“Like a winner,” Matvey fires back.
I find myself huffing out something that might be a laugh.
We stand. I straighten the coasters one last time. They let me.And now, I know that they always will.
And as we step into the hall together, I realize the thing I’ve been bracing against isn’t coming.
No one is pulling away.
No one is looking at me like I’m less.
The world didn’t change.I did.I changed. By finally being myself in front of my brothers.
EPILOGUE
AVELINA
Sofia scampers into the den with a tin of markers clutched to her chest like it’s a valuable treasure. The lid wobbles precariously, a waterfall of color threatening to spill across the floor.
She skids to a halt at Viktor’s elbow, her eyes bright with the kind of hope that makes my throat tight. “Please can I put rainbows on your tattoos, Viktor?” she asks with the same casual directness she’d use to ask for a glass of water. No hesitation. No preamble. Just a child’s straight line to the thing her heart wants most.
My breath catches. Viktor’s tattoos have always been sacred territory—those intricate black and gray lines that climb from wrist to elbow in sharp geometry and shadowed script. They’re part of his armor, his carefully controlled world, and Sofia is asking to paint them with the chaos of childhood.
“Sofia, honey,” I start gently, because some things are still fragile for Viktor. “He might not?—”
“Yes,” he announces, interrupting me.
The word drops like a stone into still water, sending ripples through everything I thought I knew.
My head snaps to his. “Yes?”
He looks at Sofia first—really looks at her, the way he does when he’s reading between the lines of what someone needs but can’t say. Then his gaze drops to his forearm, where those familiar patterns tell stories I’m still learning to read. “If we use the washable pens,” he adds, ever practical, but there’s something soft threading through his voice. “And we can stop if my skin says no or starts feeling too buzzy.”
Sofia’s face transforms, lighting up like the sun breaking at dawn, and my chest goes warm and tight all at once. This is Viktor choosing joy over control. Choosing Sofia’s happiness over his own comfort.
“Okay! These are the washable markers.” Sofia scrambles up onto the chair beside him, patting the table like she’s setting up the most important art studio in the world. “Arm on the mat, please,” she instructs, suddenly all business and concentration. “And once I start, no moving. Artists need steady canvases.”
I suppress my grin.
He settles his arm on the table with the same careful precision he brings to everything he does, but there’s something different in his posture now. Looser. Like he’s consciously choosing to trust and to be vulnerable.
I watch this moment. This man who flinches from unexpected touch offering his skin as Sofia’s canvas. And my heart is shaking and singing at the same time.
She studies his tattoos with the serious consideration of a master painter approaching a blank canvas. “Do you want to choose the colors?” she asks, because even in her excitement, she remembers that Viktor needs to have choices and needs to feel in control.
“Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet,” he says without a moment’s hesitation, and something in my chest cracks open with tenderness.
“Okay,” she replies solemnly, selecting her first marker like she’s choosing a tool for the most important task in her whole little life.
She starts with red, carefully drawing a semi-circle above the blacklines of the clouds in his tattoos. Viktor watches her work, his gaze tracking each deliberate stroke.
I hold my breath waiting for him to tense up, to say it’s too much.
But his expression never tightens. Instead, he looks fascinated, like he’s watching magic unfold right on his own skin.
Orange follows, then yellow, Sofia’s small hands move with the intense focus of someone performing surgery. She understands the weight of what she’s been trusted with—this chance to add beauty to someone who’s spent so long believing color was his enemy.
Viktor shifts only to let her turn his arm, accommodating her need for the perfect angle.
