The world kept turning. “The girl’s going to be okay,” Dean said quietly. Not a question, but not quite a statement either. “She’s strong. Stronger than she should have to be. Like someone else I know.” Roman didn’t respond to that. The comparisons between his childhood and Maya’s were inevitable but imperfect. He hadn’t had anyone to run to when Sofia died.
No stranger appearing out of the fog to offer mercy and protection. He had been alone. Maya wasn’t. That made all the difference. The city appeared on the horizon. Steel and glass and a thousand complications waiting for Roman’s attention. Business didn’t stop for acts of mercy. Empires required constant maintenance. People depended on his decisions, his authority, his willingness to do what others couldn’t.
But as the SUV merged into traffic and the forest vanished completely behind them, Roman felt something unusual settle in his chest. Not quite satisfaction, not quite peace. Something adjacent to it. He had kept his promise to his fourteen-year-old self. When he saw someone defenseless being hurt, someone who mattered even though the world pretended otherwise, he had stopped it. Sofia would never know, but somehow it still mattered that he had tried. His phone vibrated again.
A photo from Victor this time. Maya and Ellen standing in front of their new apartment building. Maya was smiling wide, while Ellen smiled with a cautious hope. The little girl was holding up a piece of paper with large, neat letters: “THANK YOU, ROMAN.” Roman looked at the image for a long time, then saved it to his phone and turned the device off. Some moments didn’t need responses; they just needed to exist. “Dean,” Roman said quietly. — “Yes, Boss?”
“If anyone ever asks about what happened on that mountain road… nothing happened. We were never there.” — “Understood.” The SUV carried them deeper into the city, back into the world of calculated moves and controlled violence, of power maintained through reputation and strategic ruthlessness. Roman would return to being who he had always been—a man feared, respected, and carefully avoided by anyone with common sense. But somewhere three hours north, a little girl would grow up knowing that once, when it mattered most, a dangerous stranger chose mercy over convenience.
And her mother would live to see her grow. That was enough. The forest road behind them sat empty now, waiting for the next traveler, the next story. The oak tree remained, its branches spread wide. The marks of the rope were still visible if you looked close enough. But the terror was gone. The cruelty had been answered. The balance, however imperfect, had been restored. The road remembered everything. It always would. But memory without consequence was just a story. And stories, Roman knew, belonged to the ones who survived long enough to write them. Ellen and Maya had survived. That was the only story that mattered.
