Epilogue 1
Natalya
“This one is perfect,” Kiara says, flipping through my drawings while I hop onto the table in her office.
Floor-to-ceiling windows stretch across one wall, opening the room to a sprawling view of the city, while everything else somehow manages to feel warm and impossibly cozy.
Another wall has been transformed into one giant bulletin board covered in notes, photographs, and scribbled ideas, which suits Kiara a little too well.
We’ve spent the last few years traveling and caring about absolutely nothing, barely knowing what day it was.
And now we’re back here, not fully settled anywhere, all our belongings still half-packed because we’re somewhere in the middle of buying a place as far away from this city as possible while somehow still clinging to parts of it.
Kiara carved out a temporary office for herself here, apparently incapable of staying idle for longer than five minutes and eager to have a place of her own to write again, while my brother and Adrien had to return and deal with a few things they’d left behind, because years away don’t magically make businesses, properties, and responsibilities disappear.
They continue operating somewhere in the gray area between entirely legal and definitely not legal. And they think we don’t know.
We do.
Not every phone call happens in front of us. Not every meeting is explained.
I suppose some things never leave a person completely.
Even though there’s finally no one controlling them anymore, no one pulling their strings, or making them do horrible things, they still can’t seem to let go of certain people, certain obligations or lingering connections.
But all we care about is that they’re no longer part of that darkness within the organization. Not actively, at least. I guess everything around here is part of it somehow.
“This one’s ridiculous. Someone is absolutely buying it,” she murmurs, spreading my artwork across the desk and already racing ahead with a dozen ideas.
Instead of sitting like a normal person, I’ve somehow ended up sprawled across her table like an oversized cat, while she moves around the office in her sleek dress and heels.
“I’m not sure I want to do this,” I admit eventually.
Her head snaps up.
“What do you mean?” she asks, genuinely startled. “It would be a crime if all of this stayed hidden forever.”
“I’ve never been particularly ambitious. I’m not sure I know how to do...” My hand waves vaguely through the air as I search for the right word. “This. A career. A business. Any of it.”
Kiara laughs softly and climbs onto the table beside me.
“That’s why you have me,” she says simply.
“You have enough work yourself.”
“But I want to do this with you too. And I want to feature you in next month’s issue,” she says, visibly excited.
A series of frustrated noises leaves me in response.
“I’ve never even had a real job. Or anything remotely close to one. I’m not sure how to operate on a schedule.”
A smile spreads across her face.
“Nat, you’re the art. I’m the business. Deal? Stop overthinking it.”
At this point, I need to accept she’s not going to let this go until I do something about the frankly absurd number of paintings I’ve accumulated over the years.
“Okay,” I sigh. “Deal. But I’m not explaining my art to anyone. If someone doesn’t get it, it’s their problem. I don’t give a fuck.”
“Fine by me.” She laughs under her breath before she opens her laptop and starts typing.
I watch her in silence.
She used to tell me her career was just about finding my brother. That she didn’t miss it.
That was complete bullshit.
She loves this. She loves writing or having something to chase.
After spending years scribbling observations, and random thoughts into notebooks while we traveled, she finally listened to us and started writing professionally again.
These days she writes for two magazines, under the strict condition that she stays away from anything likely to get her kidnapped, shot, or dragged into a criminal investigation.
Instead, she writes about people. Artists. Entrepreneurs. Strange ideas. Unusual lives. The kinds of stories most people overlook. And since she’s easily the nosiest person I’ve ever met, it suits her perfectly.
“Anyway,” I cut in, leaning into her line of sight to steal back her attention. “I’m not even sure I’ll have time for exhibitions or whatever it is you’re planning.”
“Of course you will,” she shoots back instantly, not even looking up from the screen.
A guilty smirk tugs at my lips as I reach into my pocket and pull out the reason my hands haven’t stopped trembling since this morning.
I place the pregnancy test directly in front of her, hard enough to pull the workaholic out of whatever spreadsheet she’s currently buried in.
Her eyes drop to it right away. Then her mouth falls open.
“Oh my God,” she breathes.
“Exactly,” I nod.
“Does he know?” she squeaks.
My face betrays me instantly, collapsing into something caught between guilt and a barely contained grin.
“No,” I admit. “I need you there when I tell him.”
“Oh God.” She covers her mouth, the shock dissolving into delighted laughter.
“They’re both going to lose their shit.”
“I know. That’s exactly why I need you. I’d probably announce it in the most catastrophic situation imaginable.”
“Well.” She shrugs, already reaching for her bag. “Let’s go then.”
She pushes away from the desk and starts stuffing her laptop, charger, and approximately half her office into her bag.
“Now?” I blurt, my pulse instantly spiking.
“Yeah.” She slings the bag over her shoulder. “Let’s do it.”
I gulp.
Suddenly, I’m far too aware of the situation I’ve gotten myself into.
But that’s precisely why I can’t do this without her.
Without Kiara forcing me into this, I’d probably keep postponing it until Adrien noticed I’d somehow become suspiciously bigger, but then he wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings by suggesting that I’m fat, so we’d never talk about it until a little baby came out of me.
?
We step into the church through the back door, apparently quietly enough for them not to notice us.
The place smells of fresh paint and sawdust. Stacks of lumber are piled near the entrance, and the nave is now covered in scaffolding as the building slowly transforms into whatever Adrien has decided it should become.
Last time I asked, he said he wanted to turn it into something meaningful. Meaningful for whom, however, was still apparently up for debate.
The two of them are standing up there, wrestling with a massive wooden beam.
“Right,” Adrien barks at my brother. “This one is going up here.”
“It can’t go up there,” Kasien fires back.
“Why?”
“Because it’s too long.”
Adrien stares at the beam, then at the opening, then back at the beam.
“It’ll fit.”
“It won’t,” Kasien retorts.
“Lift your end.”
“You lift your end.”
“I’m already lifting my end.” Adrien lets out an aggravated groan. “Pivot.”
“What?”
“Pivot.”
“That’s not going to help!”
“Just higher.”
Kasien rolls his eyes so hard I’m surprised they don’t fall out.
For a moment, they continue arguing while somehow keeping the timber suspended in midair. We stand there with matching smirks on our faces, watching the show unfold.
I tilt my head, studying him up there in those ridiculously attractive work clothes, trying to decide whether the pregnancy hormones have already started affecting me or if he’s simply impossible to resist right now.
Covered in sweat and dust, muscles straining, veins standing out beneath his skin, fully absorbed in the process of turning one of his impossible ideas into something real.
Then Kiara clears her throat and both of them look our way.
Their faces instantly light up, and the beam drops several inches. The smile that spreads across both their faces the second they see us looks like something pulled straight out of a dream.
Adrien shoots me a wink from up there.
Am I really having a child with this man?
Oh God.
Yes.
Yes, I fucking am.
He turns back to Kasien, gesturing something while I’m still lost in the thought.
“Let’s put it over there,” Kasien says, still wrestling with it in his arms.
“Are we doing this?” I whisper to Kiara.
“Let’s wait until they come down,” she says quietly.
“Right,” I murmur, but the nervousness is already crawling up my throat, making me lightheaded.
My stomach freefalls the moment I realize what I’m about to say, and the pressure building inside me suddenly becomes unbearable, the nausea rising so high into my head that the words spill out before I have a chance to reconsider them.
“I’m pregnant!” I shout.
The silence that follows crashes through the church so abruptly it almost feels physical.
Adrien immediately lets go of the beam. Unfortunately, Kasien is still holding the other end. The entire thing slips from his hands as well and comes down onto the scaffolding with a deafening bang that echoes through the nave.
“Idiot!” my brother shouts after him.
“That’s why,” Kiara mutters through gritted teeth beside me, “we were supposed to wait until they came down.”
Adrien, however, seems absolutely unconcerned with the wooden timber as he starts making his way down, taking the scaffolding stairs two at a time until his foot catches on something and my heart nearly stops.
For one horrifying moment, he’s trying to regain his balance, but the attempt fails, then he drops the last few feet and lands badly.
A gasp tears out of me.
Then he suddenly springs back up as though nothing happened.
“I’m fine,” he blurts out instantly. “I’m okay.”
He practically sprints toward me while relief crashes through me so violently my knees nearly give out.
Adrien comes to an abrupt stop directly in front of me and simply stares.
His gaze drops to my stomach.
Then returns to my face.
Then drifts back down again.
“You’re pregnant?” he asks quietly.
“Mhm.” I nod.
He takes one hesitant step closer to me, looking pale and thoroughly confused.
“And that’s...” he trails off, catching his breath while his hands are visibly trembling. “That’s good, right? Or—”
My brows knit together.
“Or?” I repeat.
“I mean, whatever it is that you want,” he blurts out quickly. “If you’re happy, then I’m happy.”
A flash of panic shoots through me.
“You don’t want it?”
“No!” he protests right away. “No, I want it. Jesus, baby, I really want it.” His words come out so fast they practically trip over each other.
“I just didn’t know if you did,” he adds more quietly.
All I can do is stare at him.
“You want it?” I ask, feeling the corners of my mouth lift.
And just like that, he finally seems to start breathing again. A grin slowly spreads across his face too, growing wider and wider until it becomes impossible to contain.
“Of course I want it,” he murmurs.
Then his hands are on me as he wraps his arms around my waist, lifts me off my feet and carries me toward the altar before sitting me down on it.
“You’re pregnant,” he says again, the words sounding almost disbelieving.
He takes a small step back and just looks at me sitting there, smiling, as though he’s trying to burn the image into his memory forever. I squirm happily, making myself comfortable on the altar with a giggle.
“You knocked up my sister,” Kasien suddenly wheezes from somewhere behind him.
Adrien doesn’t even turn around.
“You bet I did,” he replies proudly.
A laugh bursts out of me.
Across the church, my brother looks seconds away from a medical emergency while Kiara is saying something to him in a low voice, apparently trying to prevent either a homicide or a heart attack.
Then my gaze finds Adrien again as he makes his way back to me, gently running his hands along my thighs, remaining completely silent with a soft smile lingering on his face.
I don’t say anything and simply let him have this moment.
Because as I watch him standing there, looking at me like I’ve just handed him the entire world, I find myself thinking about what kind of father he’ll be.
And the answer comes frighteningly easily. A good one.
He’s always taken care of me. He’s always somehow known how to do everything, whether it was fixing a car, breaking and entering, rebuilding a church with his bare hands or simply helping me find my way through my chaos.
He’s always made the impossible look manageable. He’s such a comfort to me that I can’t imagine our child ever feeling anything but safe with him, because I’ve never felt safer than when he’s beside me.
Ever since Kiara and I took his father’s case into our own hands and finally pieced together what had happened to him, Adrien changed.
The anger that used to live inside him, always threatening to spill over whenever life pushed him too far, is simply gone.
Learning that his father had never willingly abandoned him gave him the kind of peace he’d been searching for his entire life. Once he understood that his father had really been dead all along, he stopped carrying that weight around with him.
Somehow the loss of his father brought him two more people he’d do anything for, and I’ve never seen him happier than he has been these last few years since we made it out of the web of pain.
“We need to move, then,” he suddenly says, his eyes snapping up to mine. “We need to buy a house. Somewhere far away from here. I need to finish the church and start working on that too,” he adds, the thoughts spilling out faster as they form.
My fingers slide into his hair, pulling him a little closer.
“There’s no rush, okay?”
“Okay.” He nods, beaming.
I lean down and press a small kiss to his lips.
“I told you,” he says, a smirk slowly appearing.
“What?”
“That one day you’ll have a whole bunch of my kids.”
The maddening arrogance in his voice makes me grab his jaw tightly.
“There’s just one,” I remind him firmly.
“For now,” he murmurs through a smug smile before leaning in and stealing another kiss, effectively preventing me from strangling him.
Then he pushes my shirt up and drops to his knees in front of me, pressing a kiss to my stomach before proceeding to mumble something so unbelievably ridiculous to our unborn child that I burst into helpless laughter.