Fifty.
Irina can't quite believe she's made it to her fiftieth birthday. She can still pass as a much younger woman, but she feels about a thousand years old. Most women, at this point in their lives, are thinking about grandchildren. This is the time to look back on one's life and reflect.
Irina has learned that the past holds nothing but regrets, and the future is something that may never come to be. She lives only for today and expects any day to be her last.
She thinks, suddenly, that perhaps the reason she has survived so long in this business is as punishment for her sins. And she knows, with a certainty she has not felt in a long time, that she does not want the eternal life Rambaldi offers.
One lifetime of regret is more than enough.
She has come to the family dacha outside Moscow not to celebrate, but to hide from the world for a while. She is tired, and alone, and as she sits in front of the fireplace, she allows herself a moment of weakness.
She thinks of Jack and Sydney, and of the child she never knew. It is no longer quite so painful to think of them. (In those first few years, it hurt to breathe at the thought of them.)
She wonders, now that so much time has passed, if Jack still hates her, and if he's finally told Sydney the truth about Laura. And she imagines, just for a minute, what they would do if she came back from the dead.
Probably kill her, she thinks.
Irina would like just one moment with Sydney, face to face. She wants to see Jack just once more.
Then she shakes her head, acknowledging the lie. Just once would not satisfy her, not with either of them.
She pours herself a glass of vodka and raises it in a silent, mocking toast. "Happy birthday, Irina," she says, then downs the alcohol.
If this was twenty years ago, she would be out with Jack right now. There would be dinner and dancing and romance.
That is not her life anymore.
Irina decides she's been melancholy enough for one evening, and she picks a novel at random from the shelf. She almost wishes Katya was here with her now, though Irina knows she would be bad company.
Even so, maybe Katya's presence would lift her spirits.
Or perhaps not.
There is nothing special about today, Irina decides; it is just another day of the year.
Tomorrow she will return to Moscow and life will be business as usual. She has taken control of K-Directorate from Khasinau, and people refer to her, ridiculously, as The Man. It is time to put her plan into motion; she has a long memory, and has not forgotten the people who have hurt her family.
She smiles; this will be her birthday present to herself.
And maybe next year she will treat herself to a trip to Los Angeles.