Epilogue
Yana
One year later
“One, two — go.”
Lucia swings, and a fist comes and hits Christov’s open palm hard enough to push him back a step. He stumbles, catches himself, and stares at her with his mouth open. Lucia squeals and spins toward me with her glove up.
I high-five it.
“Did you see that?” she demands. “Did you see his face?”
“I saw it.” I’m grinning. “Again. Feet first this time.”
Her legs are better. Not fully strong, maybe they never will be, but better than anyone ever promised her.
She walks by herself without thinking about it now and doesn’t reach for the wall.
A year of physio and a year of this, and the girl who couldn’t lift a glass of water is knocking my brother off balance in her own training room.
“She’s getting dangerous,” Christov says, shaking his hand out. “I want it noted that I’m being injured for free.”
“You’re being toughened up,” I tell him. “Kirill says you’re soft.”
“Kirill punches like a truck; of course I look soft —”
The door opens, and Giovanni comes in with his new capo behind him, both of them still in their meeting suits.
He shakes Christov’s hand, kisses Lucia’s cheek, and then his eyes find me across the room, and they change.
I know that look. Christov knows it too because he laughs and claps both hands over Lucia’s eyes.
“Hey —” Lucia swats at him as he pulls her away.
The capo clears his throat. “I’ll see myself out, Don.” He goes, smiling at the floor.
Giovanni walks across the room to me. I put my arms over his shoulders, and he kisses me, and then his hands find my waist, and he lifts me, and he carries me to the desk at the side of the training room and sets me on it.
“I couldn’t focus on the meeting,” he says against my mouth. “My head was full of you.”
“What a smooth talker,” I chuckle
“It’s a serious problem. Millions were discussed. I heard none of it. All I thought was, I miss my sweet girl.”
I laugh, and he kisses me again.
The year has been quiet. He recovered fully after six months and stepped back into the seat as he’d never left it.
Kirill quietly held everything together until he could.
Lucia came back to us after two months with Annika, walking better, glowing, and never once stopping her physio.
The house got rebuilt slowly, and everyone settled back down.
Nobody has tested him since Fabiano, and nobody seems eager to be the first.
His hands move down my sides through the fabric of my clothes.
“How was your day?” he asks.
It’s been a year, and I’m still not used to it.
A day with no one to guard. No gun at my ribs, no punches thrown or taken.
The first weeks of it nearly drove me mad.
Then I started on the garden and then the kitchen, and now, my days are dirt under my nails and bread proofing on the counter.
Christov coming home from training with Kirill, complaining about his shoulders.
Lucia at the table with college brochures spread everywhere, asking me to teach her to defend herself before she goes.
So, I teach her. And I cook. And I grow things. It was strange, and it’s still strange, but Kirill says I need to understand freedom, and I don’t mind it. It’s just strange.
“I like staying home,” I reply.
He pouts. “But do you not miss me?”
I look at his face — the performed wounded look, the eyes underneath it that aren’t performing at all.
“Yes,” I say. “I do. A lot.”
Giovanni’s gaze darkens with that possessive hunger that still makes my heart stutter and my core clench after an entire year together. He leans in, lips brushing the shell of my ear.
“Show me,” he whispers, the words rough with want.
Lust floods through me; it’s that deep, terrifying safety I’ve learned to trust. I kiss him desperately, pouring every unsaid feeling into it.
My fingers fly down his shirt, popping buttons until I can push the fabric off his shoulders.
I kiss his bare shoulder then drag my tongue slowly across his collarbone, tasting the faint salt of his skin.
I flick my tongue over one flat nipple, circling it before sucking it into my mouth.
He groans, the sound vibrating against my lips and sending sparks straight between my legs.
His hand grips the back of my neck, and then his tongue is plunging into my mouth.
I moan into the kiss, my hand sliding down to stroke the thick, hard outline of his cock through his pants.
He’s rock-hard and throbbing for me. I tug the zipper down eagerly and free him.
His heavy cock springs out, and it’s leaking at the tip.
I wrap my fingers around the hot length and stroke him firmly, loving how he pulses and leaks pre-cum over my hand.
“Lupa,” he whispers against my lips. “You really miss me, huh?”
“Shut up,” I breathe, smiling into another messy kiss as I shove his pants lower.
He yanks my t-shirt over my head and pulls my bra down roughly, freeing my breasts.
His mouth attacks them immediately. He is ravenous.
He sucks one nipple deep into his mouth, tongue lashing and swirling around the peak while his hand kneads and pinches the other.
Pleasure dances through me as I cry out softly, arching my back, pushing more of my breast into his hungry mouth.
Sweat is already beading on my skin from the intensity.
He switches sides, sucking harder, teeth grazing just enough to make me whimper. His tongue is followed by tight suction that leaves my nipples swollen, glistening, and aching. I’m soaked between my thighs, dripping with need.
He rubs the swollen, leaking head of his thick cock against my slick entrance, teasing my folds, coating himself in my wetness. I moan loudly, hips rocking desperately against him.
“Put it in, Giovanni,” I beg, voice shaking.
He smiles against my mouth, eyes dark with love and lust. “Say please.”
I look up at him, heart full and body burning. “Please.”
He pushes inside me in a deep thrust.
The stretch is exquisite in every inch of me. I gasp sharply, hugging him tight as he bottoms out. He feels so big, so perfect inside me. He starts thrusting, making my breasts bounce, and the desk creaks beneath us.
“Giovanni—” I cry out, the name torn from my throat.
“You like that, Lupa?” he groans, voice strained.
“It’s so good,” I moan, tears of overwhelming pleasure stinging my eyes. “So fucking good, Giovanni — oh god —”
He kisses and bites at my ear, tongue tracing the shell as he holds my back and drives into me harder.
The desk shakes violently with every thrust. Sweat covers our skin where we’re pressed together, his chest sliding against my breasts, our bodies growing hotter and slicker.
I’m flushed red, crying out with every deep plunge, trying and failing to contain my moans.
“Baby,” I whimper, voice breaking, “I’m so close—”
“Me too,” he growls. He licks into my ear and whispers, “I love you so much.”
The words send me crashing over the edge.
My orgasm rips through me violently. My pussy walls are clenching and pulsing hard around his thick cock as I cry out his name again and again.
Wave after wave of blinding pleasure floods me.
He follows with a deep groan, burying himself to the tip of his balls and spilling hot cum deep inside me.
We stay locked together, panting, sweating, and trembling.
He kisses my mouth softly, licking gently at my swollen lips like he can’t stop tasting me.
Then he rests his forehead against mine.
“Let’s go out tonight,” he murmurs, his voice husky. “I have somewhere I want to take you.”
Still breathless, I smile and lower my hands to cup his balls, rubbing and massaging them gently. I feel his cock twitch and harden again inside me almost instantly.
“If you can go again,” I whisper, “I’ll consider it.”
He throbs fully hard in seconds. “Lupa, you asked for this.”
I lean in, lips brushing his ear. “Pin me to this desk and make me call your name.”
He lifts me, spins me around, and bends me over the desk, ready to give me exactly what I want. I let out a groan as he enters me again.
Later that night, because he kept his promise, I come down the stairs in a black dress.
The house is quiet at this hour; he’s waiting at the bottom of the staircase with one hand on the banister, looking up at me. When he sees the dress, his whole face changes, and after a year, I still feel that look land somewhere in my chest.
He is wearing a black shirt that is open at the neck, showing his tattoo. He bulked up almost immediately after he recovered.
He pulls me in and kisses me and whispers against my mouth, “You look so pretty.”
I smile. “Let me go tell Lucia and Christov we’re leaving —”
He catches my hand. “Don’t worry about them.”
“Giovanni —”
Before I can protest, he stops my mouth with his and lifts me off the floor, and I’m laughing as he carries me out the front door, down the steps, past the new fountain in the courtyard he rebuilt, and sets me into the car.
The night air is cool and smells of the garden, my garden, the lavender I put in along the drive.
He gets in beside me, and I lean into his shoulder as we pull out of the gates.
“I never thought I’d be this happy,” I tell him. The lights slide past the window, gold and white against the dark. “Sometimes, I think it’s a dream.”
He takes my hand, lays it to his mouth and bites it gently.
“Ow —” I laugh.
“Not a dream,” he says.
“I know.” I look at his face, the soft light from the dashboard catching his jaw. “I just keep feeling like something has to come next. Like it can’t stay this quiet.”
It’s the old habit. Five years of guarding taught my body that quiet is the sound before something breaks, and a year of peace hasn’t fully untaught it. I still count exits in restaurants. I still wake at five.
“Whatever comes,” he says, “I’ll protect you.”
The car stops.
The restaurant sits on a corner above the water, light spilling out of tall windows onto the pavement.
I expect it to be humming with people; after all, it’s a nice night.
But it isn’t humming. It’s empty. There are only the workers, going quietly between tables set for no one.
It’s so calm that our footsteps feel too loud.
“Did you book out the whole place?”
“No,” he says.
Unease spreads through my body as the waiter greets us and walks us to a table at the center of the room. We sit, and he hands me a menu. I look at it without reading a word.
“I feel strange,” I say quietly.
He smiles. “I’m here.”
His phone buzzes. He glances at the screen and stands. “I have to take this. One minute.”
He walks off toward the front, and the second, he’s out of sight, I feel eyes on me.
There is no mistaking it; I know when I am being watched from somewhere in the room.
My hand drifts to my bag; in there is a small gun Giovanni gifted me one random Tuesday, the way other men gift earrings. I carry it around for times like this.
Then the lights go out. I’m on my feet with the gun up. Everywhere is pitch black, the candles snuffed, only the faint blue moonlight through the windows hit a part of the room far away.
“Who’s there?” My voice carries flat into the black. “I can hear you. I know you’re there.”
I pick up my bag. “Giovanni! Where are you?”
I get nothing, and my heart begins to pound.
Then I hear footsteps in the dark. It’s more than one person.
People are walking into the room, making sure to keep in the shadows.
My heart slams against my ribs, and my finger settles alongside the trigger, and I’m thinking, of course, of course it couldn’t stay this quiet forever; I knew it, I knew!
The lights come on, and the faces are Annika’s, Kirill’s, Christov’s, and Lucia’s. Little Dimitri waving with both arms over his head.
“Oh — shit —” I whip the gun behind my back as I see him. The staff is all holding balloons. And gold letters strung on a ribbon between them.
WILL YOU MARRY ME?
I stand with my mouth open and a loaded gun hidden against the small of my back.
“Look back,” Annika calls, her hands pressed to her mouth. Lucia is bouncing on her toes, pointing past me. “Look back!”
I turn to see Giovanni, who is on one knee behind me.
The tears come up before I can do anything about them. He opens the box, and the ring inside is enormous, a diamond that gathers every flame in the room and throws it back, exactly like him.
“Make me the happiest man alive,” he says. “Marry me, Lupa.”
His hands are shaking. I set the gun down on my chair. I wipe my palm on my dress because I am nervous. I hold my hand out to him, and the relief that breaks across his face nearly takes my legs out from under me.
He slides the ring on, and the room erupts, clapping, Annika crying openly now, Lucia shrieking, Kirill nodding in approval, and Christov cheering. Giovanni rises and pulls me into him.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you more.”
“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Christov starts the chant, of all people, and the whole room takes it up.
“Ewww,” Dimitri yells and turns away. Christov claps his hands over Lucia’s eyes. She swats at him again, laughing.
Giovanni kisses me, and I hold onto him, and over his shoulder I see all of them: my brother, his sister, Annika, Kirill, and the little Dimitri.
The room is full, and I truly have a full family. I smile as Giovanni kisses my ears and whispers. “I love you.”
I love him too.
The End?