But none of that mattered.
I was getting my son back.
Dmitri straightened, already turning away. “I hope we don’t both regret this,” he said grimly. “She’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
He paused.
“With Vanya.”
My chest seized.
“And her room?” he continued. “Right next to ours.”
“Ours?” I echoed, the word sour on my tongue.
He looked at me like it should’ve been obvious. “We’re married. We share the master suite. Vanya gets the room to the left. Seraphina to the right.”
Like we were placing bombs in adjacent rooms.
I didn’t respond. I just watched him walk away, his shoulders tense, posture rigid—every step screaming restraint. He wasn’t happy. Not even close.
Truthfully?
Neither was I.
Seraphina’s presence was a ticking clock. A reminder of the woman haunting my marriage, my past, my future. But consequences could wait.
Vanya couldn’t.
I paced the living room again, the fire’s crackle mocking my nerves. Twenty minutes stretched into something unbearable. I imagined Seraphina’s smile, her calculating eyes, her questions. I imagined her watching me. Testing me.
But I’d endure it.
For my son, I’d endure hell.
I perched on the edge of the armchair, staring at the digital clock as if it were the only thread tethering me to reality.
Twenty minutes. Dmitri had said Vanya would be here in twenty minutes. Each second that ticked by was a fresh stab in the chest, twisting deeper than the last.
My heart felt impossibly heavy—like it carried not just the weight of my own fear, but the remnants of every scar Dmitri had ever left on me. And yet, insane as it was, I could not stop loving him.
Insane.
The pain he’d caused me wasn’t abstract; it was vivid, etched into my very bones. I remembered the altar, the day he forced my hand into his, the iron grip of his fingers, his storm-grey eyes cutting into mine like frozen steel, the ring sliding onto my finger like a brand I couldn’t remove.
I remembered the nights he compared me to Seraphina, his words sharper than knives: “She’s graceful. You’re... heavy.”
I remembered the months of abandonment, alone in that echoing mansion, terrified and pregnant, my body and mind left to survive his whims while he vanished without a word.
I remembered the order to terminate my pregnancy, delivered with the same casual precision he used to command an army or order coffee—like my life and the life growing inside me were nothing more than chess pieces on his board.
I remembered the dark room, two suffocating days of blackness because I dared protect the one thing he wanted to control, to erase.
I remembered the exile, sent away so that path could be cleared for Seraphina, leaving me and my son like pawns in a cruel game.
Unspeakable things. Things that should have extinguished any love I’d harbored for him.
And yet.
