Epilogue
CADY
A year and a half later…
Artem Makarov kisses like he’s making a point.
Not every time, and not always with an audience, but frequently and thoroughly enough that you start to understand it’s less about the moment and more about the fact that he has decided you’re his.
He’ll do it without apology in the middle of a conversation, when I’m in mid-sentence about something I was fairly invested in finishing.
It’s been more than a year since Benedikt’s office, the department store chaos with Lucas Manifold, and a dressing room where I agreed to something with no expiration date.
And this is what normal looks like for us.
Dinner at my place on Tuesdays because I do cook—contrary to what Misha believed—and Artem sitting at my kitchen island watching me.
My father has no strong feelings about him, which is the most I’ve ever been able to hope for from Colin Gallagher. He acknowledges Artem’s existence, factors him in because he’s in my life, and leaves us alone, which is more than I expected.
Killian has reached a grudging, wordless ceasefire that expresses itself primarily through the fact that he no longer looks at Artem like he’s calculating how long it would take to bury him.
Rian shook his hand once, which, for Rian, is essentially a declaration of acceptance, and nobody in my family has arranged me into anything or handed my name to anyone.
I wake up most mornings still surprised by the peace.
I’ve kept working. Artem didn’t ask me to stop. What I didn’t anticipate was how useful we’d be to each other, the way his operational instincts complement my ability to move through systems.
He doesn’t bring me flowers. He knows I hate them, but he books vacations and has the confirmation sent to my email. And he makes really good eggs when I stay over, because apparently that is the full extent of his culinary repertoire.
Like the long weekend in Lisbon last month that I didn’t know I needed. He leaves wine on my counter when he knows I’ve had a difficult week. He has, on two occasions, left a designer bag on my kitchen table that he acquired without my input and turned out to be the right thing.
Mostly, he lets me dress myself and furnish my life and make decisions, and he inserts himself only if something involves my safety. I’ve stopped arguing with him on that point because arguing with Artem about safety is like arguing with a wall with opinions.
It’s a Tuesday in October when he asks me something that has me shocked and speechless for the first time in a long time.
Dinner is done, the wine is open, and we’re on my couch with the city doing its thing beyond the glass walls. He’s been quiet for twenty minutes, and I’ve learned his silences well enough that I don’t try to fill this one.
“Move in with me.”
I look at him, and he stares back.
“Move in with you,” I repeat.
“You already spend four nights a week at my place. You have a drawer. Your dry cleaning is there. It makes sense.”
“It makes sense.” I echo.
“What?” he says.
“I’m not going to marry you.”
“I didn’t ask you to marry me… yet.”
Yet.
Would that be so bad?
Not with the way he’s been showing up for me. Not with the eggs and the Lisbon booking and the way he kisses me.
But the word still makes something in me tighten, which is probably why he said “yet” instead of anything more specific.
He plants things and waits for them to grow.
“You did that on purpose,” I narrow my eyes.
He picks up his wine. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You absolutely know what I mean.”
“Move in with me,” he says again, unbothered. “We’ll figure out the rest later.”
I think about it. Not the moving in, but the other part.
When I’m ready for it.
Not today. But eventually.
“Your apartment is where Misha lived,” I say. “Where he and I—“ I stop, because he knows, and saying it out loud in any more detail is something neither of us needs. “I can’t move into that apartment.”
“I know. I meant a new place. Something we pick together that has nothing to do with anyone else.”
“You and me? Are you serious?”
“When am I not? You can wake up next to me every morning,” he says, quieter now. “You already do most of the time, anyway. This would just make it official.”
“What kind of place?”
“Whatever you want. You can have the whole closet; I don’t care about closet space. I’ll make breakfast.” He pauses for a second. “You know I make some mean eggs.”
“That’s all you can make.”
“I make them well.”
“That’s a very low bar for cohabitation.”
Something warm moves through my chest.
No hidden agendas.
No pressure.
Just a relationship that keeps becoming the best thing I’ve ever experienced.
“I get the final say on the kitchen.”
“Fine.”
“And the bedroom.”
“Alright.”
“And I won’t compromise on natural light.”
“Lisichka. Fine. All of it. Whatever you want.”
I look at him, and I think about waking up next to him every morning in a place that belongs to us.
A place with no one’s history in it but ours.
Our sanctuary and peace.
“Okay…” I say.
He kisses me before I can say more, and I let him. When he pulls back, he’s looking at me with a smile.
“Are you scared?”
“No,” I reply honestly. “Which is the weirdest thing about this conversation.”
“Ah, well—” He stretches his legs in front of him. “Let me fix that.”
“Oh, God,” I moan, feeling my heart race. “Now, what?”
He smirks. “A man confessing his love shouldn’t make you scared. I thought you were tougher than that.”
I sit there shocked for a moment, because I didn’t think he was that kind of man. I never let it go that far in my head.
“I love you,” he says plainly.
“You do?”
“I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.”
“I know, I just… me?”
“Lisichka… now, you’re making it weird.”
I choke out a laugh.
I stare at the man who walked in on me spying on his mob boss. The same one who entered my penthouse, ate my sandwich, turned my life sideways, and somehow made it better in the process.
Who has made me open up and become comfortable with him.
“How much?”
His lips brush against mine, indicating that he’s done talking. “How much what?”
“How much do you love me?”
“More than anything, Lisichka. Happy?”
“Not if you’re just saying it to get in my pants.”
“You don’t wear pants often. Thank God.”
I press a soft kiss to his lips, and when he chases it, I pull back a little. “What’s this talk about marriage?”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about that.”
“I want to hear your plans.”
“Not until I know you’re ready. But, one day, you’ll have my name, and people will call you by my name.”
“More control, huh?”
“We both know damn well that I can’t control you.”
I smile. “Do you also know that I love you, too?”
“No.”
“I do.”
“How much?”
My smile widens. “More than anything. Happy?”
“Now, you’re just saying it so I’ll fuck you.”
“I don’t need to do that.”
He reaches over to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear. “No, you definitely don’t.”
Artem kisses me again, slower this time, sliding his tongue impatiently between my lips.
In the morning, he’ll make eggs with fruit, and I’ll steal his side of the bed.
Somewhere out there, there’s a place that will be ours. I find, sitting in the quiet of my living room on a Tuesday in October, that I’m not afraid of any of it.
It feels like everything I ever wanted.
It feels like home.
With him.
Read Benedikt Volkov’s story here!!!