Recognition crossed her face the moment she saw Maya.
"Doctora!" The woman changed direction, moving toward the car with surprising speed. "Doctora Cross!"
Maya was out of the car before I could say anything. The woman reached her in seconds, arms already opening, and then they were hugging on the sidewalk while morning commuters walked past without a second glance.
I stayed in the car. Watched.
The woman was crying. Talking fast in Spanish, clutching Maya's arms, touching her face like she was making sure she was real. Maya was nodding, responding in Spanish I couldn't fully follow, her own eyes going bright in that way that meant she was trying very hard not to break down.
"El ángel doctor," the woman kept saying. "Mi ángel."
Someone Maya had treated in the past. I could see it now—the way Maya's hands were gentle but assessing, checking the woman's general health even while accepting the embrace.
Whatever issue she’d had, Maya had fixed it. In her basement, probably. With her steady hands and her medical supplies and her refusal to let people die when she could save them.
The monster stirred. Not with hunger, but with something else. Something that felt almost like pride.
My little bird. Saving lives in shadows because the system had failed her and everyone she tried to help.
I thought about Frank.
The weight was still there. Would probably always be there—the memory of him bleeding out on a the cold ground, the choice she'd made to try to save him. It was a tragedy.
But Frank's death had also led here. To this clinic. To Maya working in daylight instead of darkness. To the old woman hugging her on a Brooklyn sidewalk, calling her an angel, crying because she was still alive because Maya had refused to let her die.
Not meaningless. Not wasted.
Just the brutal math of consequence and cost that bratva life had taught me to calculate.
Maya finally extracted herself from the embrace, promising something in Spanish that made the woman smile through her tears. She watched the patient walk into the clinic, then turned back to the car.
Her eyes were still bright. Not crying, but close.
She waved. Small gesture, just for me. Then she disappeared through the clinic doors.
I sat in the car for another minute. Processing. The weight and the pride and the strange peace of watching someone you love find their purpose again.
Then I drove to the coffee shop on the corner and bought six cups. Black, dark roast, exactly how my security detail liked it.
Some things hadn't changed. Maya still had guards watching her every move—discreet, professional, invisible unless you knew where to look. She'd accepted it now. Had learned to see protection as love instead of control.
Took her a while. Took me longer.
But we got there.
Sundaydinneratthecompound had become tradition somewhere between chaos and survival. I didn't remember when exactly—maybe after the cathedral, maybe after Nikolai stopped looking like a man who'd just watched his world burn and started looking like a father waiting for his daughter to be born.
The dining room was full tonight. Not just the usual—Nikolai, Sophie, Maks, Mikhail in his corner chair where he could see all the exits. But also the Volkovs, who'd started showing up after the alliance solidified. Alexei with his brutal posture and ice-blueeyes that only softened when he looked at his wife. Ivan already on his laptop despite Anya trying to physically close it. Dmitry looming near the fireplace like he expected an attack through the windows.
And at the center of it all, six weeks old and completely unaware of the empire she'd been born into—Katya Besharov.
Mikhail had cried when they'd announced the name. Not the kind of crying most men did—quiet tears, a cleared throat, a quick exit to compose himself. No. The old man had wept openly, had pulled Sophie into an embrace that lasted long enough to make even Nikolai uncomfortable, had said something in Russian about his Ekaterina being remembered.
The grandmother none of us knew well enough to remember. The woman who'd died ten years ago, leaving a hole in the family that no one talked about but everyone felt.
Now her name lived in a baby with Sophie's blue-green eyes and Nikolai's stubborn chin.
"Kostya." Sophie appeared beside me with the bundle in her arms—Katya swaddled in pale yellow, making soft sounds that could have been contentment or protest. Hard to tell with babies. "Hold her for a minute. I need to check on the borscht."
