“You are lucky I decided to trust you,” the big man growls, giving me a sharp smile. “I was this close to putting a bullet in you instead of them.”
“I’ll remember that next time I’m holding a gun.”
“Easy, you two,” Maxim says with a grimace. “We are all on the same side now.”
Sacha’s smile becomes a little less sharp, and this time, I manage to return it. “Welcome,” he says. “Malen’kaya zmeya.”
“I am not the little snake, anymore,” I say, and we begin trudging through the snow to where the trucks are parked. I climb in after Maxim, careful to keep pressure on his wound. He leans his weight against me, and I hold him, and don’t let go.
Sacha slams the door closed. Maxim and I are, for the first time in what feels like forever, alone. He looks up at me, that beautiful, familiar face at last mine. “What are you now then?”
I place my palm against the side of his face and gaze down at him.
“I already told you,” I whisper. “Or did you not believe me, Maxim Volkov?Ya ves’tvoy.”
I am yours.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Maxim
Was it laziness, or surrender, or some twisted mercy that Viktor Desyatov’s final act was to reveal where he’d hidden our daughters?
I’ll never know. I don’t care to.
The manor is fine but simple, similar to all the others in this Moscow suburb. The nanny, tasked with looking after the girls by Viktor, walks out into the morning sunlight with the girls before her.
Annika surges past me, sweeping them up in her arms, gathering them toward her like she thought she never would again. And despite her conviction and tenacity since we took her from Seattle, I know she did fear this, truly. She thought she would die before she saw them again. But she changed her own fate—and here we both are.
The little girls fall into her, giggling, babbling, clutching their mother. Annika’s shoulders tremble, and she hides her tearful face in the embrace of the twins. I hang back. Everything in me screams to go to them, to look at them, take them in. To begin, as quickly as I possibly can, making up for all the time I’ve lost.
But I wait, patiently, as Annika savors them. And when at last she stands, shaking slightly, and looks back at me, my heart fills to bursting with love, and tenderness, and utter, pure joy.
“Manya, Karine. There is someone I’d like you to meet.”
I hesitate, but the girls look up at me, and their faces—utterly pure, and wholesome, and full of hope—break my heart. I kneel, and Annika walks them to me, the three hand in hand and aglow in dawn light.
Manya reaches for me, touches a tiny, cool palm to my cheek. Tears burn in my eyes. Karine clings to her sister, examining me openly, curiously. I recognize the feeling welling up within me, suddenly, as pride.
Annika’s girls.Mygirls.The world narrows to the three of them, everything before this moment forgotten. This is my world now. I will fight for it, and protect it, and live for it, and die for it. For them.
I touch each of the girls’ soft, precious faces. They turn their brilliant eyes on me, and in them, I see myself. I see Annika. Mother. Father. Family. Blood.
A future I never dreamed could be mine.
I lift my face to Annika. Tears glisten on her cheeks, and her eyes are full of love and gratitude.
“Spasibo,” I whisper to her.Thank you.
“Spasibo,” she mouths back, smiling through her tears.
It’s an end to so much, I realize, taking in the three of them.
But it is the beginning of so, so much more.
* * *
A year has passed, but I feel like I’ve known them my entire life. Manya and Karine, my beautiful, ferocious daughters. They have her face and my eyes; they have her will and my silence. They are ours, and we are each other’s.
