Page 119 of The Bratva Betrayal

The elevator reaches the ground floor, and we walk out into the city together.

I reach down to grab her hand and lace our fingers together.

And there, I feel the most peace I’ve ever felt.

Epilogue

CADY

A year and a half later…

Artem Makarov kisses like he’s making a point.

Not every time, and not always with an audience, but frequently and thoroughly enough that you start to understand it’s less about the moment and more about the fact that he has decided you’re his.

He’ll do it without apology in the middle of a conversation, when I’m in mid-sentence about something I was fairly invested in finishing.

It’s been more than a year since Benedikt’s office, the department store chaos with Lucas Manifold, and a dressing room where I agreed to something with no expiration date.

And this is what normal looks like for us.

Dinner at my place on Tuesdays because I do cook—contrary to what Misha believed—and Artem sitting at my kitchen island watching me.

My father has no strong feelings about him, which is the most I’ve ever been able to hope for from Colin Gallagher. He acknowledges Artem’s existence, factors him in because he’s in my life, and leaves us alone, which is more than I expected.

Killian has reached a grudging, wordless ceasefire that expresses itself primarily through the fact that he no longer looks at Artem like he’s calculating how long it would take to bury him.

Rian shook his hand once, which, for Rian, is essentially a declaration of acceptance, and nobody in my family has arranged me into anything or handed my name to anyone.

I wake up most mornings still surprised by the peace.

I’ve kept working. Artem didn’t ask me to stop. What I didn’t anticipate was how useful we’d be to each other, the way his operational instincts complement my ability to move through systems.

He doesn’t bring me flowers. He knows I hate them, but he books vacations and has the confirmation sent to my email. And he makes really good eggs when I stay over, because apparently that is the full extent of his culinary repertoire.

Like the long weekend in Lisbon last month that I didn’t know I needed. He leaves wine on my counter when he knows I’ve had a difficult week. He has, on two occasions, left a designer bag on my kitchen table that he acquired without my input and turned out to be the right thing.

Mostly, he lets me dress myself and furnish my life and make decisions, and he inserts himself only if something involves my safety. I’ve stopped arguing with him on that point because arguing with Artem about safety is like arguing with a wall with opinions.

It’s a Tuesday in October when he asks me something that has me shocked and speechless for the first time in a long time.

Dinner is done, the wine is open, and we’re on my couch with the city doing its thing beyond the glass walls. He’s been quiet for twenty minutes, and I’ve learned his silences well enough that I don’t try to fill this one.

“Move in with me.”

I look at him, and he stares back.

“Move in with you,” I repeat.

“You already spend four nights a week at my place. You have a drawer. Your dry cleaning is there. It makes sense.”

“It makes sense.” I echo.

“What?” he says.

“I’m not going to marry you.”

“I didn’t ask you to marry me… yet.”