Epilogue

Six months later

I pullup to the compound at dusk, fading sunlight filtering through trees and hitting the dash, momentarily blinding me. Laina sits beside me in the passenger seat, slurping the last of her lemonade through a straw. To anyone who saw us, we’d look like just regular girls back from a shopping spree, plastic bags stuffed into the back of the car witness to our exploits. They maybe wouldn’t notice the men who followed us everywhere we went, or the sleek black car that pulls in behind us now. When I was younger—hell, it wasn’t that long ago—I felt the protection was oppressive. I hated it, and would try to hide from Nicolai. I wanted my freedom so badly I would cry at night, wondering how anyone could be happy under the constant watchful eye of the Bratva. Now, it brings a sort of comfort I can’t deny. I suppose having lived through what I have will sober a girl.

The only reason Nicolai is behind me and not driving this car is because he’s training a group of new recruits, and he hasn’t been more than a car’s distance away from me the entire night.

“He loves you,” Laina says.

I smile to myself.

“He does. And I love him.”

She reaches for my hand and squeezes. “Someday, will you tell me everything, Marissa?”

I swallow hard. “Maybe someday.”

I’m not ready to talk about it. I don’t like to even think about it. I still dream that I’m held captive, and when I wake I’m covered in a cold sweat. He holds me, every time, tucked to his chest with his arms wrapped around me. Sometimes he hushes me, sometimes he gently rocks me. Sometimes he just tucks the blanket back around me, but what he says is always the same. “You’re safe, and I love you.”

You’re safe, and I love you.

Maybe those are the only two things anyone ever needs to hear. To feel. To know.

Knowing I’m safe and he loves me brings him as much comfort as it does me.

“It might help you to talk about it,” she says.

I shrug. “It might. Some people do better talking about things and others do better moving on.” I like to pretend that what I went through was a terrible dream. I like waking to my new reality. I place my hand on my swelling abdomen and smile to myself. I feel as if I’ve aged a decade in the past year, and I am more than ready for this new chapter in my life. Our new chapter.

Then I smile and give her a teasing look.

“It’s funny how much we have in common, you know.”

“Isn’t it?” she muses.

“We both had shitty fathers who deserved their demise,” I say, unable to mask the bitter note in my tone. Then I smile. “And we both ended up with fiercely protective cavemen.”

“Ah, you’ll tame your caveman over time,” she says sagely, reaching to the back seat to grab her bags.

“Really,” I say, giving her a sly grin. I don’t believe it. Rafael looks at Laina the same way Nicolai looks to me, as if she’s his world, and he’d do anything to keep it that way. I stifle a snort of laughter when Rafe knocks on her window and she jumps. She rolls it down and gives him a winsome smile.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he says, but his voice is gruff and his arms are crossed on his chest. “Thought you’d be home an hour ago.”

“Well, we took a little detour,” she begins.

“Is that right?” he asks, cocking his head to the side. “And how many of those bags are yours, baby?” He nods to the back of the car.

“Um. Most of them?” she says.

“I called you three times,” he says. “Why didn’t you answer?”

“Oh, um, I had my phone on silent?” she says.

He literally reaches in the window, taps the lock, opens the door and unbuckles her, but I don’t miss the teasing glint in his eye.

I’m still giggling as he hauls her out of the car and she shoots me a parting grin.

Tamed her caveman my ass.

I squeal when a deep voice comes to my left.

“You do know stop signs are meant for you to actually stop at, don’t you?”

Nicolai stands on my side of the door with his arms across his chest.

“I stopped!” I protest, gathering up my bags. “A soft stop, but I stopped. And anyway, I thought you were following to protect me, not to police my driving.”

“You thought wrong,” he says. “And there’s no such thing as a soft stop.”

I give him a pout before I exit the car. I go to get the bags from the back and he gently pushes me out of the way and takes all of them.

“I can hold some of those,” I protest, even though he doesn’t listen to a thing I say and rolls his eyes at me.

“You carry nothing, little girl,” he says, giving my swollen abdomen a pointed look.

“Nicolai,” I say, rolling my eyes at him. “Pregnant women can carry things. They can lift heavy things. They can run marathons!”

“Not my pregnant woman,” he says.

“Damn right,” Rafael calls from the front porch to the compound. “You’re lucky he lets you out of his sight.”

“He doesn’t!” I retort.

Nicolai leans in, his eyes softening, as he brushes his lips across my forehead. “And why would I take my eyes off the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen? My wife?”

“Why thank you, husband.” We’re ridiculous sometimes, but I don’t care. We fought hard for what we have, and there’s no shame in unabashedly loving someone.

I waddle beside him, secretly pleased he’s so overprotective. I know why he treats me the way he does. He told me.

“I lost you once and will never lose you again.”

And I have to give him that. Just like I don’t ask questions when he does a job for his father, or he and Rafael leave together after receiving a message. I know that he seeks revenge for what happened to me, and that he will not rest until he’s duly punished those who hurt me. I don’t pry because the silent understanding between us holds fast. He won’t lose me again, and he won’t give anyone a chance to repeat their actions.

“Your speed got a little out of hand on the highway,” he says.

“Oh yeah?” I tease. “I didn’t notice.”

“I did,” he says, giving me a stern look that makes my heart beat a little faster.

He puts the bags down and gathers me in his arms. “I notice everything about you,” he says, before he leans down and presses his lips to mine. “What you like and what you don’t. What makes you happy and what excites you. What you fear, what you hope, what you dream about.” He kisses me until my breathing’s labored and my knees grow weak, but my belly prevents us from getting too close.

“There’s a roadblock,” I mutter when I pull away. “I can’t get as close to you as I’d like.”

He gives me a teasing look and quirks an eyebrow at me. “I have some ideas about how we could get a little closer.”

“Oh, do you?” I ask. I turn away casually, very aware of what that predatory look means. I pretend I’m just sauntering, but as soon as I’ve turned fully away, I bolt.

“Marissa,” he warns, but I dodge furniture like a pro, leaving him behind. I make it to our bedroom with him in hot pursuit, and squeal like a little girl when he catches me and lifts me straight up in the air.

“I thought pregnant women could run marathons?” he teases.

I’m panting from the exertion, flailing in his grasp. “Not this pregnant woman,” I pant.

I’m on my back on the bed and he’s got me pinned down beneath him. The muscles on his shoulders flex and bulge as he braces himself over me. Those blue eyes of his make my belly warm and I stop squirming.

“I love you, Nicolai.”

“And I love you.” His voice is deep and husky, sending a thrill of pleasure down my spine.

I know he wrestles demons and always will. That he’s devoted loyalty to his brotherhood. That he breaks the law and lives by a code of conduct the entire Bratva swears allegiance to.

“And I love our child that you carry. No one will ever hurt you again,” he says. “And I will keep our family safe no matter the cost.”

“I know you will,” I whisper.

His father brought him back to Atlanta and appointed him head brigadier, for now. As son to the pakhan, Nicolai will eventually be appointed leader.

Stefan and Nicolai worked tirelessly for months, ensuring that no one who worked for my father had affiliations with the Atlanta contingent. The Bratva men found my father’s actions appalling, and welcomed me and Nicolai home with open arms. Tomas still checks in on occasion, and once a month, Nicolai flies back to Boston and works for him as well.

What my father did was inexcusable even to the most hardened men of the brotherhood. It brings me some consolation knowing as Nicolai’s, I bear the protection of the entire extended brotherhood. And now I carry an heir to the Bratva throne.

“Tomas is coming to pay us a visit,” Nicolas says. I once feared the head of the Boston Bratva, and though I still am not comfortable around him, I trust him.

“Oh? Why?”

“It’s time he found a wife.”

I give him a curious look, waiting for him to tell me more, but when he doesn’t, I prompt him. “Oh? And how will coming here help him with that?”

Nicolai sighs. “He’s been promised the daughter of a rival group, and my father will officiate.”

“Nicolai,” I say, pleading, but I don’t know for what. It seems every time we make any progress, and I’ve accepted the ways of the Bratva, something happens to remind me how they live by their own set of rules.

“It isn’t as terrible as you might think, Marissa.”

“No? Being wed to a man you’ve never met? And dragged away from everyone and everything you love?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes, unlikely unions happen as a result.”

“And sometimes you end up wed to a man you despise.”

But Nicolai shows no sympathy. “Fools marry every day,” he protests. “They know nothing about loyalty or self-sacrifice or honor. Any woman that belongs to Tomas will be glad to call him husband.”

I don’t agree, but it isn’t worth fighting with him. I can’t control this. And I know he’s loyal to Tomas.

With a sigh, I take his hand and place it on my belly. Our baby boy kicks, and I watch as Nicolai’s eyes grow misty. He swallows hard. Bratva men don’t cry, but they aren’t made of stone.

I’ll never forget the way his eyes lit up when the pregnancy test came back positive, or the way he held me when we accepted the news that we’d created new life. We’ve come through hell and back, but each step together—marriage, family life, reinstatement in our family brotherhood—moves the pain of the past further behind us and forges a new road.

Twenty years later

“I’m nearly forty, you know,”I tell Nicolai. I’m staring at myself in the mirror before me, frowning. “Almost an old lady.”

He scoffs. “Forty is the new thirty.”

He was forty over a decade ago and insists that age is just a number. I don’t much care myself, though it’s remarkable to me how far we’ve come. Our oldest son is a sophomore in college, and our daughter is a senior in high school. Nicolai has taken on the role of pakhan. Though Stefan is still youthful and of completely sound mind, he no longer wanted to bear the weight of brotherhood leadership. Nicolai volunteered. It’s time.

I touch the few grays at my temple and stare at the laugh lines around my eyes. My cheeks are fuller, my body curvier, and there are traces of silvery stretch marks in places hidden under my dress. It’s late fall in Atlanta, the weather slightly cooler. I take my book and I head to the porch. I look up when the door opens behind me. Nicolai follows.

I smile at him and slide onto the porch swing. He sits down beside me, and pulls me onto his lap.

“I’ll squash you!” I protest, more than a little self-conscious about the extra few pounds I’ve gained in the past few years. With a growl, he turns me over and slaps my ass, hard.

“Ow!”

“Don’t let me hear a word about your curves,” he says warningly, every bit the dominant caveman he was decades ago. “I love those curves. I love everything about you.”

I kinda melt into him a bit more.

The porch door swings open again, and our daughter Fiona joins us on the porch.

“Boys are idiots,” she pronounces, flouncing onto the white wicker chair that sits across from us.

“Oh?” I ask, eyeing Nicolai. He’s stiffened, his eyes narrowing.

“Relax,” I tell him.

“Please, dad,” Fiona says. “You don’t have to start polishing your rifle.”

Nicolai doesn’t own a rifle. He does, however, own a veritable arsenal of weapons he has readily at his disposal, and Fiona well knows this.

“I’ve been good to your boyfriends,” Nicolai protests. “I haven’t broken a single bone.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yet.”

“Oh, Fiona,” I say. “He won’t.” But I’m not so sure he wouldn’t if one of them mistreated her.

“You know,” she says wistfully. “I just want what you two have. None of my friends’ parents have been married for twenty years. You guys are so into each other it almost makes me sick.” But she smiles. “And I want that.”

Nicolai looks at her gravely. “You deserve that,” he responds.

She gets to her feet with a smile and trots down the stairs, waving over her shoulder when her friend pulls up to the curb. One would think we were an almost normal family, if they didn’t see the black car that follows her friend when they leave, or the trademark Bratva ink.

“You know,” I say teasingly. “I wouldn’t worry so much about the boys pursuing her. Remember, she isn’t into boys so much.” I chew my lip thoughtfully. “It’s her bodyguard I’d keep an eye on.”

I laugh out loud when he sits up so straight I nearly topple off the porch swing.

“I’m teasing,” I tell him. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure he’s gay.”

His eyes crinkle around the edges and he pulls me closer before he bends down and kisses me.

“I’m feeling wistful tonight,” he says. It was twenty years ago we said our vows, on a night just like this. I look up at him and rest my hand on the side of his face. Though he’s aged, sporting salt and pepper in his beard that wasn’t there before, his eyes are as blue as they were the day I met him.

“Oh?” I ask. I rest my head in his lap and sigh into him when he pulls me even closer.

“You are still my precious star,” he says, holding my hand to his chest. “Zvezda moya. All this… our home, our children, your love… what you’ve given me is beyond the worth of a thousand kingdoms. Priceless.”

Zvezda moya.

I’m his star, his light in a world of darkness, and I will shine on.