Chapter 166 166

Chapter 166 166
Then—chaos.

Feliks comes keening out of the corner. He hurls a knife that sinks deep in one Serbian’s throat, followed by a stone that crushes the skull of another.

Jasmine drops, scrambling toward Kosti’s body as his killers reel. I’m already moving—snatching Dragan’s fallen pistol from the rubble, putting two rounds in the nearest Serb’s skull before he gathers his bearings.

When the goons are all dead, I turn once more to see the one who remains.

Pinned between the car and the altar is Dragan. His legs are pulp beneath the bumper and blood leaks from his lips. He’s still breathing somehow. Wet, gurgling sobs that speak of punctured lungs and crushed ribs.

I advance on him with the gun in my hand. “Look at you. Roadkill.”

He spits blood on my boots. “F-finish it, then.”

This is for Jasmine, I think as I level the gun at his head. For Ariel. For every woman you’ve ever hurt.

But before I can pull the trigger, the car door creaks open. A figure stumbles out into the rain-slick mayhem.

The storm howls through the shattered nave, whipping Ariel’s hair into a Medusa’s crown of wet snakes. Her wedding dress clings to her like a second skin, ivory linen now the color of old bruises. One hand grips the car door frame—knuckles white as bone shards—the other splayed low over the swell of her womb. Blood streaks her inner thighs.

She shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be standing. Shouldn’t be anything but curled in that cellar with our children, safe.

Our eyes lock across the carnage. Her gaze isn’t the shattered glass I expected—it’s flint sparking against steel. I see the girl who sent back a dozen courses just to watch me sweat. The woman who fucked me senseless on a printing press. The mother who clawed her way through hell just to spit in death’s face.

Dragan whimpers beneath the Peugeot’s crumpled hood. I should finish him. Put a bullet through that smirk he’ll wear into the grave.

But my arm won’t lift. My finger won’t bend.

Ariel takes a step. Stumbles. Catches herself on a pew gnawed to splinters by termites and time. The movement parts her dress’s torn slit—I glimpse the bandages Zoya applied hours ago, already blooming fresh crimson.

“You,” she rasps at me, voice raw from screams, “don’t get to die today. Not when you have children to live for.”

Thunder cracks. The church groans. Behind me, Feliks drags Jasmine toward the blown-out wall.

But all I smell is peaches.

Ariel limps closer. Rain pools in the part in her hair. She stops a breath away. Her palm finds my chest—over the wound Kosti’s betrayal left.

“Look at me,” she demands.

I do.

Her thumb brushes my jaw. “You don’t get to quit,” she whispers. “Not on them. Not on me.”

“Ari—”

Then she kisses me.

It’s not forgiveness—that will take time. It’s not absolution—that will take penance. It’s a collision of teeth and truth and every unspoken thing that matters between then and now. When she pulls back, her lips are painted in our shared violence.

“We’re not done,” she says. She glances at Dragan. “He is, though. Leave him here to die.”

The church doors burst open. Wind screams through the hole where our future waits—broken, bleeding, but alive.

I follow my wife into the storm.

EPILOGUE: ARIEL

SIX MONTHS LATER

The twins’ hungry cries pulled me from sleep before dawn today, same as every morning. I’ve learned to love it. The quiet early hours, the stillness, the moments of just me and them when they’re too sleepy to truly put up a fuss—those are the things I’ll remember when I’m old and they no longer fit into the crooks of my elbows.

We stayed at Mama’s house last night, just for a change of pace. It’s nice to get out of the heart of the city sometimes. Quieter out here. Prettier in some ways, too. Sunlight slants through her lace curtains, gilding the dust motes swirling above Natalie’s downy head.

Nat’s the easy one. She does not play when it comes to nursing time. Eyes on the prize like a wartime general, sometimes even with a fist raised in victory. Leo, my restless revolutionary, keeps unlatching to glare at the world that dared remove him from the warmth of the womb.

I look up at the wall to check the time. Mama’s French cuckoo clock, the one Sasha fixed, is perfect down to the second.

Leo frowns and starts murmuring at the shift in my posture. “Shh, little man,” I whisper, stroking his cheek. “Your sister’s being so good. See?”

He sighs and settles back in, thank God.

Once they’re comfortably nursing again, I return my attention to my computer screen, where a Word doc has my story waiting for today’s words. It’s hard enough to type with one baby, much less one in each arm, but I find a way. Feliks calls it “double dribbling.” I think that’s a basketball joke, but I’m not completely sure. To be honest, I don’t think he knows, either.

My fingers hover over the keys as I stare at the scene I’m trying to write. The church in Roccastrada looms dark in my memory—rain and mud and broken saints watching from above. Hard to believe these same babies entered the world in such chaos. Sometimes, I wake up gasping, thinking I hear thunder. But then I feel Sasha’s arms around me, hear the twins breathing in their bassinet, and reality settles back into place.

I look down at my children—our children. Natalie with her father’s ice-blue eyes, Leo with my green ones. Both of them with Sasha’s nose and my stubborn chin. They’re our best story yet, written in flesh and blood instead of words.

My fingers fly across the keyboard again, weaving fiction from truth. Some details, I keep exactly as they happened—the weight of Sasha’s hands as he helped me breathe through contractions, the way Jasmine’s violin sang just before our world imploded.

Others, I soften, blur, transform into something less sharp-edged.

The truth is in there, though, between the lines. In the spaces where I pause to remember. In the moments when my hands go still over the keys, and I simply watch my children nurse, marveling at how something so gentle could come from so much violence.

The clock ticks on, keeping perfect time. Outside, Brooklyn wakes up slowly, but in here, it’s just us—me and my babies and our story, unfolding one word at a time.

Leo’s fist raps on my sternum. “I know, agapi mou,” I murmur, adjusting his angle. “The world’s unfair. Write a strongly worded letter to management.”

Natalie pops off with a satisfied smack. I shift her to my shoulder, patting the gas bubbles she’ll deny having. The motion jostles Leo again, who retaliates by clamping down.

“Malysh,” I hiss through clenched teeth, “we talked about this.”

Footsteps creak in the hall. My mother appears with two mugs, her silk kimono whispering against the doorframe. “They’re conspiring against you,” she remarks, setting my coffee down for me.

I sniff the steam—hazelnut creamer, heavy on the cinnamon. “They’re Sasha’s children. Scheming’s in their DNA.”