Bryn's a slave driver, who wants everything perfect, so Scali leaves at nightfall. He ignores Boris' dire warnings about steep roads and desperate men in his rush to get back home ASAP. Can't blame him. The man has a lot of explaining to do to the mafia and his girlfriend.

Ryan and I are stuck here, waiting for safe passage to Russia.

We help the returning farm workers to clean up, bury the bodies, fix the damage... do the good works, I suppose. Stress, shock and fatigue accumulated over the crazy weeks hit like a ton of bricks. But the Georgians are generous with food and wine, and a local healer does something medieval with Ryan's swollen gums and broken teeth. I don't want to hear the details, but his face looks more symmetrical by next morning and he sleeps the day away. I have few thoughts in the haze of recovery. I can't even say if we while away three days or four.

But the calendar comes back into play once the date is set for us to leave. Today... A sunray slanting through the window hits Ryan's cheek. He stretches on his back in our old-fashioned bed.

I hover over to kiss his warmed skin. He opens his eyes just as I close mine. Slowly, very slowly he pulls me into his arms and finds the bottom of the borrowed cotton shift I wear—not a simple task, since it covers me to the ankles. From there, his hand moves into a less puritan territory.

"This pregnancy thing," I warn him in a whisper, "it's going to be a question of when, rather than if, if you keep doing what you're doing." I'm out of pills and common sense.

His response is a throaty chuckle. "And you... you don't want to?"

I have to think about it for about a second. "No... actually, I don't mind."

He keeps doing what he's doing. So do I.

When I write my Northern Caucasus on the Lowest Budget Imaginable travel guide, I'll strongly advise against crossing the Russian border in the back of a mid-sized produce truck with illegal migrants. The only upside of that stuffy, bumpy, nerve-wrecking ride is that Ryan cocoons me in his arms and legs like a human bubble-wrap.

After the eternity of motion sickness and lung-mummifying dust, the truck slows down, makes a few rattling turns and lurches to a stop at the outskirts of Sochi. The driver unlocks its scratched-up back doors. They swing open with an ear-splitting screech.

It's mid-morning. While we were busy trespassing, spring seized the sea-side town in earnest. Fresh leaves spill over the fences. Something green pops out of every patch of dirt in a hurry to bloom, wanted or not. Wind tosses sunshine and handfuls of salty air into my face.

Ryan lets go of me to clear the lip and jump to the ground, then whirls with his arms outstretched. After the hellish hours inside the dark cube, hell yes! I deserve a treat. I leap, and he catches me with only a slight wobble. I tilt my head to take in the boundless blue of the sky.

It makes me want to throw my arms wide, like bird's wings in a childhood dream about flying. "We made it!"

I wave good-bye to the driver, who takes a second before his face breaks into a responding grin. Probably, he isn't used to hauling happy people.

But I'm a happy person. My legs are dancing with impatience to get moving. My nausea clears with every gulp of fresh air. It sort of blends with the dizziness of being free and that exquisite feel of this being the first day of the rest of my life. Our life.

Ryan digs up the burner phone Scali set us up with. "I think there's a bus stop three blocks that way—"

The thought of getting back inside a cooped up space, I choke a little. "Screw buses! We walk."

"Yes, dear."

And so we blend with leggy girls in their tank-tops; with women in sensible shoes; with ice-cream licking kids and smoking men shuffling along the sidewalks.

Our first stop is a pharmacy.

We enter separately, given how memorable we'll be together, a blond girl and an Asian-type, and how we're presumed dead. Half of the worn Russian bills Boris coughed up clog my pocket. My eyes run over the price tags. Jeez, I hope it's enough cash!

For the first time in my life, I pull out my money and count it, while my heart squeezes in worry. My chest eases once I'm done, but the sensation is disturbing. This new life, it'll have its drawbacks.

I find Ryan discreetly with my eyes. He's rummaging through the stand with glasses, seemingly concerned with nothing but finding the best match without a prescription.

I take a deep breath in. I can do it.

After fighting the Cyrillic alphabet and navigating the narrow aisles, I score both the pregnancy pee-stick and the hair dye.

The chirpy girl at the counter gives me a sympathetic look while she rings through the portentous item. Then she frowns at the hair dye and pauses, not sure if her position as a cashier entitles her to dispense medical advice.

Yeah, it's not recommended for expectant mothers. I'm aware of that. Except if this potentially expectant mother doesn't hide her memorable blonde locks, the baby-maybe-in-progress faces worse dangers than a minute exposure to L'Oreal's potion.

A shiver runs through me as I assume this new identity. An expectant mother. I pushed it out of my mind for weeks, so how come it decides to sink in here, in a store, on a teeming street, in Sochi? No way I'm doing it right now... no fucking way.

I move the carton with the dye closer to the girl. "It's not a mouth to feed, so it'll keep if I'm preggie." Hopefully the old adage as well as the habit of stocking up is alive and well in Russia.

It must be, because the girl scoffs. "No offense, darling, but blonde looks better on you."

"Aww, thanks! But it's such a pain to keep up with the roots." I pay, then grab the baggie with my two glossy boxes and walk down the street. My steps are slow to wait for Ryan to buy his glasses and catch up. Also because I'm wondering if something about my appearance has already changed to signal that I'm pregnant to other women. I pull the shirt tight around my abdomen and study my reflection in a store's window. My belly's just my belly.

The corner of my mouth curls when Ryan's arm wraps around my waist. "How do I look, darling?"

I suppress a giggle. He always favored the wireframes, but now thick-rimmed, square shades weigh the bridge of his nose. Gosh, at least it's not a faux tortoise-shell. "Like a card-carrying nerd."

"Good." He scratches his emerging beard.

Yup, small things like these fool untrained eyes. "Should we buy you a beige turtle-neck to go with the glasses?"

He snuggles me closer to him. "Maybe later? There are things that interest me far more than shopping."

Suddenly, the walk through the city loses most of its charm. I want to hole up with him in our safe house for however long we need to wait for our backup flights, with the backup fake passports stamped with the fake backup visas.

Sochi, like most maritime cities, climbs and climbs away from the turquoise flats of the sea, with high-rises skirted by the trees. Our haunt is away from the collapsing and crime-ridden area of the 2014 Olympic Village, but not in the mafia-controlled luxury town.

Ryan snatched us a condo that belongs to a drug fence who normally rents it out for courier exchange. One guy comes and leaves the packet in the hiding spot. The other one comes to grab it on a predetermined day... that sort of thing.

In other words, it's a quiet, low-risk place.

In practice, we let ourselves into a one-bedroom with shabby furniture and blackout blinds. The boxy space is filled with closed air because nobody bothered to open a window for a month. Hardly a honeymoon suite, but I don't stifle a yelp of excitement once the door closes behind us.

We are alone. Alone!

I hang myself about Ryan's neck and drag the ugly glasses off. He squints, before finding my lips, then steps back with a nervous chuckle.

"Naz... Naz, I'm thirsty too, but let me see if we got what we've paid for first. After the way things went, I'm paranoid."

I release him, sobering up. "Can't blame you."

While he scours the faded walls for the secret compartment, I saunter to the bathroom in the most inconspicuous manner. The bag with my purchases is clutched in my sweaty hand. I take the hair dye out and put it on the chipped counter. Then I grab its side and look in the mirror. A long hard look. There's one more box in the bag.

Come on, deep breath, then go. It's not that hard to pee. Do it.

Despite the pep-talk, my hands shake as I dig my nails into the carton box. Ignoring the dotted lines and the instructions on how to open the box, I rip it in four uneven pieces. The simple device tumbles out. The treacherous hands do nothing to help with reading the more pertinent instructions. Luckily, if Ryan knocked me up on New Year's Day, my hormonal level would be so high by now, the test would light up if a single drop of urine landed on it.

I glance down at my stomach. "Are you there?"

Like on a cue, it growls back at me. Well, something is in there, and it's hungry.

Leaving the test to do its thing for the prescribed number of minutes, I rejoin Ryan.

He emptied the hidden safe to spread our two sets of passports, matching ID's, plane tickets and three stacks of US cash on the old kitchen table. Either the owner or his guests extinguished cigarettes on its top for years.

"Looks like we're good," I say with fake enthusiasm after my eyes estimate the amount of cash. This seems a paltry start to a new life. Good thing I have a couple of hidden accounts to fall back upon, but I don't want to dig into them until we're desperate for money. Or I can figure out how to reconcile my stash with my promise to turn my back on my old life.

"No." Ryan says tightly. "Not all is good."

My heart sinks. "What's wrong?"

He hands me the passports.

At first glance, they look real. Bahamian, because that's where we're heading first. And the US ones, in case it's safe to repatriate in a few years. My picture has dark hair. He's aged, bespectacled and bearded in the pictures, like a professor teaching something esoteric.

I'm about to ask what's wrong when I spot it.

My passports reads: Laila Ratnik.

His passport reads: Josh Lang.

Essentially, I'm staring at the world's fastest divorce. "Oh."

"It was our fail-safe, Naz," he says quietly. "I thought it would be better to keep complications to a minimum if we had to use it."

"I see..." Before I can assure him that it's okay over the constriction in my throat, Ryan goes to one knee.

"I hate you," I mutter. "Freaking me out like that!"

"It didn't stop you the first time, so..." His eyes crinkle. "Laila Ratnik, will you marry me?"

He opens the palm of his hand and my jaw drops in a gasp.

I tossed this ring back into the treasure chest without giving it a second look, drawn by larger, showier pieces. On its own, the workmanship is stunning. The ring is a four-foil flower, with a pale yellow round fianate in the center, set into a channel, like the middle of a flower. Each of the four lily-petals to its sides are inlaid with pink enamel, opalescent like mother-of-pearl nail polish. The second set of the tiny foils, green, just peeks out between the pink ones.

There's no other word for it, but beautiful. Naturally, I find something else to say.

"Did you... steal this ring, Josh Lang?"

Ryan makes an offended grimace. "Tsk, tsk, what a suspicious mind you have. I asked for it. Very nicely, I must add."

"And Scali gave it to you just like that?"

"Yup."

I don't believe him for a second! But I'm happy he stole it for me.

"Do you like it? Because I thought you might like it after all we've been through." He tilts his head trying to catch my eyes. "And it's not antique, so no problems crossing the borders."

"It's beautiful," I say. "Absolutely beautiful..."

He exhales in relief and mutters something suspiciously like, Yay!

Slowly, I realize that it's the price of the damn thing next to Luca's old one that concerns him. "Do you actually want to marry me, Ryan? I love you with all my soul, but we fight all the time—"

"No, we don't."

"As I was just saying, you argue with me over every little—"

"That's not it," he shoots back. "We... we simply forge agreement in the fires of an invigorating discussion."

I can get used to looking at it this way. The ring in his hand twinkles at me seductively. "Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, Josh. I'll marry you."

My fake and my future husband, my enemy with benefits, my lover and my everything under the sun slips the ring made for a hapless princess on my finger—or a very decent copy of it—and why would I ever want anything else?