EPILOGUE - Moscow Safe House, Three Months Later #4
“Still too many.” He sets a cup in front of me, steam curling fragrant between us. “We need a permanent solution.”
“I have ideas.” I wrap my hands around the warm porcelain. “About the antidote. About using it as leverage instead of keeping it locked away.”
He settles onto the stool beside me. “Tell me.”
“Polina’s trafficking network depends on compliance. Fear. The girls she moves are kept docile with chemical cocktails that I can counteract with the MX-42 antidote.” I meet his eyes. “If we distribute it through the underground networks—”
“Her product becomes useless.”
“Her entire business model collapses.” I take a sip of tea, perfect temperature because he’s learned exactly how I like it. “And we look like heroes to the NGOs and law enforcement agencies who’ve been fighting this for decades.”
“Keene.” Roman’s expression sharpens.
“She’d have to acknowledge we’re useful. Even if she doesn’t want to.”
“She’s Interpol. She’s not going to be our ally. She hunts until she catches or until someone removes her from the board.”
“We might have to send Luka.”
The door opens, and Galina enters without knocking, the way she always does, rosary beads clicking against her palm as she takes in the scene—Roman in sleep pants making tea, me in his shirt at the counter, the easy intimacy.
She looks smaller today somehow, more fragile, though I know better than to say so.
Seventy-eight years of surviving Soviet politics and Bratva bloodshed have made her harder than the marble floors she walks across, but three days locked in the east wing left marks that even she can’t hide completely.
Dark circles under her eyes. A new slowness in her movements.
“Good morning. The captains are gathering early. Chernov says there’s news about Odessa.”
“Good news or bad?” Roman asks.
“News.” She settles onto the stool on my other side, accepting the cup of tea Roman slides toward her with the comfort of long practice. “The kind that requires both of you.”
I look at Roman. He looks at me.
Three months of building this, and we’ve learned to read each other without words.
“Twenty minutes.” Roman drains his tea. “We’ll be ready.”
Galina watches us.
“You’re good for each other,” she says finally. “The way you move now. The way you think. Like two wolves who’ve finally found their pack.”
Her rosary clicks softly.
“Irina would approve.”
Roman goes still beside me. “You think so?”
“Ya znayu.” Galina reaches across the counter to pat his cheek, the gesture so maternal it makes my throat tight. “She wanted you to find someone who could see the man beneath the monster. Someone strong enough to stand beside you.”
Her eyes shift to me.
“And you—she would have adored you. The spine. The way you love her son with everything you have.”
“I wish I’d known her.”
“You do know her.” Galina’s smile is sad and proud and peaceful all at once.
“Every time Roman touches the case of her violin. Every time he chooses mercy. Every time he looks at you with that expression that makes him seem seventeen instead of thirty-two—that’s Irina.
Living through the son she raised and the woman he chose. ”
Roman’s damaged hand flexes on the counter, the fingers that will never hold a bow again curling against the marble like they’re still searching for strings.
“Spasibo,” he says quietly. “For everything. For sixty years of holding this family together.”
“And I’m not finished yet.” She rises from her stool with the creak of ancient joints. “Twenty minutes. Don’t be late.”
She leaves with the same lack of ceremony she entered with.
Roman and I sit in the silence she left behind.
“Shower,” he finally says. “And then we go build an empire worth being proud of.”
“Together?”
His smile is everything. “Together. Always, solnyshko.”
* * *
The captains’ meeting runs three hours and leaves me with a headache that throbs behind my eyes and a list of problems that won’t solve themselves no matter how many times I read through the reports.
Polina controls forty-two percent of what used to be our Odessa revenue. She’s recruited eighteen of our people since November, three more this week alone, and Chernov’s sources say she’s planning something for the summer that involves enough firepower to level a city block.
“Suka,” Roman mutters, scanning the surveillance photos spread across the table. “She’s building an army.”
“An army needs soldiers,” Dmitri says from his seat at the far end, the bruise on his jaw still fading from where I hit him three weeks ago when he tried to countermand one of my orders. He’s learned since then. Mostly. “We cut her supply, we cut her threat.”
“Her supply is our people.” Luka’s voice carries the flatness of someone who’s been awake for thirty hours and running on caffeine and spite. “Bratva who grew up in the organization, who swore vor v zakone oaths, who know our routes and safe houses and—”
His phone buzzes.
The sound cuts through the room like a gunshot, and every captain goes still because Luka’s secure line doesn’t ring during meetings. Ever. The protocol exists for exactly one reason: emergencies that can’t wait.
He checks the screen and his expression hardens into something I’ve only seen twice before—once when Roman was bleeding out in my arms, and once when we found Galina’s empty room in the east wing.
“Keene,” he says.
Roman’s jaw tightens.
Luka turns the phone so we can see the single line of text glowing against the dark screen:
I’m not done. I’m just choosing the battlefield. —E.K.
The silence stretches for ten heartbeats. Fifteen. Twenty.
“Blyad’,” Chernov breathes. “She’s not backing off. She’s—”
“Positioning.” Roman’s voice is cold in that way that means he’s already thinking three moves ahead. “The Red Notices?”
“Still active.” Luka pockets the phone with a motion that’s too controlled.
Something about the way he says her name makes me think there’s more to this than professional hunting.
“She hasn’t withdrawn them. If anything, she’s added documentation.
The factory. The warehouse. Bodies we thought were buried deep enough. ”
“She won’t stop,” Chernov interjects. “She’s Interpol. She hunts until she catches or until someone removes her from the board.”
“No one touches Keene.” Roman’s voice carries the edge of command that makes captains straighten in their seats. “She’s doing her job. We do ours better.”
The meeting ends with more questions than answers.
“She’s not going to stop,” I say when we’re alone.
“Net.” He pulls me against him, his arms wrapping around me with a desperation that tells me he’s more worried than he’s letting on. “But neither are we.”
* * *
Later, standing at the window of our bedroom watching Moscow glitter beneath fresh snow, I think about the girl who signed a marriage contract in November.
She couldn’t have imagined this.
The captains who bow to her. The brother who hugs her and argues about chess openings. The husband who loves her with intensity that still steals her breath. The empire is spreading beneath her feet.
Roman’s arms wrap around me from behind, his chin resting on my shoulder, his body warm against my back.
“Thinking again,” he murmurs. “I can always tell.”
“Thinking about Keene.” I lean into his embrace. “About what she’s planning. What she knows.”
“She knows enough to be dangerous.” His breath is warm against my neck. “But not enough to stop us.”
“You sound certain.”
“I’m certain of you.” He turns me in his arms to face him, and I see the exhaustion he’s been hiding all day, the lines around his eyes that weren’t there in November, the weight of everything he carries, so I don’t have to carry it alone. “The rest we figure out together.”
“Together,” I echo. “Vmeste.”
“Always.” His smile is tired but real. “Now come to bed. Tomorrow we plan for war.”
I let him lead me away from the window, away from the city that wants us dead and the hunter who’s circling closer with every day that passes.
We’re not the people who met in November.
We are Pakhan and Tsaritsa.
We are partners.
We are the wolves now.
And the hunt has just begun.
THE END
Thank you for walking through fire with Roman and Anya.