pee every ten minutes and can’t see her own feet.
Nikolai won’t let me do anything. Not cook, or clean, or reach for anything. Last week I tried to pick up a sock and one of his guys materialized out of nowhere to grab it for me. A grown man in a three-piece suit, holding my dirty sock like it was a live grenade, asking if I needed anything else.
“This is insane,” I tell Nik that night.
“You’re carrying our child. Nothing is insane.”
I huffed. “Your child is using my bladder as a punching bag. I think he takes after you.”
“She,” Nik corrected, giving me his devastatingly handsome grin.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a boy, Nik. I can feel it.”
He winked at me. “It’s a girl. She’ll have your attitude, and we’ll never have a moment of peace.”
* * *
We’ve been having this “argument” for months. Neither of us wants to find out the sex. We just want to be right.
I ease myself onto the couch, and Nik drops at the other end, pulling my swollen feet into his lap. His thumbs dig into my arches and I let out a moan of pleasure.
“Don’t stop,” I purr like a cat.
He chuckles. “That’s what you said this morning.”
I mumble without opening my eyes, head resting on the cushions, “You’re disgusting.”
“Yet, you married me.”
“Under duress.”
His hands pause on my feet. Just for a second. I reach over and poke his thigh with my toe. “I’d do it again.”
His jaw works. “Yeah?”
“All of it,” I add, twisting the emerald on my finger. “And I’m definitely keeping the ring.”
“It’s not coming off that finger as long as you’re breathing,” he replies.
The baby moves hard enough to ripple my belly, and Nik’s hand moves there instantly, his massive palm spanning my stomach, fingers spread wide. His eyes go soft in that way they only do when he’s touching my bump. The Butcher of San Francisco, already melting for his unborn child.
“Strong,” he murmurs.
“He gets it from me.”
He looks up, and I melt. His cut jaw, dark eyes with lighter flecks, the scar through his eyebrow. He’s still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. And he’s mine.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “She does.”
He leans to press his lips to my belly, his stubble scratching through my shirt, and rumbles against my skin, “You’ve got the toughest mom on this planet, and a father who will burn down the world for both of you.”
Then he pulls me on his lap, against his chest, his arms strong around me. The city glittering through the windows, his heartbeat steady under my ear, and he smells like home.
A year ago, I was months behind on rent, maxed out on my credit cards, with no one in the world who’d notice if I disappeared.
Now I’m Mrs. Nikolai Maksimov. Carrying this incredible man’s baby. Loved fiercely, obsessively by a man who would tear down limb by limb anyone who looked at me wrong with his bare hands.
“Nik?”
“Hmm.”
“I love you.”
His arms tighten around me, his lips pressing to my hair. “Love you too, Mrs. Maksimov. Both of you.”
I smile against his chest. For the first time in my life, I’m not fighting to survive. I’m actually living. Safe, spoiled, claimed by a monster who turned out to be exactly what I needed. Not a fairy tale, but something better. Something real.
THE END.