Epilogue #2
Drake and Katriana bring a bottle of whiskey. He holds it up with a half-grin and sets it on the nightstand. "For when you're ready to celebrate."
I smile. "Give me about six weeks and I'll drink the whole thing."
Luca with Ilona, Kon and Onyx and Massimo and Sloane all take their turns.
Massimo lingers longer than the rest. He counts her fingers. Counts her toes. Mutters about college funds and tax-advantaged accounts while his voice gets thicker with every number. He walks out rubbing his eyes with his sleeve, the legal counsel undone by ten tiny toes.
"God, I love our family," I say to my new husband.
"And they love you."
"They love you too. Even if you make them work for it."
Raine is last of the family. She crawls onto the bed beside me, careful around Svetlana, and presses her forehead against my temple.
We stay like that for a full minute. Twins who spent months on opposite coasts with nothing but missed calls between them, sharing air and silence and the weight of a new life sleeping on my chest is all we need.
"She's perfect," Raine whispers.
"Obviously. Look at her mother."
Raine snorts against my temple. Kisses the spot where her forehead rested. Climbs off the bed and disappears down the hall. I catch the low rumble of Soren's voice meeting hers as she turns the corner.
Filing that away for later investigation.
The last visitor is someone I have only talked with in passing.
Cristian appears in the doorway after the others have cycled through. Tall, dark-haired, sharp-jawed, younger than the rest. He moves with a quiet ease that reminds me of Kon but looser, like a man who learned stillness as a skill rather than inherited it as a default.
He's carrying a pomegranate. A single fruit, deep red, sitting in his palm.
He crosses to the bed and holds it out. "For my brother Hades and his new wife, Persephone."
I stare at him. Then at the pomegranate. Then at the stone walls around me, the underground rooms, the garden growing on the terrace above. Then at Rowan beside me with our daughter's fist wrapped around his finger.
“Oh my goodness.”
“You never thought once about how you two appear together?”
Cristian’s smile glides easily over his lips.
I think over the past few months. I've been Persephone this entire time.
"You're telling me I've been living a Greek myth this whole time and nobody thought to mention it?"
I take the pomegranate. Hold it against my chest beside Svetlana. The weight of the fruit and the weight of my daughter settle together against my heart.
A ghost of a smile crosses Cristian’s face. He looks down at Svetlana with an expression I can't quite place. Reverence, maybe. Or hunger. A man staring at something he wants and doesn't have.
"She's beautiful." His voice is low. Accented, different from Rowan's. Less gravel. More smoke.
"She gets it from me." I just pushed a human being out of my body. I've earned the right to be insufferable for at least forty-eight hours.
He extends his hand, bends at the waist and places a kiss over the back of my knuckles. “I’ve known Rowan since I was a boy just learning the ropes. You’ve brought a light into his world that does not compare to any other.”
“Thank you.”
Rowan’s eyes are on me as his brother speaks. I can feel the love and admiration roll off of him in waves so warm I’ll never be cold again.
Cristian’s phone buzzes in his breast pocket. He reaches for it and a photograph slips free, spinning through the air before landing on the blanket across my thighs.
A small print. Creased at the edges from being carried too long, the kind of photo a person keeps on their body rather than on a screen.
I pick it up before he can grab it.
It’s of a woman. Dark hair, sharp cheekbones, soft eyes. Her mouth curves in a way that suggests she finds everything amusing, including whoever is holding the camera. She's stunning. The dangerous kind of stunning.
"Who is she?"
Cristian's hand hovers over the photo. His jaw tightens. A dark fire catches in his eyes that wasn't there three seconds ago. The temperature around him shifts the way Rowan's shifts when Nikolai's name comes up. Unresolved. Burning.
"A woman." Which is not an answer.
"I can see that. She's gorgeous." I hold the photo up and study his face over the edge. The fire behind his eyes isn't casual.
He takes the photo from my fingers with a gentleness that contradicts the fire and tucks it back into his breast pocket. Against his chest. Close to the heartbeat. The gesture is automatic. He's done it a thousand times.
"Thank you for letting me meet her." He nods toward Svetlana. He's gone before I can ask another question.
Rowan watches him leave. His arm drapes over my shoulder, his hand resting near Svetlana's head, tracking Cristian's exit with the quiet precision he tracks everything.
"He's in trouble," I say.
"How do you know?"
"Because the woman in that photo is a thief. A belladonna." I adjust Svetlana against my chest, her tiny fist curling around my finger. I hand over the pomegranate and Rowan sits it on the nightstand.
"Raine knows a few and I've met them. I recognize her face."
Rowan is quiet. His thumb traces a slow circle on my shoulder.
"Then God help him," he says. "Because there's no cure for that poison."
I look down at Svetlana. At the pomegranate on the nightstand and the gold wedding bands on our fingers.
Heartache settles in my chest for the man who just walked out the door. "There's always a cure," I say. "You just have to be brave enough to swallow it."
Rowan’s arms tighten around us both. “He’ll have to figure that out on his own. We’ll be here when he needs us.”
“Watching that play out ought to be fun, huh?”
Rowan chuckles softly. “Da.”
Svetlana Meli Volkov sleeps on her mother's chest in the underworld, breathing the air of a kingdom built on darkness and held together by light.
I press my lips to her forehead.
"Welcome home, little sunshine."
Thank you for reading Wicked Mafia Sinner! The sexy and dangerous fun isn’t over! Cristian’s story continues in Wicked Mafia Thief, Book 7 of the Red Letter Syndicate and you can preorder his book here or by visiting the series age on for the Red Letter Syndicate series.
I stole from the untouchable mafia man, so he stole me.
I thought I was the predator. I had a job to do, a target to hit, and a way out of the life that was suffocating me.
I even carried a Red Letter wish in my pocket, a desperate prayer I never had the courage to drop in the box.
I didn't think anyone would answer.
I was dead wrong.
Cristian Vetrov isn't just my mark. He's the man who knew my wish before I ever walked through his door.
He's the ghost who moves through the Syndicate's shadows like smoke, known to only a few. He’s six feet of hard muscle, sharp cheekbones, and eyes like frozen mercury that see straight through every lie I've ever told.
He's been watching me. Waiting. Letting me think I was hunting him when I've been his prey all along.
Now I've stolen from him, he's come to collect on my sin and my wish.
His price? My freedom. My sticky-fingered skills. My signature on a marriage contract.
And my complete surrender to him.
Cristian is patient in ways that terrify me. His forbidden touch is deliberate, his commands impossible to refuse, and every dark whisper against my skin promises that he'll take his time unraveling his little thief once delicate sigh at a time.
I tell myself I'm only playing along to survive. But when he pins me against the wall with that cold gaze, his body a cage around me, I don't want to escape. When he calls me his in that low, gravelly voice, a dangerous fire ignites somewhere far lower than my chest.
I wished for someone to catch me.
I got the one obsessive mafia man who will never let me go.
And the most dangerous part? I'm starting to hope he never does.