But this—this loss—had gutted him.
His shoulders bowed beneath a grief that wasn’t his to bear.
I couldn’t look at him for long.
The guilt was too sharp, twisting in my chest until it felt like punishment.
She had died shielding me.
Ruslan Baranov approached then, his presence cutting through the stillness like the edge of a blade. The dying sun caught in the silver of his hair, turning him almost spectral—part man, part legend.
His mute son trailed behind, a small, silent shadow of sorrow.
“I’m heading back to Greece, Dmitri,” Ruslan said, his deep voice steady, threaded with that rough Greek accent that always made every word sound like an order.
He looked at me for a long moment. “Give yourself time,” he said finally. “Bleed if you have to. But when you rise—make it count.”
He clasped my shoulder—firm, grounding.
The touch steadied me more than I wanted to admit.
We were born the same year, but Ruslan carried the weight of decades: harder, colder, forged in darker fires. Had he not pulled me out, the Volkovs or my aunt would have crushed me.
“Appreciate you coming, Ruslan,” I said after a long pause. “I should’ve been there when you buried your wife.”
He didn’t answer, just studied me with that calm that made men nervous.
“Tell me,” I asked finally, “does it ever stop hurting?”
A faint smirk touched his mouth—thin, aristocratic, and cold.
“There’s nothing to heal from,” he said evenly. “She was a deal, not a wound.”
The simplicity of it hit harder than any confession.
Ruslan’s gaze found mine again, sharp and appraising, as though weighing the worth of my heart. “Love,” he said, almost as a lesson, “is a frailty. It renders men feeble. You’ve already been through hell and survived. Don’t lose yourself now by obsessing over the dead or the past.”
He tilted his head, a faint glint of approval breaking through his detachment. “When you have taken a new bride, come to Greece. We’ll drink like men who outlasted the pain.”
My answer came without hesitation. “I’ll never remarry,” I said flatly. “She was all I ever wanted. All I ever will.”
His smirk deepened, almost indulgent. “That’s what we all say—until the next war, or the next woman.”
Then he turned toward his boy.
The child waited a few feet away, small hands clasped in front of him, the collar of his black coat too large for his thin neck.
Ruslan knelt, lifting him into his arms with a tenderness that seemed foreign to a man like him.
He brushed a strand of dark hair from the boy’s forehead and studied his face in silence—a look heavy with possession and something close to fear. Whatever humanity still lived in Ruslan Baranov, it was buried in that child.
He straightened, the boy now perched on his shoulders, small hands gripping his father’s silver hair. The soldiers waiting by the chopper stiffened to attention, their salutes sharp and wordless. The rotor blades began to turn, slicing through the evening quiet.
Ruslan paused before boarding, the wind from the helicopter whipping his long coat around his frame.
He turned once more, the dying light catching in his pale eyes.
“I’ve heard the stories,” Ruslan said, voice low, deliberate. “How you treated her. How she became the outlet for your rage.”
