"That must have been difficult to realize."
"You’re better than you ever were. The time away sharpened you." He raised his glass. "You are the Pakhan we need."
I looked at the vodka. I didn't drink during council meetings. A rule my father had broken constantly and paid for in decisions he'd later tried to walk back, but I picked up the glass to be polite. Yuri was trying. Yuri trying was a rare enough phenomenon that it deserved acknowledgment, the way one acknowledged a small child who had successfully used a fork.
Mikhail appeared in the doorway behind him, buttoning his coat. He was seventy-two and moved like a man who had outlived everyone who'd ever underestimated him, which considering we were in the Bratva, was most people. His waistcoat was the same one he'd worn to my father's funeral, and probably to my grandfather's before that.
"Your father's greatest failure," Mikhail said, "was not living long enough to see what you'd do with his empire. He would be proud. Of you and Ivan both. The succession—" He shook his head. "Flawless."
I set the glass down untouched.
"Not just Ivan." I held his gaze. "Gregor. Maeve. Mac." A pause. "Even Fergus."
Mikhail's brow furrowed. He opened his mouth, presumably to ask who Fergus was and why a name that sounded like a Scottish groundskeeper had been included in a list of Petrov assets.
"It isn't any single man that makes this syndicate function," I said before he could. "It's the pack. The unit. We're strong because we have something worth protecting. I’ll never forget that."
I didn't wait for a response. I picked up my coat and walked out.
The lift descended through all three security layers with the quiet hum of expensive machinery. The receptionist nodded as I passed. The ficus was still dying. I made another mental note. Possibly I would become the sort of Pakhan who sent memos about office plants. Stranger things had happened. I'd married an omega who'd tried to stab someone with a steak knife in a Prague alley, and now I kept a nursery invoice in my inside pocket next to state secrets.
By the time the car pulled through the Surrey gates, the sun had given up entirely. The house was lit from within, every window glowing gold against the dark of Winter. The grounds were quiet. The Dobermans at the gatehouse had been joined by Fergus earlier that day, according to Gregor's patrol log, and one of them was now apparently answering to commands delivered in a frequency only Yorkshire terriers could produce.
I stepped through the front doors and handed my coat to the guard on duty. The house wrapped around me in the usual scents, but underneath all of it, was the sweetest champagne mixed with the depth of storm clouds.
Home.
I followed Maeve's voice to the den and stopped in the doorway.
She was on the sofa with her legs tucked under her, the phone pressed to her ear. Mac was asleep beside her. Fergus was curled into a tight, sweater-clad circle on her feet, having apparently decided that foot-warming was now part of his operational mandate.
"Mary, I know." Maeve's voice was soft and tired. "I miss you too."
I heard the faint, muffled sound of her sister crying on the other end of the line. Boston seemed like the right decision. She craved distance, security, a university with a name that meant something, but distance was distance, and Mary was about to turn nineteen and alone in a country where she couldn't legally drink and everyone pronounced her fake name wrong.
"You're in Boston for a reason," Maeve said. "You're safe there."
“I'm trying to find a university to transfer to in England.” Mary's voice filtered through the phone, thick with tears. “I just want to be near you. Near Mac. Near everyone.”
"We'll talk about it. Give it a little more time." Maeve pressed her fingers to her temple. "I love you."
She ended the call and let the phone drop onto the cushion beside her. "She's so lonely," she said to the room at large.
Fergus opened one eye, assessed the emotional climate, and closed it again.
I stepped into the doorway. Maeve looked up, and the worry on her face didn't vanish but it changed. Her smile was the same one she'd given me from the altar in Las Vegas. Brilliant and slightly surprised, as if she still wasn't entirely convinced I'd show up.
She started to rise, but Mac made a small waking sound from the bassinet.
Maeve froze halfway between sitting and standing, caught between two gravitational pulls.
"Go on," she said. "He missed you too. Demanding little person. No idea where he gets it."
I crossed the room. Every part of me wanted Maeve in my arms, her scent in my lungs, the steady rhythm of her pulse against my mouth. But Mac had opened his eyes, dark and unfocused, and his fist was already waving, issuing commands and expecting compliance.
My son.
The words still had the power to stop me mid-stride.
