That Summer In The Country

Fifty-nine:

Fifty-nine:

Alina woke up to her cell phone vibrating. There was a text from a number that she didn't recognize, but it said one, simple thing. Release it all. That was all Alina needed to know where the message was from. Aleksander had fallen asleep next to her on the couch, his head resting on her shoulder. It was the most vulnerable she had ever seen him. "Aleks," she called, "Aleks!"

He started awake and stared at her in complete and total surprise. "What is it? Is everything okay?"

She handed him her cell phone. "I got a message from Genya. She gave us the okay to expose Petyr."

"Right," said Aleksander, "let me text Nikolai to give him the heads up."

Alina frowned. "He won't try to stop it will he?"

"No, Nikolai doesn't have any loyalty to Petyr. He's long suspected that he wasn't his birth father, and he doesn't want anything to do with him. That's why he was so bent on working with Mal because he thought that he could help to get rid of him."

"Are you sure that he didn't intend to get him killed?"

"Nikolai's one of our oldest friends. Well, as friendly as we can be in the world that we grew up in. He would never do anything to let Mal get hurt. He probably didn't even know about the flash drive until Mal died and he was sorting through his stuff to have it sent over."

"This world is complicated," said Alina, "how do you know who to trust?"

"You don't. But you've made it that much easier for people to trust each other by getting rid of Petyr. Or at least you will once you release that information. Are you ready? Because this is absolutely going to change everything, you know that, don't you?"

"Ravka is a dark, dangerous place. It makes it hard to survive. Men like Petyr make it worse. He needs to be taken care of. So how are we going to do this?"

"There's a newspaper editor I know. Jesper Fahey. You give him a call, and he'll run the story for us."

"Are you sure that it shouldn't be you?" Alina asked. "You're the one that has the name and all of the power. They're not going to want to hear anything from Alina Starkov. I'm a little nobody. I'm not important."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that," said Aleksander, "I gave them a name that will convey exactly how important you are, I think."

Alina frowned. "What name did you give them? Genya's?"

He shook his head. "No, I didn't give them Genya's name. I told them that Alina Morozova would be calling. My wife."

Alina blinked, not sure that she had heard him correctly. "Aleks...."

He took her hand in his. "Come on. You've finished your school. We're going to destroy Petyr. You love me, and I love you. What could you possibly want to wait on? We were always supposed to be there. You know it and I know it."

Alina smiled. "You know, some girls might not think it romantic to propose to someone while they're trying to blackmail another person and expose them for being a completely corrupt asshole."

Aleksander grinned at her. "I would say that those girls have no sense of adventure. What do you say, Alina? Do you have a sense of adventure?"

When he was looking at her like that, so full of love, Alina couldn't bring herself to say no to him. In fact, she wanted desperately to do absolutely everything that he wanted her to. She was so young, and marriage sounded so crazy. But she had spent her life seeing the whole world. She didn't need to search far and wide to find where she belonged. She already knew where she belonged, and that was where she wanted to be. With Aleksander, wherever that might be.

"Come on, Alina," he said, "take this jump with me. Be with me. Please. I know that you think of The Great House as your home, and I want to make it your home for real. Let me love you. Let me marry you and let me make you part of my family so that you can call it your home always."

Alina smiled and pressed her forehead against his. "Yes, Aleksander, I'll marry you."

He smiled at her, laughing nervously. "Do you mean it?"

"I most definitely mean it."

He kissed her deeply, and when they were done, Alina turned her attention to her cell phone. "Jesper Fahey?" she said. "This is Alina Morozova. I've got a story to tell you, if you're willing to listen...."

She told him everything. She told him about Petyr, about Genya (she left out Mika, because he was Mal's son, not Petyrs). She told him about the accounts and said that she would have the flash drive sent over to him. Jesper listened, occasionally adding a shocked gasp, and after she finished the whole thing, he agreed that he would run the story on Lantsov. He was aware, he said, of how deadly the man was. He worked with a man called Kaz Brekker, and Kaz Brekker worked with Inej Ghafa, who had been responsible for saving Genya.

Inej had also worked at The Menagerie. She had been underage when she'd been recruited to work there, and she had agreed that she would tell her story to collaborate with Genya's. Once Jesper got approval from his editor to run the story, it should be in the next days newspaper.

Once Alina was done, she got off the phone and turned to look at Aleksander. "So, it's done. The newspaper is going to run the story. Everyone is going to know the kind of person that Petyr Lantsov is. It will only be a matter of time before Petyr gets justice served to him, and Genya can live her life without being scared anymore of that terrible man."

Aleksander smiled. "I'm glad."

"So am I," she said, "but we...."

"What is it?" Aleksander asked.

"Aleksander, as happy as I am about spending the rest of my life with you as your wife, we can't get married until we burry Mal. It would be wrong for us to run off and get married when he hasn't even been buried yet."

Aleksander nodded. "I know. My parents have been making the arrangements already. We'll be having it this weekend. We'll wait a few months, and then we'll get married. I wouldn't want to disrespect Mal's memory."

"What are people going to think?" Alina asked. "I was supposed to be dating him. They'll think that we were cheating on him."

"I don't care what they think," said Aleksander, "all I care about is that I get to be with you."

Alina smiled. "Then I guess that's all I'm going to care about too."

"As you should," he replied, kissing her deeply.

They were getting married. Alina was going to have a home, and it was going to be with Aleksander, in The Great House, as she always thought that it should be. She had spent her life traveling the world and now, she got to have a home of her very own.