Sebastian throws his arms around me and hugs me hard. A little too hard, quite honestly, because my shoulder is still burning and aching where Rodion hit it, opening up the stitches again. But I don’t care—I’d rather feel the pain, if it comes along with the warmth of his arms.

“Thank you,” Sebastian says, in my ear.

“How did you do it?” Aida asks, curiously. “Did you knock him over the ledge? Did you shoot him?”

Seeing me wince, Sebastian says, “Leave her alone if she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

I still feel like I owe Aida a hell of a lot for forgiving me so easily, so I answer anyway.

“I shot him,” I say. “But it was close. It was almost me that went over the edge.”

I can see the fear in Sebastian’s face. He holds me tighter than ever, as if the fight on the roof is something he can still protect me from now, and not something finished and in the past.

“I can’t fucking believe that,” he says. “I mean, I guess I can. I’ve seen you when you’re mad. But Jesus Christ Yelena, he’s a fucking ogre . . .”

“It wasn’t my favorite afternoon,” I say.

As we enter the hospital, the nurse seems highly suspicious that we’re just there as visitors, considering the state of us all. Even Callum and Aida look disheveled and dirty, despite the fact that we arrived when the fighting was almost over.

Reluctantly, the nurse gives us our badges and lets us go up to the top floor. Two of Sebastian’s men are guarding the elevator and the hallway. The taller one tells Seb, “He’s out of surgery. He’s in the room with Camille.”

We all hurry down the hall, trying to be quiet in case Nero is still asleep.

But when we peek in the door, he’s sitting up in bed, pale and thin, but surprisingly alert.

“Why do you all look worse than I do?” he says.

“Yenin’s dead,” Seb says, by way of explanation. “He burned the house down.”

“Our house?” Nero says.

“Yeah,” Seb nods. “Sorry. I kind of let him.”

“Well, fuck,” Nero says.

He sounds stunned and disbelieving, which I can understand, since that house had been in their family a hundred years. It is baffling that something that stood so long could be destroyed in a matter of hours.

“Did you at least move my cars?” Nero asks.

“No,” Seb winces.

Nero glowers at him, and I see that his temper is still alive and well, however weak his body might be.

Camille squeezes Nero’s thigh through the bedding. “It’s alright,” she says. “Your favorites are at our shop.”

“Some people died too,” Callum reminds him.

Nero shrugs, not caring nearly as much about that. “People are more common than a 1930 Indian Scout Motorcycle.” But after a moment, his curiosity gets the better of him. “Who’s dead?” he asks.

“Bosco Bianchi, for one,” Seb says.

“Pfft,” Nero snorts. “He’s barely worth a gasket.”

I’m lurking in the doorway, embarrassed and thinking I shouldn’t be here. I doubt Nero wants to see me, or Camille either.

Before I can think of an excuse to sneak out, Nero fixes me with his sharp gray eyes and says, “Don’t be so twitchy—if your dad’s dead then we can all relax.”

“I’m really sorry—” I begin, but he waves me off.

“Ah, save it. Your wedding did suck ass, though, just so you know. I’m glad I only got you the two-slice toaster and not the four.”

Aida snorts, and I see that this is Nero’s idea of a joke. Or perhaps his idea of forgiveness. Either way, I’ll take it.

Camille looks utterly exhausted from all her hours at the hospital, but she’s smiling while she rests her chin on her palm, leaning against Nero’s bed. She’s obviously thrilled to have him fully awake and talking like this—like what I assume is his usual self.

“We can’t stay long,” Cal says. “We left Miles at my parents’ house.”

“If we don’t get back soon, Imogen will probably have bought him twenty more outfits and tried to cut his hair,” Aida says.

“It is a little crazy,” Cal says.

“He’s a baby,” Aida rolls her eyes. “Just be glad he’s not bald as an egg like you were ‘till you were three years old.”

“It grew in eventually,” Cal says, rubbing his head self-consciously.

“Anyway, goodbye all,” Aida says, giving us a little wave. “Glad you’re alive, big brother.”

“Me, too,” Nero says. He’s looking at Camille as he answers, not at Aida.

“We’d better go, too,” Seb says.

We head back down to the elevator, letting Callum and Aida go on ahead of us because Sebastian and I are both stiff and slow. On the way out, Seb bribes a PA to take a look at my shoulder. For $600, the guy puts a couple more stitches in the wound, then slips me an extra dose of antibiotics and a couple sample packets of painkillers.

Whatever he gave me, it takes effect almost immediately. I feel warm and relaxed, and the aching of my shoulder dies down to a gentle twinge. Seb swallows a couple himself, so he won’t have to lean on me so heavily to walk.

By the time we’ve hobbled a few blocks down from the hospital, so we can catch an Uber where the road isn’t blocked off any longer, all the lights in the buildings look bright and twinkly. A breeze is blowing in from the lake, making the air smell clean and fresh.

Sebastian has his arm around me.

“Should we take a car back to our apartment?” he asks me.

I hadn’t even thought about where we would go. We can’t go back to Sebastian’s family home, obviously. There’s no way in hell I’d go to my father’s house. So it makes sense that we’d go where we were meant to go directly after our wedding: to the beautiful loft that Seb and I picked out together, when nothing awful had happened yet, when our future seemed bright and full of promise.

I want to go there now, more than anything.

I want to recover that feeling that everything will be alright. That Sebastian and I can build a life together, the two of us, and shape it to be whatever we want.

He’s watching my face closely.

He’s not just asking where we should sleep tonight. He’s asking if we can try again—if we can try to bring that dream to reality, to put the train back on the tracks.

“Yes,” I tell him. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Sebastian stops on the sidewalk. He grabs me and he kisses me.

I can taste the smoke on his lips. It’s not unpleasant.

Fire doesn’t always mean death and destruction. Sometimes it clears away the old and rotten brush so that new things can grow.

We take the Uber back to our apartment building.

It seems like forever since we picked this place out together, and sent over the few furnishings that we had time to purchase.

When we open the door, it smells clean and new inside, not like Sebastian or me. It’s antiseptic and anonymous—no hint of his soap or cologne, or of my favorite brand of coffee beans.

I barely recognize the gleaming modern kitchen and the wide-open living room with no couch, only the beautiful piano that Enzo gave me as his last gift.