Epilogue: Stephan
Ican’t believe how incredible she looks, how easily she was able to pull this all off in such a short amount of time. It feels like it was just yesterday that we were squatting in small, dingy hotel rooms, trying to track down some of the most coveted pieces of art imaginable.
It’s so strange to see us here like this, in all this glitz and glamour, blending in with the rich like we didn’t spend our lives running crime, but that was the beauty of it all. I’m amazed at how willing Annika has been when it came to getting what she wanted and giving us the starting point for a business venture that was unlike anything my brothers have ever attempted to do.
She’s the love of my life, and she has changed me in more ways than I could ever fathom. I never want this moment to end, but knowing us, it’s only going to be a matter of time before we find ourselves in trouble all over again. I never did mind, because it kept our lives incredibly interesting, and I liked a little danger every now and then.
I looked out into the large space that Annika had hiding in the back of her gallery, a space perfect for this kind of event, something that was completely unheard of in the surrounding crime community, but it brought us all together, leaving our weapons at the door, apart from the security, so we could indulge in a little old-fashioned art collecting. It was quite the sight to see, and even my brothers had been impressed by the mere fact that one woman managed to get every crime boss that we’d ever come into contact with in one place, to lay down their weapons, and play by her rules for the evening.
I was so proud of her, seeing her command the room just like she had the first time I laid eyes on her. She and I were a team that was going to make waves amongst the crime world, and everyone that attended was certainly aware of that fact.
There was no denying that something like this was going to come out of the chaos we dealt with, after seeing what we were capable of when we were together, even when we nearly lost our lives fighting for the ones we loved.
Annika taught me to believe in myself, to see that I didn’t have to spend my life running small jobs just because I believed I wasn’t worth anything more, and she helped me gain the kind of power that set me apart from everyone else. Together, we were unstoppable, and I could tell that even my brothers were impressed by what we managed to accomplish, seeing how it truly added quite a bit of notoriety to the family business.
Annika and I still had quite a bit of growing to do, but I already knew that once we managed to settle down, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I couldn’t imagine a life without her in it, because she was the very thing keeping me going, keeping my head above water when my anger and frustration got the best of me. She and I both were in such a good place, but there was still the part of me that feared the time that we were going to have to embark on a new journey, one that would be as difficult if not more than what we had to deal with when the Chadov family nearly ripped us apart.
It was that very night that I realized there was something absolutely extraordinary about Annika, that she was unlike any other woman that I’d ever met and that she would do absolutely anything for the people she loved.
I promised myself that I would spend the rest of my life showing her just how much I love her, how much I want to stick by her no matter how difficult things may get in the future. I knew that there would be hard times, especially in a career like ours, there were always people trying to get the upper hand, trying to steal the limelight from us when we weren’t looking.
We managed to build a support system amongst two of the biggest crime families in the country, and I knew that everyone else was buckling down, trying to figure out how they were ever going to match up to that kind of power. Annika did an incredible thing for us all, bringing us all together when we thought that all hope had been lost, teaching us to believe when there just doesn’t seem to be a way out of a terrible situation. I remembered the look in her eyes when I had finally woken up, when I had realized that she had saved me that night at the massacre of the Chadov family, and I had been indebted to her ever since.
I promised her that I would never stop fighting for her safety, that I would never let her out of my sight again for the fear that something bad might happen, but she always reminded me that we were going to make it out no matter how hard things may seem in the moment.
I glanced over at her, watching her take the podium to welcome everyone to the biggest crime gathering in history, and I couldn’t be more proud to join her up there, to hold her hand, while we embarked on a new journey right from that moment on. I couldn’t believe just how wonderful it felt to know that we still had so much to look forward to, so much to learn about what we truly wanted out of life, but we got quite good at remembering that we had to enjoy the little moments whenever we could because we’d never be able to know when chaos would erupt yet again.
It was certainly a night to a remember, a night that changed us all for the better. I looked out into the audience to see a gathering of some of the most ruthless people I’d ever met, all there for the very same purpose, all realizing that we had assumed power at the very top of the country’s crime ranking for now, but I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone tried to take that away from us.
That is a problem for another day. Now, it’s time to see where we’re really headed, and how long we can go before we’re called back into action yet again. It’s a never dull moment between us, and it never will be.
