“I’ll go!” Cat says, gamely. “As long as there’s popcorn.”
She glances at me to see if I’m amenable.
“In Moscow we eat sunflower seeds at the movies,” I tell her.
“We’ll sneak those in, too,” Leo says.
I pause a moment, wanting to ask Leo something before we land.
“Leo . . .” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Did you tell your mother what happened? At Christmas?”
“Yes,” Leo nods, his smile fading.
“Was she . . . how did she take it?”
“She was devastated,” Leo says, simply. “She always hoped that she and Adrian would reconcile eventually. She wrote to him every year on their birthday. I don’t think he ever wrote back.”
I nod, slowly.
I never saw those letters, but I’m sure Leo’s telling the truth.
“My father could be very cold,” I say. “His capacity for love was . . . limited. And conditional.”
“Well,” Leo says, quietly. “I can only imagine the pain he suffered.”
I can see on Leo’s face that there’s regret on both sides. I was raised with anger, he was raised with sorrow. The difference between his mother and my father.
We pass over the Great Lakes as the plane begins to descend. The vast, shining bodies of water each look as large as an inland sea. Around the edge of Lake Michigan, the gleaming spires of downtown Chicago jut up into the sky: opulent and golden-hued in the late-afternoon sunshine.
My heart rises up in my throat.
I’m finally returning to the city where I was born.
I never thought I’d make this journey alone.
But I’m not really alone—Cat slips her hand in mine.
Across the aisle, my cousin smiles at me.
“You’re gonna love it,” he says.
We disembark the plane and retrieve our luggage from the conveyer belt. Then walk past the security gates.
I see Leo’s parents waiting for us—his father as tall, tan, and athletic as his son, his hair graying but still thick and wavy. Sebastian Gallo wears a pair of stylish eyeglasses and a neatly-pressed polo shirt tucked into slacks.
Next to him, a tall blonde woman pushes a space-age pram. I look at her face and I see . . . something painfully familiar to me. The high cheekbones, the stubborn jaw, the full lips and eyes of that unusual shade that I’ve only seen twice in my life: on my father’s face, and my own.
She is Adrian Yenin’s twin in every way.
Except that the moment she sees me, her eyes fill with tears. She opens her arms and wraps them around me, pulling me tight against her in a hug.
“Dean,” she says. “I’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”
I can feel my body stiffening. My own eyes are burning, my heart beating too fast. I know her husband is watching.
But also . . . there’s something familiar and comforting in Aunt Yelena’s clean, sweet scent, and in the shade of the silver-blonde hair that falls across my shoulder.
So I push away my usual response to fear and confusion. Instead, I take a deep breath and I hug her back.
When she lets go of me at last, I face Sebastian Gallo and I look him in the eye.
This is the man who mutilated my father and strangled my grandfather. He’s also the man who loved Yelena Yenina enough to marry the daughter of his worst enemy.
I hold out my hand to him to shake.
Sebastian grips my hand in his warm grasp and pulls me into an embrace, hugging me just as hard as his wife.
“Welcome home,” he says.
Epilogue
Cat
Chicago
Dean and I had only intended to visit Chicago for a couple of weeks, but we end up staying almost the entire summer.
We stay at Leo’s parents’ elegant mansion in the downtown core. The six of us—Anna, Leo, Miles, Zoe, Dean, and me—explore every part of the city and the surrounding countryside. Sometimes Miles’ little brother Caleb tags along, incensed at being left out when he himself will be attending Kingmakers in the fall.
I thought Dean might be irritated by Caleb, since Caleb is brash and loud and desperate to prove himself. But Dean responds to him with surprising patience, even consenting to meet Caleb on his favorite basketball court, despite Dean barely having played before.
It reminds me of Dean’s strange protectiveness of Kade Petrov.
I always thought Dean was a bully. But in actuality . . . he’s got a soft spot for the underdog.
Soon Dean, Caleb, Leo, and Miles are all playing basketball together on the outdoor courts almost every morning. With his typical determination and total disregard for his own physical safety, Dean is picking it up much faster than anyone expected.
When Dean teams up with Leo, the best player of the bunch, they’re fairly evenly matched with the Griffin brothers.
“Dean’s gonna be better than you soon,” Leo teases Miles.
“I’m not exactly practicing on the regular,” Miles scowls. “I’m running a business, not fucking around taking three months off like the rest of you.”
“Oh, you’re working right now?” Leo says, pretending to look around the court. “That definitely explains the score.”
All four boys are sweating under the sweltering summer sun. Dean and Leo join Miles and Caleb in stripping off their tops, though it’s supposed to be shirts against skins.
When Miles sees Dean’s back he grimaces.
“Jesus, Dean,” he says. “There’s easier ways to get a tattoo removed.”
Dean lets out a huff of air that’s something like a laugh. “Well, that’s Penmark for you—he didn’t respect my safe word.”
He tips me a wink.
I shake my head at Dean, surprised at his willingness to find the dark humor in anything.
That was one of the most painful and impactful experiences of my life—the agony of watching the man I love be tortured, but also the moment that I finally understood how much Dean loves me.
The boys asked Zoe and me if we wanted to play, but Zoe said it was too hot and I was in the mood to sketch. Zoe is stretched out on the park bench reading a novel. I’m filling some of the last pages in my sketchbook with yet another drawing of Dean—this time, sweating and laughing as he manages to sink a shot over Caleb’s head.
Caleb scowls, but acknowledges that it was a pretty good shot.
“I had a good coach,” Dean says, punching Caleb lightly on the shoulder.
Once the boys have thoroughly exhausted themselves, we all pile back into Caleb’s Escalade and drive back to the Gallo mansion for breakfast.
Since it’s Saturday, Sebastian Gallo has a half-dozen pancakes sizzling away on the countertop skillet. Yelena is making fresh-squeezed orange juice, filling the kitchen with a fresh citrus scent that reminds me of Kingmakers.
Leo scoops baby Natasha up out of her highchair to stop her from fussing. Unlike Leo, Natasha inherited her mother’s fair hair and violet-blue eyes. Her curls are wild and puffy as dandelion fluff, and her little eyebrows point upward in the middle in a way that makes her look perpetually quizzical.
Leo sits his baby sister on his forearm and pats her back until she stops squawking. Then he gently rubs his nose against hers and blows little puffs of air in her face until she giggles and tries to grab his cheeks with her chubby hands.