Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 86238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
EPILOGUE
ALEK
Eighteen months later…
Months of turmoil seem like a walk in the park when, “I lied, so now you have no choice but to punish me,” sneaks out of the crack at the bottom of Ghost’s office door.
We toed the line.
We played the game with honor.
And now we can finally claim victory.
Although I’ve already been professing our triumph to anyone who will listen for months—ten, to be exact.
I won’t lie. It was a close call, especially when Ana collapsed within minutes of displaying what I saw in her eyes when she stood across from me for the first time, giving me cheek, but a win is a win no matter how many obstacles you barge through to cross the finish line first.
Our victory didn’t come without sacrifices. Blood was shed, and lives were lost, but like every tragedy, there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
Her hair is as fair as her mother’s, her eyes as icy as mine. She is the very epitome of strength and determination, which Anastasia insists she inherited from us both.
I’m not so sure I agree. Anastasia is nothing like her father, so how can our daughter adopt any traits from me?
“Don’t even think about it,” murmurs a sweet yet lusty voice at the side, her tone without a single quiver.
She doesn’t fear me like the men I killed to keep her safe and the ones I massacred for placing unnecessary miles between us. Ana never has. She gets way too much satisfaction riling me to provoke another response.
Ana’s smile heats my back when my hand freezes partway into the crib our daughter is sleeping in. Kira has grown so much over the past ten months I’m considering swapping her crib for a bed. The only reason I haven’t is because she mastered the art of crawling over the past month, and although I want to spend as much time with her as possible, I crave her mother’s attention just as much.
“I’m not going to wake her.” Only a fool would wake a sleeping baby, especially when the tension is as white-hot as the energy zapping between Ana and me.
She has always been my kryptonite.
My challenge.
My biggest fucking headache to date.
But I wouldn’t change a single moment that has occurred over the past eighteen months.
When we thought we were losing Kira, we were forced through a remake of the event that should have occurred many years earlier. Since my medication wasn’t replaced with placebos, I held Anastasia’s hand through every examination, ultrasound, and doctor’s visit. And I wiped away the tears of joy that spilled from her eye when the doctor the Yurys gifted to us explained Watermelon Head’s hit caused a hematoma to Ana’s uterus and not the miscarriage as suspected.
Mercifully, the abscess was several inches away from Kira nestled in her sac, which means it was drained without incident before Ana was placed on a month of bed rest.
This will make me sound as cocky as fuck, but so be it. The no-touch order the doctor evoked killed Ana more than me. Whenever her blood is thickened with extra hormones, she is extra horny. She wanted to fuck sunup until sundown, so it killed her to keep things basic.
Lucky for us both, the month flew by with only the occasional hiccup, then we were given the all-clear to resume normal activities.
We made up for lost time in every possible location. In between the stacks of shipping containers, on the couch in the rec room, and at the cubes with the lighting just right so we could see everyone, but no one could see us.
We even fucked in a nook closest to her father’s cabin because Ana couldn’t wait for us to get back to our room to show her appreciation.
I didn’t bring Andrei here because he’s an upstanding member of society who deserves to be a part of his daughter’s life. I did it because the only gambling conducted on this ship is done with pretzels and M&M’s, and I’m over Anastasia paying for that fucker’s debt.
With us no longer having roots in Russia, and Ghost unwilling to put more than five miles between Katie and him, Anastasia agreed it was best for us to make the shipping container our home until we rebuilt bigger and better than ever.
As much as this sucks to admit, Ana’s father is part of her family as much as the tiny box in the safe of our room.
I’ll string him up and ship him out the second he pisses Ana off, but for the most part, Andrei plays the role of devoted grandfather and father well. That may have more to do with the fact he often brags about how he put us in contact with the sniper we used to take out two of Kirill’s men without stepping foot on US soil.