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“I’m not looking forward to this either.” I sighed. “But it has to be done. There could be more victims. More children, still captive. And I’m sure none of us want that going on and associated with us.”
Sergei set his jaw. “No. Of course not. I’ll get to breaking in as soon as this thing is gone.” He barely glanced at the body.
“Good. I’ll help you handle it.” I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I wasn’t going to let him face Vasily’s crimes alone.
***
It was almost dark by the time I got home, and the snow was falling again. I came through the door to smell soup cooking and heard a children’s movie playing. I put away my coat and holstered my gun, then poked my head into the living room. Feodor and Michelle were curled up together sleeping, while her mother dozed next to them. I checked the kitchen, she had used the crock pot. I turned it down and went to look down at her.
She stirred awake and smiled up at me. “Hey, you’re home. Dinner soon.”
That weird, desolate hole Vasily’s betrayal and death had left inside me faded when I looked at her. Finally, I nodded. “Think I’ll have dessert first, though.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Dessert?”
I smiled slowly, then scooped her up and carried her to what was now our bedroom, careful to close the door behind us. She let out a startled giggle as I set her down and started peeling off my clothes.
There was no comfort like the comfort of her arms, like the sweetness of her body. Vasily faded away in seconds when I entered her, leaving me alone with my love. As we moved as one, slowly thrusting toward climax, my troubles fell away, until my only worry was keeping us quiet enough not to wake our daughter.
She moaned into my mouth as her pussy fluttered around me, contractions caressing my length in ways I couldn’t resist. My mind whited out with pleasure as I bit back my groans, and then we collapsed to the bed together.
We all had darkness in our pasts, but as I lay there with Alissa nestled against my chest, my mind did not turn toward the past, but the future. An uncertain future, but bright with promise.
Epilogue
Alissa
Eight Months Later
“Mommy, watch, watch! You’re not watching!” Michelle’s little voice rose above the sound of waves and the plunk of steel drums down the beach.
I looked up from my perch on a nearby boulder, peering at the shimmering outline of my daughter against the pale sand.
She was crouched froglike on the sand where it was damp from the lapping waves, her bright purple bathing suit, shorts, and crocs almost glowing against a deepening tan. She had her father’s skin, thank God. Crouched beside her, he had gone bronze after the first week, while I was barely the color of weak tea after dealing with an unexpected sunburn on the cruise over. I spent a lot of time slathered in sunscreen, in the shade of an umbrella, taking the tropical sunlight in the tiny doses I could handle.
Michelle had learned how to make bucket towers, and now her bright orange bucket was upended, full of sand, sitting on the ocean-smoothed beach while she worked her little fingers under its rim. She lifted it carefully, revealing a perfect upside-down mold of the bucket.
“Yay! It didn’t break this time! See?”
“I saw.” I flashed her a smile. “Good job, sweetheart. I’ll have your banners ready for you soon.” I went back to coloring them in. I had learned to draw a little, in part to decorate her castles of Legos or sand, which were getting more ambitious with every week that went by.
Gregor laughed. “You’ll need more—we’re doing four towers on this baby.”
Michelle cheered, and he smiled that lopsided, just a touch awkward smile that I loved seeing on his face. It was the smile of a tough guy who loved his family.
The last eight months had seen more changes in my life than I had ever experienced. I was married. I was on a long honeymoon with my daughter and new husband. And my daughter was recovered enough to speak normally again.
Michelle had gone through a transition over four months, first only speaking to us, then speaking to people we introduced to her, then letting in fellow kids, and finally, a few months ago, she was chattering normally again to everyone who would listen.
It hadn’t been an easy road. Michelle and I had spent a lot of time in therapy, both for trauma and for Michelle’s speech issues. She had occasional nightmares, but the therapist reassured us it was normal, kind of like her brain starting to reset itself, and drawing and talking about it in a safe calm space would help her process the experience.
We had learned that no one had physically harmed her, and the older girls and women had protected her, but she’d seen things that no one ever should. The first time Gregor and I had an argument—nothing really serious at all—she had hid under the bed which all but broke my heart, she also did it at first whenstrangers arrived. But now it happened less and less, just like the nightmares and sometimes I’d find her reading a book under the bed with Feodor curled up beside her, so I guess as well as being a safe space, it was also becoming her happy place.
The police reopened investigations into several child abductions in the region after a search of the Ivanov property turned up the bones of a dozen girls. Dogged by the press for their mishandling of Michelle’s disappearance, they were desperate for a win, and I left them to it.
Alan, lead investigator on more than one of those cases, ended up with parents to inform and a million uncomfortable questions to answer. The press was showing him no mercy. His superiors had him on notice. And the IA investigation ground on.
He’d called me twice to whine about his situation, claiming that I was helping a criminal organization humiliate him and the police. I reminded him that he had taken Vasily’s bribes just like every other cop involved, and that he had tried to get me to give up on my baby when he’d known damn well that she was probably alive. I shouldn’t have had to go to anyone besides the police to get my little girl back, but Alan had been willing to let kids suffer and die in order to make some side money. What he was experiencing now were the consequences of his own choices. Alan, unable to take responsibility or even handle the truth, had hung up swearing both times.
