I think about everything we’ve been through, from my amnesia to Viktor’s final assault. “Sometimes, the worst circumstances create the strongest foundations.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps you two were determined to find each other despite the obstacles.”
“Both,” I decide.
Dr. Orlov raises his wine glass. “To finding love in impossible places.”
“To choosing love over everything else,” Dmitri counters.
“To survival,” Anya adds.
“To new beginnings,” I finish.
We toast to all of it, four unlikely friends who found each other through violence and deception but chose to build something better together.
Later, after Anya and Dr. Orlov have left, Dmitri and I stand at the windows overlooking Moscow. The city spreads out below us, full of possibilities and challenges.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“Family. I never really had one growing up, and my FSB handlers weren’t exactly nurturing. But this… what we have with Anya and even Dr. Orlov… it feels like family.”
“The kind you choose instead of the kind you’re born into.”
“The kind that accepts you, knows your worst secrets, and loves you anyway.”
He puts his arms around me from behind, and I lean into his warmth. “Speaking of secrets, there’s something I should probably tell you.”
I groan and ask, “What now?”
“I might have already started looking at wedding venues.”
I turn in his arms to face him, cocking my head. “Wedding venues?”
“I figure since we’ve already done the fake marriage thing, we might as well try the real version.”
The corners of my mouth quirk up. “Are you proposing to me?”
“I’m suggesting we make it official. Legal this time, with vows and witnesses who aren’t part of a psychological operation.”
“That’s the least romantic proposal in history,” I tease, scrunching my nose.
“Want me down on one knee? I’ll do it.”
“Don’t you dare.”
He laughs and kisses me softly. “Is that a yes?”
“That’s a, ‘we’ll see how the domestic experiment goes first.’”
“Fair enough. But I’m keeping the venue research.”
“Of course, you are.”
Whatever comes next, we’ll face it together. Not as captor and prisoner, not as spy and target, but as partners who chose each other against all odds.
The war is over, Viktor is dead, and somehow, we found love in the wreckage.
That’s not a bad foundation to build a life on.
