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I can’t doubt anymore when I see his face come around the corner, armed to the teeth with an assault rifle and some other type of handgun hanging off his belt. He looks so powerful and authoritative that I want him to pick me up and carry me out of here like a baby in his arms.
“Holy shit! You found us!” Adam shouts, probably experiencing his first taste of true joy since before this whole thing happened. I can’t imagine how relieved he must feel, but it’s still too soon to celebrate. We haven’t actually escaped yet.
“Adam, shut up!” he hisses as he approaches. “Are you two alright? Or some approximation of alright?” he asks, frantically searching the perimeter of the room for something to remove our handcuffs until he finds a pair of bolt cutters.
He cuts the cuffs off us, and I feel a premature sense of relief come over me.
“You two need to stay here. Grisha is out to collect a shipment of the drug that I’ve been after, and I have to make sure he’s dead before we leave. I can’t risk any of this shit happening again. Faye, can I trust you to stay here with my brother until I come back to get you?”
My heart skips a beat. The idea of being left here again after the thought of being rescued tears me to shreds. I want to follow him, and I need to see Grisha die in front of my own eyes.
But if this is what Aleksander wants, I need to obey him.
“If you never trust me again, I need you to trust me now. Okay? I will never, ever lead you down the wrong path, Faye. I fucking love you so much,” he says with the most emotion and sincerity that I’ve ever seen from him.
For the first time, I truly believe him. He does love me, and he knows that keeping me behind is the right thing to do until everything has been cleared. He’s the final authority here, and I’m more than willing to do what he says. I trust him with my whole heart now, and I regret that I ever doubted him to begin with.
He leaves, and my heart wrenches as I see him pass the corner. All I can hope and pray for is that he returns to me safely. If he doesn’t, then I have no reason to live, anyway. Everything will have been all for nothing if I don’t have him by my side anymore.
I glance at Adam, who also looks concerned but not fearful. “Do you think he’s going to come back?” I ask, my voice shaking.
“Of course he will. When he loves someone, he’s ruthless about keeping them safe. He would never let anything happen to you again, and that’s a promise. If you don’t believe him, believe me. I’ve never seen him look at anyone like that before in my life. Hedoesfucking love you.”
I feel like I could burst into tears from joy. Even if I never could have believed Aleksander, his own brother has confirmed that he has true, deep feelings for me. I never thought any man would love me enough to kill for me, but I just saw him walk out of here with a machine gun to take down the man who threatened to rape me.
No man on earth would have made that promise to me. No other man would put his life on the line like that, but Aleksander has done it multiple times now. Even the first time we met, he endangered himself to keep me from being hurt by Grisha’s men. I couldn’t see it before, but it’s clear to me now that he’s always been selfless in the way he protects me even if I didn’t know how to accept it.
He’s going to be an incredible father. I never should have doubted him, and now I want to spend the rest of my life showing him how much I appreciate him. Our child is going to have the bravest, strongest father in the world, and I’m going to make sure that they understand the gravity of that role. Our baby is going to be so beloved by their father that I might even become jealous after a lifetime of emotional neglect from my own. Over time, I know that Aleksander will help to mend that wound in my life, to repair my ability to trust again and to accept the love that I deserve.
When I close my eyes, I hear the hail of bullets rattling the atmosphere outside of the warehouse. All I can do now is hold my breath and pray that he’ll return safe as the victor. Knowing that he loves me so much gives me the strength to believe that he will.
And then the bullets stop.
EPILOGUE
Aleksander
Watching Grisha emerge from his vehicle with that smug fucking look on his face was enough to make me throw away all of my fantasies about revenge. I wanted so badly to capture him, tie him up, and cut off his limbs inch by inch in week-long increments until he was nothing but a mess of gangrene and regret.
But when I saw him, I remembered what he was. He wasn’t fully human, at least not in any practical sense. He had forfeited his right to walk the earth with the rest of the human population alongside wonderful individuals like Faye. Imagining them breathing the same air was enough to blind me with rage, and my world turned black as I began to fire viciously into the area surrounding his car.
I have no recollection of the incident because of my episode of uncontrollable rage. The only people who remember what happened are Anthony and my other associate Matthew, both of whom followed my lead as soon as they saw me firing at Grisha.
Grisha’s own men abandoned him the moment the bullets started to fly. I should have known that he would choose spineless pussies to follow him, because only men with no resolve and no sense of self would ever follow someone like him in the first place.
After Grisha was officially dead and his goons scattered, I took it upon myself to scour his lair and seize anything he had that might have been of worth to me. Lying in the back of his car was none other than a briefcase full of the black-market drug that I had been killing myself to get my hands on.
I couldn’t believe my luck. I was able to save Faye, Adam,andmy empire all in one swift motion. I thought for a fact that I would have to make a sacrifice, and I wasn’t ready to choose. I feared the wrong choice more than anything I’ve ever feared before – how could I justify my decision if it ended up being the wrong one?
Another thing I discovered when we raided Grisha’s bunker was the passport of the man who I apprehended at the restaurant a few weeks ago. I was so certain that he wasn’t one of Grisha’s men after seeing the look in his eyes when I held him at knifepoint, but now that I know that Grisha only hires weak men to fight his battles, I’m not even a little bit surprised. This must be how he knew that we were still alive after the plane crashed.
Seeing how much information Grisha had on us was eerie at best, but knowing that he’ll never live to terrorize anyone ever again is the only thing that could ever reconcile this entire tragedy. That, and the fact that all the evidence he gathered was enough to clear Faye’s name for the shootings in Vegas. He’s responsible in the eyes of the law, and now he’s dead.
I swear I held Faye in my arms for a full ten minutes without letting go after I killed Grisha. She didn’t try to pull away once, and I wonder if we would still be there suspended in time if we didn’t have to escape from an enemy bunker. We needed each other more than anything in that moment, and I still feel intense cravings to return to that intimacy and sweetness that we shared. I was able to make Faye feel like she was going to be alright despite everything, and I’ll take the rest of my life to show her that she’s safer with me than anyone else in the world.
Faye’s pregnancy went well, even though she suffered from some intense morning sickness for the first few months. I allowed Anthony and Adam to take over most of the hands-on work with the bratva in order to take care of her, and I wasn’t expecting it to be as gratifying as it was. Supporting her and helping her feel cared for seemed to make a bigger impact on her than any huge gesture possibly could, and now I’ve seen that she really is more down to earth than any other woman I’ve ever met. She has so much depth and integrity that I want to spend years and years learning each detail until there’s nothing left to explore.
When the baby was born, I remember looking into her eyes and seeing her mother’s beauty and grace flourishing through her. We named her Rose after the flowers that saved our relationship when she was first conceived, and I can already tell that she’ll grow into the name perfectly.
