“There a reason you needed to disrupt my day, Volkov?” Niklaus asked as he joined his brother in his McLaren, already pulling on his seatbelt though they had yet to pull off.

He didn’t trust anyone’s driving but his own.

“I owed you a debt. An apology was never good enough, so I had to do something else.”

Niklaus just stared at his twin. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Mishca didn’t respond, merely putting the car into drive and pulling away from the curb. If Niklaus wasn’t already confused as to what was happening, it only got worse. Not only was this out of the ordinary for him—they had mended bridges though they still didn’t go out of their way to be around each other—but he was driving, and as far as Niklaus could tell, he didn’t have any of his muscle trailing them.

If it was anyone else, Niklaus might have thought that he was being taken to his death or at the very least an ambush. Though the McCarthy family was taken care of, and the man Niklaus had been tasked with finding was in the wind, he still had a meeting with the Kingmaker to tell him everything that had gone down.

He wouldn’t put it past his handler to orchestrate this just to fuck with him.

Except, they pulled over at a brownstone in a suburban neighborhood where there were people out walking their dogs, jogging, and other such things.

Mishca still didn’t explain as he killed the engine and climbed out, fully expecting Niklaus to follow behind him. With his curiosity piqued, he did.

Producing a key, Mishca unlocked the residence, stepping out of the way with a nod of his head for Niklaus to go ahead of him.

“Are you going to explain, or do you want me to guess?” Niklaus asked as he walked in, the scent of freshly painted walls greeting him.

The space was fully decorated in warm neutrals, and looked lived in already despite how new everything looked. He heard voices coming from what he thought was the kitchen, Reagan, he could tell, and Lauren from the soft laughter. And somebody else, but he couldn’t make out the voice.

“What, you bought me a place?” Niklaus asked. While he would never admit it aloud, the place was pretty nice. “Sorry, Russian, I don’t need it.”

“Not for you,” he said pocketing his keys. “Someone else.”

“Then who—”

The question was answered when his gaze moved to the three people that were walking in from the doorway across the room.

“I didn’t need all of this.”

“We know,” Lauren was saying, “but you deserve this.”

The woman Lauren was talking to was tiny, probably shorter than even Alex, with silver hair neatly smoothed into a bun at the nape of her neck. Wrinkles were abundant in her face from a lifetime of laughter and hard work. She had kind eyes, ones that had never looked at Niklaus with anything other than love and acceptance. While she had never hid the fact that she had adopted him—though she never told him the full story as to who and where he came from—she had never treated him as anything other than her son.

His mother, a woman he hadn’t seen in years, stood across the room from him.

It almost felt like his chest was breaking open.

“Mama?”

Malvina Antakova looked to him then, her face splitting into the softest, but most honest smiles he had ever seen. He could just see the tears in her eyes as she crossed the floor towards him.

He was halfway to her when he stopped and dropped to his knees to make up for their height difference.

Since his training, Niklaus had feared he didn’t know if he was capable of tears, thinking it had been beaten out of him, but as he felt the arms of his mother close around him, he could feel the lump in his throat, the sting in the back of his eyes.

“Syn moy—my son,” he heard whispered above him, the words taking him back to early mornings in the Florida heat as he happily went along with her to a job not wanting her to be alone.

Or the nights when it was just the pair of them at home, sitting in the living room with pizza, even though she hated the taste of it.

But she ate with him, because he enjoyed it.

Laughed with him when he needed it most.

Loved him when no one else would.

“I didn’t believe him, you know,” Malvina said pulling away after a moment, lifting her hands to cradle his face. “How could you have been okay after all these years?”

She looked between them, Niklaus and Mishca. “The resemblance really is uncanny. Catja would have loved to see her boys together again.”

In the twenty-one years that he had lived with her, she had never mentioned that name, and judging from the way Mishca stood a little bit straighter, a flash of pain in his eyes, Niklaus knew that Catja had been their mother.

“She worried,” Malvina said sadly, “that the life Mikhail wanted for you two would ultimately tear you apart. So, she gave me you, Niklaus, to love and raise—give you the freedom you might not have had otherwise.”

Whatever ill feelings he might have had towards Catja drifted away at his mother’s words. No one could have predicted what would come of it, and that despite her best efforts, they had ultimately been torn apart.

But Malvina didn’t need to know that.

Getting back to his feet, Niklaus looked to Reagan who was standing not too far away, and unlike him, she was crying freely. Quickly wiping at her eyes, however, when she noticed his attention on her.

With one arm still around Malvina, he held his hand out to Reagan and waited. Wordlessly, she joined him at his side.

He didn’t know what Malvina would say about her. She knew better than anyone in this room how he had felt about Sarah.

“Such a sweet girl, your Reagan,” Malvina said instantly. “Stayed with me during the entire flight, though she didn’t tell me you needed a haircut.”

She reached for his hair, and he had to bend at the waist to give her access to what she wanted. As quickly as she had touched the ends of it, she turned a narrowed gaze on Mishca.

“You too, Mishca.” She tsked, shaking her head. “It’s grown too long.”

Lauren smiled up at her husband, waiting to see his reaction just as Niklaus did.

The man in question just shrugged. “Let me know and I’ll let you have at it. Now, we’ll give you all some time before Lauren comes back with Sacha. She told me how you’ve been ready to meet your grandson.”

Malvina’s eyes lit up, and Niklaus knew it wasn’t just because of the prospect of meeting Sacha, but the casual way he had included her in the family.

Releasing his hold on his mother and Reagan, Niklaus walked back over to Mishca and didn’t hesitate in hugging him. Mishca grew stiff, but after a moment, he returned the embrace.

It had only taken twenty-seven years, but they had finally embraced as family should.

“Thank you, brat.”

It was the first, and probably the last time, Niklaus would ever call Mishca, ‘brother,’ but in that moment, that was how he felt.

With just this simple gesture, though Niklaus couldn’t express the magnitude of it in words, Niklaus finally let it all go.

The anger.

The frustration.

The hatred.

This meant the world to him.

“No worries,” Mishca said for only him to hear. “You deserve this.”

Clapping him on the back, Mishca pulled away, grabbing hold of Lauren’s hand. When Niklaus looked to her, she winked, a knowing smile curling her lips. She had always promised that the feud between them would end, and he hadn’t believed her.

She was right.

As they made their leave, Niklaus turned back to his two favorite women. Rubbing the back of his neck, he knew it was about to be a long night. “Where do I start?”

Malvina got comfortable on the couch, patting the spot next to her. “Start at the beginning.”

---

“For someone that hasn’t had a permanent place in years, you’ve accumulated a lot of junk,” Reagan said as she looked around at the sheers amount of organized boxes that were lined throughout that storage room.

Day after day, she had woken up to the sight of him next to her, sometimes asleep, other times awake, his sleepy gaze on her. In that time, she had stopped worrying that one morning she would wake up and he would be gone.

If he did leave for longer than twenty-four hours—and that had happened on a few occasions—he let her know beforehand.

For good or bad, he was there with her, and she couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Nevertheless, that didn’t mean she had been ready for the clusterfuck of unpacking that awaited them. He had long since already moved himself in, yet he kept all of his possessions in one of seventeen warehouses he kept around the city.

Some were full of weapons, she remembered him saying once, others filled with other such things that she didn’t really want to think about considering he said it was ‘need to know.’

Except one, one he’d said was filled with more personal belongings—things he had collected over his travels, and even a few mementos from his life before becoming a mercenary. It was the suitcase, the same one he had brought along with his to New York City that first time.

He had given her everything he possibly could. His name, his memories, his experiences, and everything else, even if it was hard to hear.

And now, there was just this one final step…one simple task before it was done and he was fully integrated into her life.

“Not junk, babe,” Niklaus said as he walked past, touching a few of the boxes along the way, as if it reminded him as to what was inside each one.

“Right, you won’t be saying that when we have to go through all of this later—never mind the number of trips it’s going to take to get this all back to our place.”

“Are you always this moody?”

“Only after I find out I’m pregnant.”

Whatever shuffling he had been doing before silenced as her words sunk in. She smiled to herself, glad that she had done it this way instead of making a big production out of it.

Something to share just between the two of them, she couldn’t deny the small thrill that shot through her at his surprise.

Turning to face him, she didn’t know what to expect—happiness, anger, confusion—but the expression on his face was far better than she could have hoped.

Wonderment.

He looked excited, fearful even, but the sight of his face so open made her smile, even as she waited for him to respond.

“You’re pregnant,” he said evenly, his voice not shaking in the slightest, but the words were whispered like he was too afraid to really say them any louder.

Reagan nodded, her hand going to her stomach even though she wasn’t close to showing. “Eight weeks tomorrow.”

She had only found out a mere week ago when she had gone to the doctor after feeling like she didn’t want to eat anything for fear of throwing up. But ever since she had found out that warning, she had wondered how best to tell Niklaus.

It wasn’t like they had ever talked about having children, and while Niklaus doted on Sacha, that still didn’t mean he was ready to be a father.

But with one look at him now, she didn’t know why she had waited this long.

“There’s no point in moving this shit in,” Niklaus said looking around. “We’re going to need a bigger place.”

“Niklaus—”

“We can stay in Hell’s Kitchen if you want, or we can leave the city. Like I said, whatever you want.”

“Niklaus!” Reagan said his name again on a laugh, finally grabbing his attention. “You’re not upset then?”

He tugged her into his arms, kissing her forehead a second before he gave her a kiss that took her breath away. “Of course not,” he murmured against her lips. “Why would I be upset?”

“Because it may be too soon and—”

“Nothing could have made me happier than you telling me you loved me, but this…this tops that.”

“So you’re happy?” Reagan asked once more, smiling as she thought of what he would say next.

“Thrilled.”

“So you’ll still be happy even when I tell you there are two?”

It was only a moment of suspended time before his lips were splitting into the biggest of grins and he laughed that loud, glorious laugh of his.

It was a happy sound.

And Reagan was glad she could make him happy.