Epilogue
Sydney sat at the small café across the street from Argentina’s main intelligence offices. She readjusted the sunglasses on her face as she watched her sister walk down the front stairs. She was beginning to regret going against what her father and Dixon had told her. This was going to be hard.
Standing up and walking across the fairly deserted road, she smiled and waved at her sister. Nadia paused in her steps and began to walk towards her. “Hi.”
“What are you doing here, Sydney?”
“There are a few things I wanted to tell you.”
Nadia narrowed her eyes. “Am I in danger?”
“No! Nothing like that. Well, there was this one thing, but we’re handling it.”
“What?” Nadia knew she probably shouldn’t even ask what was going on, but she couldn’t help herself. Call it an act of self preservation.
“There was a man involved in my missing two years. He wanted to get his hands on a descendent of Rambaldi, and he didn’t seem to know of your existence. It’s been handled. He’s in CIA custody where he’ll be staying for a long, long time.”
“Peter Connelly?”
Sydney stared at her sister in shock. “You know about him?”
“I keep tabs on you, too. Our paths seem to intersect a lot.”
“But you didn’t know about him before?”
“Not in connection to you, no. I would have told you immediately when I found out I had a family in the United States if I had known. Everyone assumes that I’m hiding things from you just because my life is straightforward and simple. I’m not an evil agent hell bent on screwing with you life, Sydney.”
“I know.” Sydney reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope. “This is the real reason I tracked you down.”
Nadia hesitantly took the envelope from her and slid her finger along the crease. “This isn’t going to explode or anything, is it?”
“Nope. It’s just paper and ink.”
She looked down at the paper in her hand. “A wedding invitation?”
“I’m getting married in a few months. I wanted to ask you to come to the ceremony. We might not be close, but we’re still family.”
“Julian Lazarey?”
Sydney‘s mind flashed back to a moment a few days earlier when Sark hinted at having known her sister before he met her. “You know him, don’t you?”
“We worked together when I started working for the Argentine government. He helped me learn some of the ropes. I didn’t realize you were involved with him.”
Sydney started to say something and then paused. “What?” Nadia asked.
“Have you ever been involved with him?”
“No. He’s not my type,” she answered simply.
“All right. I just had to get that one out of the way.” They stood there in silence for a moment. “So, will you come?”
Nadia stared at her big sister for a moment. “If I can get away, I’ll try. It would be nice to see Julian again.”
Sydney narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Are you sure you weren’t involved?”
She just smiled and gave a small wave before walking back the way she came. When she reached the end of the street, she turned back to face Sydney. “I’ll try,” she yelled.
“That’s all I’m asking,” Sydney called back.
She watched her sister turn the corner and disappear from view. Her father had told her that she shouldn’t try to make Nadia Santos a part of her life. That it would be better for everyone if she just kept their lives separate like they had been for years. But something inside her told her that this had been the right thing to do. Nadia was her half-sister, and she should be at the most important day in Sydney’s life.
Sydney started to walk in the opposite direction to where a car was waiting to take her back to the airport and her life in the States. She still couldn’t believe she was marrying Julian Sark. Actually, she could believe she was doing it. What she couldn’t believe was the fact that there weren’t many protests. Once she had decided that it was now or never and told everyone that she was going to marry him within the year, everything had moved so fast.
There were still things about the two years she was missing that she was unsure of. She didn’t think she would ever know every moment that she had lost. But there was a sense of closure to the situation. She had been searching for that for so long that it felt eerie to actually have it. Her life had been turned end on end for what seemed like forever, but for once, it was calm. She didn’t think that would be changing anytime soon either. It was refreshing.
Sydney slid into the car and felt the car shift into drive. She still had quite a lot of questions in her life. She still had issues she had to work out with both her parents, and she still had to figure out how her sister is supposed to fit into her life. She wasn’t sure if her job at the CIA would be able to work now that she was marrying the enemy. She didn’t know if Julian would be changing his way of life to allow for them to be together if she didn’t leave, and she didn’t know how she could possibly ask him to do that so she could stay.
If she knew anything at all, though, she knew that she could finally sleep without having her memories haunt her every move. Through all the pain and through all the questions in the past year, Sark had made sure of that.
Smiling, she thought of the man she had fought so hard to love and watched the buildings pass by.
Author’s Note: Thanks for sticking around with this one for so long! I apologize for being so busy and not being to update as frequently as I would have liked. I hope you enjoyed it… )