“?φησ? με! Let me go! That’s my dad! You can’t touch me!”
My heart didn’t just break—it detonated.
I didn’t remember deciding to run. My body moved on instinct, feral and unstoppable. I flew down the aisle, black dress snapping at my legs, heels striking the marble like a string of gunshots.
“He’s my son!”
My voice tore through the cathedral like lightning cleaving a tree.
“Get your filthy hands off him!”
The nearest guard didn’t have time to react—my palms slammed into his chest with all the strength I had earned over five years of rage and grief.
He stumbled back, shock painting his features. The second guard froze mid-grip, mouth falling open.
They looked at me like a ghost had walked out of the grave and demanded her child.
I ripped Vanya out of their hands and crushed him to my chest, wrapping myself around him like living armor.
His small body was shaking—fury, fear, heartbreak all tangled into one. He curled into me instantly, like he had been trying to climb back into my ribs.
“Mom,” he hiccupped, “I found him. I found him.”
I couldn’t speak. I could only hold him.
We barely made it two steps before a third guard—new, arrogant, and too stupid to live long in this world—stepped into the aisle, blocking us. A cigarette hung from his lip, ash dangling precariously.
“Well, well.” He looked me up and down with oily amusement. “Trying to get the boss’s attention with a kid? Women like you—”
He flicked his eyes over my hips.
“—are a dime a dozen in this territory.”
I went still.
Still in the way knives go still right before they slice.
“Step. Aside.”
He smirked. Took a slow, lazy drag. And then—he exhaled the smoke directly into my face.
The nicotine hit my lungs like acid washed in razors.
My asthma slammed into me with instant, merciless force. My throat closed. My lungs seized. A strangled wheeze ripped from me. Air became a stranger.
I staggered backward, clutching Vanya with one arm while the other clawed at my collar, at my chest, at the air that wasn’t coming.
My knees buckled.
“Mom? Mom!” Vanya’s voice cracked, shrill with terror.
Through the blur of my watering eyes, I saw him twist in my arms—and then my son, my sweet five-year-old boy, launched himself at the guard.
He punched the man’s thigh with all the righteous fury of a child whose world was being ripped apart.
One tiny fist.
Then another.
