Page 163 of Boardroom Mask

I laugh, or try to. My hand is on the door handle but I’m not pulling it.

Kir reaches over and covers my hand with his. “I’ll be right here,” he promises. “Always.”

I nod and he helps me pull the handle. The door swings open and the night air rushes in, warm and fragrant and gentle as a mother’s kiss.

The walkway is six concrete squares from the curb to the porch steps. I count them as I go. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. A handful of wooden steps up. I stop in front of the door, fist raised, knuckles an inch from the painted wood.

Behind me, the car is dark and still. Kir is in there. Watching. I know I’m safe as long as his eyes are on me.

Then, after a deep breath to steel myself, I knock.

Footsteps ring out inside. A woman’s voice follows, muffled but cheery. Then the knob turns and the door swings inward. I look down to see, standing in the warm yellow light of the hallway, barely tall enough to reach the handle, a little girl with shocking red hair and freckles across her nose.

She looks up at me and smiles.

Just like that, another mask disappears forever.

EPILOGUE: JILLIAN

THREE MONTHS LATER — OCTOBER

“Type to risk my life, not afraid to die / Type to make you cry, type to put a price / All up on your head, do just what I said / I’m a straight up villain, straight up villain”

— “Villain” by K/DA, Madison Beer, Kim Petras

Three months later, I’m standing in front of my bathroom mirror trying to glue a pair of fake eyelashes onto my left eye and failing spectacularly. The right one went on fine, but the left one keeps sliding down my cheek like it’s trying to escape my face.

“Come on,” I mutter, pressing it into place as I plead for mercy. “Stay. Stay. Good lash. Very good?—”

It drops into the sink.

“… Goddammit.”

I fish it out, wipe it on a towel, and try again.

It’s Halloween. I’m already in my costume with only the makeup to go. I’m meeting Rae and Lukas at the party tonight. Rae isso pregnant that she’s going as an avocado, and she somehow convinced her smitten husband to dress as toast. Unreal.

Kir was supposed to come with me, but he got called away for a last-minute work thing, so I’ll be making the trek there solo. He’s been doing a good job balancing his different priorities lately, so I’m not too mad about it. Hopefully, he’ll get out of his meeting early and be able to join us. He won’t have a costume, technically speaking, but “Rich Hot Guy in a Very Expensive Suit” is a timeless classic that never gets old. The only thing better than seeing himina suit is helping him getoutof one. If I play my cards right, I’ll get both experiences tonight.

Kir being a staple in my life isn’t the only thing that’s changed since he came home. There’s another staple that’s just as important.

I see my daughter every Saturday. Her name is Lily. She’s five and a half, and she has my hair and my freckles and, unfortunately and/or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, my motor mouth. She talks nonstop about everything. Every bug, cloud, cat, person she meets is the most fascinating thing that’s ever existed in the whole recorded history of human civilization, and boy, would she like to share her thoughts on the matter.

She still lives with her adoptive family. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Javi and Arabella Cohen might be the nicest people who’ve ever lived. They’regood,in a pure, bone-deep sort of way. Better than good. They’re the parents I couldn’t be at nineteen, and I love them for it in a way that doesn’t have a name yet.

Saturdays go like this: I drive to Montclair, sometimes alone, sometimes with Kir. Lily and I do whatever she wants. Lastweek, it was the playground, down the slide again and again until I got burn marks on my ass. The week before that, we made cookies and ate frosting straight out of the jar, and laughed and laughed and laughed together.

It’s not uncomplicated. There are moments where she looks at me with a question in her eyes that she doesn’t know how to phrase yet. Sometimes, I have to go to the bathroom for a moment to compose myself. But I always come back out. That’s the part that matters.

Arabella sends me photos during the week incessantly, but it’s never enough. I always want more. Lily at the breakfast table. Lily in her Halloween costume. Lily asleep on the couch. Every photo goes into a folder on my phone that is no longer hidden inside “Tax Docs 2019.” It’s right there on the home screen, labeled with her name.

Work is good, too. Doug promoted me to senior investigative correspondent, which came with a raise and a desk by the window. I’m covering financial crime full-time now. The Lazarev story opened doors I didn’t even know existed. Sources reach out to me these days instead of the other way around. Doug still wears a permanent frown, but he calls me “kid” slightly more often, which is as close as he’ll ever get to a true expression of affection.

Everything else has mostly settled down into something approaching normal. Kir and Lukas are going to family therapy, if you can believe that, and they’re back to running the company side by side. It’s a legit father-and-son affair, and both the tabloids and the investors are eating it up.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to give up my apartment, even though Kir keeps saying I could move into his whenever Iwanted. This place just has memories in it. I’m not ready to let it go. To my surprise, Elliot moved out. He got a girlfriend, a giggly brunette whom he adores and who adores him in return. He was so proud to introduce her to me. I couldn’t have been any happier for him.

But I gotta admit, I do hate the nights when I’m here alone. Kir fills it up with his heat, his smell, his touch. Even, on occasion, his laugh. That’s another shocking thing that happens from time to time these days: The uber-serious, hyper-violent man I fell in love with descends into laughing fits that last for minutes on end, until we’re both teary-eyed and clutching our aching bellies on the floor.