40. Epilogue
EPILOGUE
CARA
The next night arrives carrying candlelight, flowers, and a kind of hope I almost don’t trust.
The estate chapel is old, warm, and small enough to feel private.
Candles burn before the icons, and gold leaf reflects the light above painted saints. The narrow windows hold back the snow outside.
Lidiya has placed white flowers along the front rail to soften the stone. Mrs. Wentworth stands near the back with the household staff arranged behind her in a neat, silent line, each of them dressed in black and gray, ready for the ceremony to begin.
Kathryn stands beside me. She has Mikhail’s hand in hers, and Mikhail wears a dark little suit with one button crooked. He keeps looking at Dmitri, then at me, then at the small table Leonid has set near the chapel doors.
“What is that?” Mikhail whispers, pointing.
Leonid looks up from the documents and adjusts his glasses. “That is paperwork.”
Mikhail frowns. “For kissing?”
Kathryn coughs into her hand.
Yuri grins from the second row. Kirill, beside him, keeps a straight face and fails around the eyes. Sergei stands near the chapel entrance with his hands folded in front of him, watching every door and window.
A priest waits beside Leonid, black cassock visible beneath his coat. A state representative stands on the other side with the seal case open and a pen placed across the registration book. Church first, then paper. Both real.
Elena stands near the front, pale green dress under a cream shawl, her baby asleep against Lidiya’s shoulder behind her. She reaches for my hand when I pass.
“You look beautiful,” Elena says softly, squeezing my fingers.
I look down at the simple dress Mrs. Wentworth found for me, ivory wool, long sleeves, fitted waist, nothing grand enough for a fairy tale and everything I can survive wearing. “I look like I slept for three hours.”
Elena’s mouth curves. “That too.”
Dmitri waits at the front of the chapel.
Black suit. White shirt. No tie. One bruise near his jaw, one cut across his knuckles, and eyes that hold mine once I start walking toward him. He doesn't smile. That would almost feel wrong tonight in this place.
Mikhail tugs free from Kathryn halfway down the aisle and runs to him.
Dmitri crouches at once. “Problem?”
Mikhail pulls the red car from his pocket and presses it into Dmitri’s hand. “For luck.”
Dmitri’s fingers close around it. “Thank you.”
Mikhail turns to me and pats his other pocket. “Blue is with Mama.”
My fingers find the blue car in the small pocket Lidiya sewed inside my wedding skirt.
The priest begins in Russian, and I understand almost none of it, but Dmitri’s hand finds mine.
He translates under his breath when it matters.
Marriage. Choice. Faithfulness. Protection.
Home. When the priest blesses the rings, Dmitri slides the plain band onto my finger beside the platinum one.
My hands shake when I place his on him, but he holds still for me.
Leonid clears his throat from the side table when the prayers end. “Before registration, one status remains.”
The chapel goes still.
Dmitri’s hand tightens around mine.
Leonid opens a thin black folder. “Cara O’Connell’s Blacklist entry remains marked as active under the emergency classification.”
My stomach drops. Kathryn pales beside me, and Mikhail feels the change in her hand. His little fingers tighten around hers.
The chapel doors open before anyone speaks.
Maksim steps inside. Elena turns first, and something in her face eases.
Maksim walks down the aisle, his expression unreadable. Every guard in the chapel straightens. He stops beside Leonid and takes the pen from the table.
“The status is annulled,” Maksim says, signing once. “With my consent.”
Leonid checks the line, then passes the folder to the state representative. The representative stamps the page. The small sound changes everything.
Maksim looks at me. “No debt, no claim, no mark.”
My throat closes. Dmitri’s thumb moves once over mine.
Maksim turns to him. “Marry her because she chooses you, not because my house says she’s yours.”
Dmitri looks at me, and his voice drops. “Cara.”
I turn toward him.
His hand opens around the red car, then closes again. “I left once because I thought leaving would protect you. I was wrong. I won’t make a life by deciding for you again. If you take my name, you take it because you want it. If you’re angry, I’ll stay and hear it.”
My eyes burn.
“I don't know how to stop being afraid yet,” I say, holding his hand. “But I’m tired of surviving alone. I choose you. I choose our son having both of us. I choose to stay while we learn how to do this without lying to each other.”
Dmitri bends his head just as the priest says the last words. Leonid guides us to the registration book. Dmitri signs first, and I follow suit. The state representative stamps the page. “Registered,” he says.
Mikhail looks up at Kathryn. “Now kissing?”
This time, everyone hears Yuri laugh.
Dmitri touches my cheek. When he kisses me in the estate chapel, the staff clap softly. Mikhail cheers the loudest. “Red and blue win,” he says, throwing both arms up.
Dmitri rests his forehead against mine.
“Yes,” he says, his voice rough. “They do.”
The chapel empties slowly. Staff bow their heads as we pass. Maksim takes Elena's arm, and Lidiya carries the baby out through the side door. Kathryn hugs me once, hard, then steers Mikhail toward the nursery corridor with Sergei trailing behind like a shadow with a conscience.
Mikhail waves goodnight. Dmitri and I watch him walk down the corridor with Kathryn and Sergei, safe inside our family.
"Goodnight, little mechanic," Dmitri says, and the nickname makes my throat tighten.
The house settles around us. Snow gathers beyond the windows, and every candle in the corridor has been lit by someone with more sentiment than sense. Mrs. Wentworth, probably. Lidiya. Elena.
Dmitri's hand stays on the small of my back as we climb the stairs, and his touch burns through the ivory wool like a brand.
We reach his door. Our door. The thought is still strange enough to make my breath catch.
He opens it, and the suite is warm, dim, lit by a fire already built in the grate. Someone has turned down the bed. Someone has left wine on the side table. Someone has thought of everything except how to prepare a woman for the moment her husband closes the door and looks at her like that.
Dmitri locks the door.
“Not hiding a second groom, are you?” I ask, because silence will swallow me whole.
He doesn’t smile. He crosses the room in four strides, takes my face in both hands, and kisses me.
It's different from every kiss before in that it's not angry or tinged with desperation. Slow, deep, thorough, he kisses me like he has the entire night and every intention of using it. His thumbs trace my jaw, and his tongue slides against mine until I forget where I end.
When he pulls back, I'm breathless. “Mrs. Antonov,” he says.
“Don't start.”
“Mrs. Dmitri Antonov.” His mouth finds my forehead, my temple, the corner of my eye. “Registered. Stamped. Legal.”
“God, you're insufferable.”
“You married me.” His lips brush my ear. “That makes you the insufferable one.”
I laugh, and it comes out shaky, because his hands are already sliding down my sides, finding the shape of me through the wool dress like he's memorizing geography he intends to claim.
“I’ve been thinking about this since the chapel,” he says against my neck.
“Thinking about what?” My voice is already thinner than I want it to be.
“Taking this off you.’ His fingers find the zipper at my back. “Slowly.”
The dress loosens. He peels it down my shoulders, my arms, my waist, until it pools at my feet. I stand before him in a slip and the thin band of lace beneath it, and his gaze moves over me like heat from an open flame.
“You are,” he says, “the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
“You need glasses.”
“I need you.” His hand cups my breast through the slip, thumb dragging across my nipple until it tightens and I inhale sharply. “I’ve needed you for years. I'm done pretending.”
He kisses my collarbone, then lower, sinking to his knees in front of me with enough control to make my legs weak. His hands grip my hips through the slip, and he looks up.
“I'm going to taste you now,” he says. “And you're going to stand there and take it.”
“That’s—”
His mouth finds the inside of my thigh, and the argument dies.
He pushes the slip up with both hands, slow enough that I feel every inch of fabric sliding over my skin. His lips follow the hem, tracing the crease where my thigh meets my hip, then lower. His breath is hot through the lace, and my hips tilt forward before I can stop them.
“Dmitri—”
“Yes?” His tongue drags a line through the fabric, and my hand flies to his shoulder.
“Oh, God.”
“Close.” He hooks his fingers into the lace and pulls it down. “But I prefer it when you say my name.”
He wraps his arms around my thighs, pulling me against his mouth, and the first stroke of his tongue splits me open from the inside out.
I cry out, and my knees buckle. He holds me up.
Of course he does. His hands are iron bands around my thighs, and his mouth is devastating—hot, wet, relentless.
He circles my clit with the tip of his tongue, then flattens it against me in a broad stroke that makes my vision swim.
“Taste so good,” he groans against me. “So fucking sweet. I've wanted this all day.”
“I can’t—” My fingers knot in his hair. “I can’t stand—”
“You can.” He sucks gently, and my hips jerk. “You will.”
He devours me with methodical intensity, alternating between long, slow strokes and focused attention to my clit until I'm trembling from head to foot.
The sounds are obscene—wet, rhythmic, unmistakable.
My head drops back, and the firelight plays across the ceiling while my husband's mouth ruins me.
“Dmitri—Dmitri, I’m—”
“Come for me.” His voice vibrates through me. “Come on my tongue. Let me feel it.”