Page 122 of Bride of Vengeance

"Now you understand," she says simply.

"Understand what?"

"Why parents would die for their children. Why we would kill for them." She touches Sofia's cheek. "This little one has your strength already. See how she grips my finger?"

I watch my daughter's tiny hand wrapped around her grandmother's finger and feel something crack open in my chest. Twenty-three years of armor, gone in an instant.

"And this one," her mother continues, moving to Adrian in Mariana's arms, "has your watchfulness. See how he studies everything? He's memorizing the world."

She's right. Adrian seems to be processing everything with an intensity that's unsettling in someone only hours old.

That night, after everyone's gone, I hold Sofia while Mariana feeds Adrian. My daughter weighs nothing and everything. She's impossibly small, impossibly perfect, impossibly mine.

"What are you thinking?" Mariana asks.

"That I would burn the world for her. For both of them."

"That's not comforting."

"It's not meant to be. It's just true."

Sofia makes a tiny sound, not quite a cry, and I find myself speaking to her in Russian. Telling her about her heritage, her family, the long journey that brought her parents together. She probably understands nothing, but her face shows something that looks like recognition.

"What are you saying to her?" Mariana asks.

"That she's loved. That she's safe. That her father was once a ghost but she made him real."

"Mikhail..."

"It's true. Ghost could have survived forever. But Mikhail Kozlov, father? That required these two."

Adrian finishes feeding and Mariana passes him to me. Two babies, one in each arm. The weight of the entire world.

"Are you scared?" she asks.

"Terrified."

"Good. Me too."

"But we'll figure it out?"

"Together," she confirms.

Three days later, we brought them home. We'd decided to stay in New York rather than move to Chicago near Alexei and Mila. Mariana wanted to be close to potential FBI work when she's ready, and I wanted our children to grow up in the city where their parents fell in love—even if it started with her trying to arrest me.

The house has been baby-proofed to within an inch of its life, courtesy of Mila's obsessive preparation during her visits. Two cribs, though the twins sleep better together. Enough diapers to supply a small country. And a library of parenting booksI've memorized but which prove useless when faced with actual screaming infants.

"They're broken," I announce at 3 AM on our first night home. "They won't stop crying."

"They're not broken. They're babies."

"Sofia's been screaming for an hour."

"Twenty minutes."

"It feels like an hour."

Mariana takes Sofia, who immediately quiets. "She just wanted her mama."