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  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?”

  She sighed. “I just keep thinking: we came so close! When everyone thought Christina was me, if you hadn’t realized, she’d still be being me now, she’d be living this life with you, and I’d be—”

  I put my hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. “I did realize,” I told her.

  “But what if you hadn’t?”

  “There is no chance that I wouldn’t have. I knew as soon as I kissed her. Just as I knew something was different the very first time I kissed you.”

  “But how? I mean, was she harder or softer or more tongue, or—”

  I took her cheeks between my hands and kissed her. Slow and deep and with every bit of love in my soul. I felt the tension flood out of her. And when the kiss ended, I told her, “That’s how. It didn’t matter that she had your face, or your clothes. I wasn’t in love with her. I was in love with you.”

  THE END

  Thank you for reading :) If you enjoyed The Double, please consider leaving a review - it really helps me out.

  Konstantin first appeared as a minor character in Kissing My Killer. Alexei, a Russian hitman, is sent to kill Gabriella, a hacker. But when he looks into her eyes, he can’t pull the trigger…and the two are forced to go on the run together.

  The story of Kate and Mason can be found in Alaska Wild.

  Agent Calahan will return :)

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  Helena Newbury