SAGE
Last night I dreamt of my father.
In the dream, I’m small again, around four, with socks that never quite match and hair I tried to braid by myself. He sits at our kitchen table in Aspen Ridge, the one with the wobble in the middle. There’s a coffee mug in his hand and a stack of papers spread out like a fan. The morning light comes through the window, turning the steam into a soft halo above his cup.
“Come here, Sage,” he invites, his voice warm and familiar.
I cross the tile, and the floor feels cold under my feet even though the heater hums. He lifts me onto his lap like it’s the most natural thing in the world. His beard scrapes my cheek when he kisses me. It tickles, and I giggle, leaning into him anyway. I remember that part so clearly. The smell of coffee. The scratch of his pen. The way his hand covers mine when he helps me sign my name on a pretend contract.
“You are going to be smarter than me one day,” he tells me, tapping the paper. “Smarter and better.”
“Mom says you are the smartest person she knows,” I reply, proud of that fact, proud to be his.
His smile in the dream is so bright that it fills the whole room. “Your mom is kind,” he remarks. “But she doesn’t know everything.”
The scene shimmers. The light through the window dims. I blink, and the papers on the table change. The numbers on them twist into things I don’t recognize. Russian words. Symbols I have only seen on Luka’s office walls and on the files he watches as if they were live explosives.
When I look up, my father’s eyes aren’t gentle anymore. They look like Luka’s when he faces a threat, focused and hard. A man stands in the doorway of the kitchen. I know without knowing that it is Isaak Barinov, even though I have never seen him in this house.
“I knew you were bright, Thomas,” Isaak observes. His accent folds around the words. “I did not realize you were foolish.”
My father doesn’t look at me. He looks at Isaak and covers the papers with his hand.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” my father replies.
Isaak steps closer, his shoes making no sound. His smile is thin. “Men like you always think they decide who comes and goes.”
I try to speak, but my voice won’t work. My tongue feels glued in place. The air thickens, and my father’s arm around my waist gets tighter until I can’t breathe. Coffee turns to iron in my nose. I reach for him, but my hands slide right through his shirt.
“Daddy,” I try to call, but nothing comes out.
Isaak looks at me like he finally notices I’m there. “You should not watch this, little one,” he comments, almost kind.
The scene tilts. The kitchen walls stretch into hospital corridors and dark streets. The papers scatter and turn into snow that falls without melting. My father stands alone in the center of it all, surrounded by shadows shaped like men. I see the outline of Vega, teeth bared, a growl I can’t hear vibrating through his chest while he stands between me and every danger.
“Run,” my father mouths, but I can’t feel my legs.
I wake with the taste of coffee and copper in my mouth.
My stomach rolls so fast I barely make it to the bathroom. I drop to my knees in front of the toilet, my fingers clinging to the cool porcelain while my body tries to empty everything I have left. There is almost nothing to bring up, only sour bile and air, but my muscles keep trying. My eyes water, and sweat gathers at the back of my neck, even though the tile under my knees is cold.
I breathe through it. In. Out. In again. My throat stings, and my palms ache where they press into the floor. Eventually, the wave pulls back, leaving me shaky and hollow.
Pregnant.The word glows at the back of my mind like the faint line on the test that changed everything.
I sit back and lean against the wall, pulling my knees closer even though it makes my stomach feel unsettled again. The guest bathroom here looks like it belongs in a design magazine, all cool marble and glossy fixtures. My reflection in the mirror over the sink tells a different story. Dark circles are under my eyes, my hair is tangled from a restless night, and my skin is pale except for the flush high on my cheeks.
I close my eyes for a moment and see my father at that kitchen table again. I see him laughing and lifting me into the air while I shriek with joy. Then I see him packing a bag near the front door, his jaw tight, voice low and rough while he tells my mother he has to go. I see her grip on the doorframe and the way she refused to cry until he drove away.
I thought I knew him. The man who read me stories and made pancakes. The man who called from out of town with presents already waiting in the mail. I built memories around the pieces he left behind, like they were enough to form a whole person.
Last night in the hallway, hiding just out of sight, I heard Isaak talk about him differently, not as a father, but as a man who had been useful before he became a problem. Hearing Isaak admit to having him killed sliced through a part of me I didn’t realize I had been guarding. But the facts line up in a way I can’t ignore. If my father and my uncle Ray worked with the Barinov Bratva, took money and made decisions in that world, then I didn’t know Thomas Bellamy the way I thought I did. There was an entire part of his life my mother wouldn’t talk about. She always brushed it off, saying he left and that was that. No details or stories. Just silence that got heavier every year.
Now I understand why. He left us first. That came long before Isaak’s decision. My father packed a bag and walked out of our lives when Hope was still small enough to fit in his arms. He chose whatever he was doing with Ray and the Bratva over us. He chose the numbers on those papers over bedtime stories, school lunches, and college tours.
Isaak might have ordered something terrible later that I’m not ready to forgive, but my father set his own course long before that. The ache in my chest comes from both directions. From thechild in me who wanted him to stay, and from the woman in me who now sees the man he actually was.
Another wave of nausea rises, but it passes more quickly this time. I reach for the sink and pull myself up. The room tilts for a second, then settles. I splash cool water on my face, letting it drip down my neck, and grip the edge of the counter until the faint trembling in my hands eases. I look at myself again. My reflection looks frightened, tired, and a little lost. It also looks like someone standing on the edge of a choice.
