But he was already gone.
He dropped my hand and ran toward the room, all wonder and light again.
“Mom!” he squealed, spinning in circles. “Look! A real Batmobile bed! And the fish! And—”
He skidded to a stop at the desk, staring in reverent disbelief.
“An iPad. And a MacBook.”
He turned to me, eyes huge. “Mom, please—please—don’t take them away this time, right?”
My heart squeezed.
I wanted to say no. Wanted to keep the world gentle and simple and safe for him a little longer.
But this wasn’t Greece. This was a gilded prison.
And joy, here, was a rare and necessary currency.
“Moderation,” I said softly, brushing his curls back. “Promise me.”
He nodded so hard his curls bounced, then threw himself into the chair and powered up the laptop with the confidence of a child born knowing how technology worked.
The toys he had shrieked over lay forgotten.
Circuits and code—those were his real playgrounds.
I watched him for a moment, a knot tightening behind my ribs.
And for the first time since stepping foot in this house, I allowed myself to breathe.
The silence here felt different. Heavy. Intentional. Like the walls were waiting for me to unravel.
After resting for a while, I pushed myself off the mattress and slipped into the bathroom.
It wasn’t a bathroom—it was a cathedral.
Black marble stretched floor to ceiling, veined like lightning trapped in stone. Brushed gold fixtures gleamed under warm sconces, each one casting a soft molten halo that made the room feel sacred, surreal, too beautiful for the prison it sat inside.
I locked the door.
The click echoed like a fragile promise of solitude.
Then I stripped—slow, mechanical, every movement heavy from the day—and stepped beneath the rainfall shower.
The first hit of hot water made my breath hitch.
Then the rest came like a landslide.
Heat poured over my shoulders, down my spine, across skin that felt too thin to contain everything pulsing beneath it. It washed away the grit of travel, the tension locked in my muscles, the ghost-memory of Dmitri’s fingers grazing mine—electricity and ruin in a single brush.
I braced my palms against the slick marble, head bowed.
The water thundered around me, drowning the tight, broken sounds I didn’t want to hear coming from my own throat.
Minutes passed. Or hours. I didn’t know. All I knew was the water was mercilessly hot, and the fog had swallowed the mirrors whole, and in the heavy mist I could almost pretend the tears streaking down my cheeks weren’t real.
That was a lie, of course.
