The knowledge that we'd both somehow ended up exactly where we belonged.
She smiled. Small, meant only for me. Then turned back to Maks and started explaining why his symptom categories were "epidemiologically illiterate."
The monster in my chest didn't even stir.
I refilled my vodka and let the warmth settle.
Home.
Theroomwasquietin a way that felt earned. Not the silence of waiting for violence or calculating threats. The silence of two people who'd survived enough to appreciate the absence of noise.
Our room.
Zmeya and Malysh were curled together in their shark bed—the ridiculous plush thing Sophie had given them, shaped like a shark with its mouth open so the cats could sleep inside.They'd spent the day wreaking havoc across the compound, chasing each other through Nikolai's study, knocking over one of Mikhail's chess pieces, generally being the adorable menaces that Sophie kept insisting were "good for compound morale."
Now they were exhausted. Sleeping in a pile of black and white and gray fur, twitching occasionally with whatever cats dreamed about. Probably murder. Probably bugs.
Maya sat on the bed in front of me, her back to my chest, my fingers working through her still-damp hair. She'd showered again before bed—her ritual, the hot water and lavender soap that helped her transition from day to night. Now she was soft. Quiet. Not quite Little, but close. The space between where she let herself be held without needing to be small.
I braided her hair in sections. Slow. Methodical. She'd taught me how, those first weeks when she'd still flinched at unexpected touch, when the only way she could accept physical comfort was through actions with purpose. Braiding gave my hands something to do. Gave her brain permission to receive care without feeling like a burden.
The quiet stretched. Comfortable now. The particular silence of two people who understood each other's darkness without needing to illuminate it.
I finished the second braid and tied it off with one of the hair ties she kept on the nightstand. Her hair was secure now. Out of her face. The way she liked it for sleeping, because otherwise she'd wake up with a mouthful of tangles and spend ten minutes complaining about it.
She leaned back against my chest. My arms came around her automatically—one across her waist, one higher, palm flat over her heart where I could feel it beating.
"You know, I finally feel like I’m not running anymore," she said softly. "I used to run from everything. The guilt. The loss.The fear that caring about anything meant I'd just lose it. But I'm not running now."
"Neither am I."
And I wasn't. For the first time in thirty years, I wasn't calculating escape routes or planning contingencies or assuming that everything good would eventually be taken from me. I was just here. In this room that smelled like lavender and cat, with this woman who'd somehow survived the worst the world had to offer and still came out soft enough to need braiding.
"Move in with me," I said.
Maya laughed. The surprised kind, the one that meant she wasn't sure if I was joking. "I essentially already have. Most of my things are here. The cats live here. My toothbrush has been in your bathroom for two months."
"Marry me."
She went still.
Not frozen—still. The way she got when processing something that required her full attention. When her brilliant brain was calculating variables I couldn't see.
I hadn't planned to say it. Didn't have a ring, didn't have a speech, didn't have any of the things normal people apparently did when proposing. It just came out. The words escaping my mouth before the strategic part of my brain could stop them.
But I meant it. Every syllable.
"I don't have a ring," I said, because she hadn't spoken and the silence was becoming unbearable. "Didn't plan this. But I want—I need you to be mine. Legally. Officially. The kind of permanent that has paperwork and witnesses and all the things that violence could never provide."
Maya turned in my arms. Slow. Until she was facing me, her braided hair swinging against her shoulders, her hazel eyes wide and bright in the lamplight.
"You want to marry me," she said. Testing the words.
"Yes."
"You, Konstantin Besharov. Bratva enforcer. Man who has killed more people than he can count. Want to marry me?"
"Yes."
