I rolled my eyes to hide the way my chest tightened. “You three are insufferable.”
Roman chuckled. “You love them.”
Kara snorted. “She absolutely does.”
Mikhail’s gaze landed on me then. “Whatever comes next,” he said, “we’re done letting other people decide what we are.”
I held his stare, then glanced at Andrei, then Viktor.
They were mine.
I was theirs.
We’d decided that together.
Revenant would burn tomorrow. ARCHEON would clean up the ashes. The world would keep turning and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like a weapon waiting to be used.
I felt like a woman who had survived, chosen, and walked away with her sexy monsters on her own terms.
And that, in my world, was as close to a happy ending as anyone ever got.
EPILOGUE
Katya
Dubai
The Dragunov estate wasn’t designed for parties, but tonight it had become one anyway.
Warm evening air spilled in from the open terrace doors, carrying the scent of citrus trees and faint desert heat. Lantern lights glowed along the stone columns. The long dining table was covered in dishes I couldn’t pronounce, crystal glasses, bottles of champagne, and enough silverware to arm a small rebellion.
The TV in the background replayed the same breaking news clip every ten minutes: a shot of the smoldering remains of Revenant’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, emergency lights flashing across twisted steel, as well as lists of all the crimes they’d committed in the last decade.
We’d won.
Revenant was finished.
And for the first time since any of us had crossed paths, none of us were running.
Kara raised her glass. “To destruction,” she said.
Roman clinked his glass against hers. “And to not being the ones destroyed.”
“Barely,” Lev added dryly as he uncorked another bottle.
Dmitri sat beside Kara with a rare, genuine look of contentment. His hand rested lightly on her thigh, and she didn’t swat it away. Their entire dynamic tonight had been soft glares, hidden smiles, and simmering heat. Roman kept tossing an arm around her shoulder whenever she said something smart. Lev kept brushing fingers along her back when he passed behind her chair.
Kara pretended not to notice any of it.
She failed spectacularly.
Across the table from me, Viktor lifted his glass, a cigarette balanced between two fingers on his other hand, ash threatening to spill onto the white tablecloth. “I’d like to toast to our collective badassery,” he declared. “To surviving Revenant and ARCHEON. To arson. Explosions. And to our girl here,” he nodded toward me, exaggerated flourish and all, “for being easily the hottest woman to ever break a man out of captivity.”
I groaned. “Never say that again.”
He winked. “Too late. Burned into history.”
Andrei nudged him. “Burned into your brain, you mean.”
