When we reached the spot, Hailey lay down on her front and got comfortable, putting her water bottle, snacks and camera lenses all within easy reach. I watched in amazement: it was the first time I’d seen her do it and it was like watching an animal nest. “This is how you used to watch me?” I asked.
She nodded. “For two years.”
We stared at each other. She bit her lip. I felt that electric thrill, the one that never went away, the one that made me feel like a teenager. Hailey was good for me. Literally good, the balance to my bad. It was still a turn on but it was far more than that. She completed me, in the same way my mother had completed my father. She tempered me. I might never be good but, with her influence, I wasn’t ruthless.
“I wish you hadn’t stayed in the distance so long,” I told her. And kissed her.
She’d asked me, when is it enough? When would my empire be big enough, when would I have enough money, enough power? And the answer was never because I’d been clawing away at the world, trying to fill some void the death of my family had left. But now I had Hailey. She was the answer. I looked at her. This is enough.
I’d stopped trying to take new territory. The truce between the gangs would remain and New York would continue to have three kings, not just one. It was better, that way. If one person had that much power, it opened the possibility that someone like Ralavich could take over, with no one able to overthrow him. Better that the three of us kept each other in check.
The FBI preferred it, too. Now that Carrie Blake had seen how Ralavich operated, she’d come to realize that there were worse people who could fill my shoes. When I’d reassured her that I’d stop my expansion, averting a gang war, that had placated her even more... and I had saved her life. Of course, officially she was still working to bring me down. But, as she’d told me at the end of my lengthy debriefing, “Right now, I have bigger fish to fry.”
It wasn’t just that Ralavich had kidnapped Hailey, or burned down buildings in the heart of New York. He’d tried to manipulate the FBI into doing his dirty work for him. That alone would have put him at the top of their Most Wanted list, but throw in the attempted assassination of an FBI chief and the anger was being felt all the way to Washington. Carrie had been summoned to DC twice, including for a meeting with the State Department and President Matthews himself. Ralavich had gone to ground in Russia and the Russian government was stonewalling, but President Matthews wasn’t taking no for an answer and I had a feeling it was only a matter of time.
I had mixed feelings about him being brought to justice. I still wanted him dead for what he’d done to my family. But the hatred didn’t consume me, anymore. It wasn’t the most important thing in my life, and neither was my empire.
Hailey drew in her breath. I followed her gaze.
I saw the mother first, cautiously sniffing the air and making sure things were safe. Then the father, strong and protective. And then—
Three bear cubs, each small enough to pick up in your arms, gamboling and tripping over their paws and rolling on the ground. Hailey snapped picture after picture and as I leaned over her shoulder and looked at them flashing up on the screen, I felt my throat go tight. She was going to be an amazing wildlife photographer, one of the greats. It was the details she noticed: the look of gentle chiding the mother gave her cubs as she nudged them for roughhousing, the way the father nuzzled the mother’s neck as the cubs climbed on his back. After a while, Hailey drew back from the viewfinder and just watched with me.
This. This was what was important. Not empire, family. Not death, life.
I’d already decided that I was going to ask Hailey to marry me. And after that, we were going to raise a new generation of the Gulyev family. They’d grow up in America, not Russia, and they’d follow whatever path they wanted. Maybe the Gulyev crime empire would end with me. But the family would continue.
That first day, we saw a moose and a beaver and a huge, lumbering black bear. As the sun started to go down, we began the hike back to the cabin. Hailey was strangely quiet. I slipped my arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Something wrong?”
“No,” she said firmly. “Everything’s perfect. That’s just it, I worry that….”
I stopped, letting Kate and Mason walk on ahead. “What?”