Entangled By Him

EPILOGUE

Anna

Five years later

“Jax, you better get your little butt down here.” I yell as I run up the stairs looking for my three-year-old son.

Jax happens to be named after my oldest brother. When we told him what we were going to do, he still had the same stoic expression, but his eyes did lighten and gloss over a little.

I run up the stairs and search for my son. He's on the same side of the house me and his dad are staying in, Maxim’s old room is our room.

Life from that moment when Maxim and my brother's rescued me has been wonderful. Maxim's and my relationship exploded, and it's still going strong almost five years later.

I open the door and quickly go into my son's room, and there he is, I should have known all along. My husband and my three-year-old are playing WrestleMania on the bed.

Jax’s high pitch squeal escapes as Maxim body slams him down onto his mattress.

“Come on you two,” I say as I put my hands on my hips, making me look awkward.

This would work better if I wasn’t seven months pregnant with my daughter, now I just look like a hot air balloon.

Maxim smiles at me as he lifts Jax up, throwing him over his shoulder. They both come up to me, Jax gives me a sloppy kiss on the cheek and Maxim kisses my forehead, then bends down to kiss my belly.

“Sissy,” Jax says.

“Yes, you're right. Sissy is in mom’s belly.” Jax smiles at me, then places a kiss on my belly.

“Come on you two, we're going to be late.” What makes everything worse is that we usually arrive after Colt, and he's the one who’s always late.

Jax and Maxim have been BFFs if you will, ever since they stayed at his house to rescue me.

I never thought I would see my brother so close with anyone. Booker and Maxim are good friends, but they're not as close as he is with Jax.

My eyes fill with unshed tears as I think about what could’ve happened. Maxim wanted revenge, nothing else. The whole story did a complete one-eighty. Instead of revenge, they're great friends.

Since all of us are getting older and getting our own families, we all agreed that a Sunday dinner would be treasured. That's what we are currently running late too.

Even Maxim’s siblings started to join us on the Sunday dinners a couple of years ago. With both of our families together, we couldn’t be happier.

Maxim has us in the car in under five minutes. At least we're only going to be about ten minutes late this time, and not our usual hour.

The drive to the Moretti’s main house takes about thirty minutes. Traffic's not too bad for a Sunday, but there's still a lot of cars out here.

Jax has already fallen asleep in his car seat and Maxim has taken a business call. He tries to keep his business side separated from his personal side. The Ivanov mafia has started to go more legit.

Don't get me wrong, they still do a lot of illegal things that would make a normal person shriek. Maxim promised me over five years ago the business is going to be legit. This way he can never be taken from me or his kids.

We've had some very tense moments, some cringe-worthy and some bordering on divorce.

Being the boss of the Russian mafia has a lot of problems that come with it.

Twice in the five years since we’ve been together, men have broken into our house guns-blazing. The point is armed man came into my home, Jax was a baby at the time.

Those men never made it out of the house. But, you never know what could’ve happened.

Another time, a close friend of Maxim's, someone that he thought was close to, betrayed him.

Right after they saved me and got rid of Marco, the head of the Mexican Mafia, Cruz put out a hit on Maxim, stupid man.

The hit was going to go through, but somebody a bit closer to Maxim instead, tipped us off.

To this day, I'm still not sure exactly what happened to Cruz. All I know is he’s no longer here. I don’t know if he’s still on this earth, or if he just got away. I'm pretty sure it's the former, he’s dead and buried.

I sit back and I reminisce over the times we've been together. Everything's been beautiful, I am extremely grateful.

Maxim notices my reaction, he reaches across and takes my hand. I look over at him and smile, his call ended.

“I love you,” he mouths.

“Ditto.”

* * *