“I still love you.”
That one hit harder.
“I love you,” I said back.
No hesitation. No pride. Just certainty. Her forehead rested against mine, and for a moment, the mansion didn’t feel like a battlefield. It felt like a beginning. Iosif studied me one last time.
“Well, now that I guess you are staying, welcome to the family.”
It wasn’t warm or soft, but it was real. And for men like us, that was everything. Elisse’s hand slid into mine, her thumb brushing lightly across my knuckles. It was not possession or strategy but choice.
And we were finally together. For good.
Epilogue - Elisse
One Year Later
“If you drop her, I will actually shoot you.”
“That feels excessive,” Fyodor replied calmly. “I am not going to drop my very own daughter, Elle.”
I didn’t even have to turn around to picture his expression because I already knew it would be mildly offended, entirely unbothered, while he would be holding our daughter like she was made of glass and iron at the same time. I stepped out onto the terrace and found exactly that.
He was standing under the old sycamore tree in the courtyard, dressed in a dark tailored suit that made him look less like a former Bratva strategist and more like a man who belonged exactly where he was. Our daughter was tucked securely against his chest, her tiny hand fisted into his lapel.
He was talking to her like she could understand geopolitics.
“I am not going to drop her,” he said, glancing at me.
“You once walked into this house alone and unannounced,” I reminded him. “Your judgment is historically questionable.”
“That was different.”
“How.”
“I wasn’t holding her.”
I crossed my arms.
“That’s not comforting.”
Ilana, standing beside him, rolled her eyes. “Both of you are rather insufferable.”
“She started it,” Fyodor said while I glared at him. Our daughter made a soft, offended sound, and we both froze instantly. He softened first.
“See?” he murmured to her. “Your mother is so dramatic all the time.”
“She gets that from you,” I replied.
Ilana snorted beside us, sipping from a glass of champagne in her hands. “She gets that from both of you. God help us and our darling little girl. She has to survive a lifetime with the most annoying parents in the world. You two should let her live with me once she is old enough so she can have someone sensible around her.”
I walked closer and gently brushed my finger across my daughter’s cheek. She was barely three months old, and yet she already felt like the axis of our world.
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed, making a face at Ilana.
The courtyard behind us was almost ready. Almost. White flowers climbed the stone pillars. Soft ivory ribbons moved in the late afternoon breeze. Rows of wooden chairs formed a quiet semicircle beneath the tree. It wasn’t grand or performative but intentionally small.
Just ours. It was nothing like the first wedding. That one had been strategy and silence and too many unspoken things, but this one was deliberate.
