Sasha and Noemi are asleep on the bed behind me, curled up together under the thin blanket I pulled from the closet. He cried himself to sleep about an hour ago, sobbing into her shoulder about his books and his toys and all the things we had to leave behind when we ran from that hotel. She held him and stroked his hair and whispered soft words, and eventually his body stopped shaking and his breathing evened out and he drifted off with his face still pressed against her neck.
This motel was the only place with a vacancy when we stumbled in after midnight, one king bed with a mattress that sags in the middle and sheets that haven't been white in years. Not exactly the five-star suite we left behind, but it's got four walls and a lock on the door and right now that's all I can ask for.
I sit on the edge of the mattress and watch their reflection in the cracked mirror as they sleep, and I try to figure out how everything went so wrong so fast.
We were close. We were so damn close, I could almost taste it. But Marat has contacts in Moscow everywhere and someone saw me coming.
I don't know how they found us. All I know is that one minute I was watching the safehouse from across the street and the next, I got a threatening message from one of Koslov's men saying my "wife and child" weren't safe. When I saw that, I knew right away that they were watching the hotel and knew about Sasha and Noemi.
We left everything behind. The clothes, the books, the tablet Sasha uses to watch his movies, the toys he'd started collecting since coming to live with me. All of it's still sitting in that hotel room while we drove around all night until we found this shithole. It was the only place with vacancy that didn't expect a credit card or my legal name.
Noemi hasn't spoken to me since I told her the truth of who I am in the car. Now she knows what a monster I am and how dangerous being with me really is. Any glimmer of hope I had that she would come around and willingly be with me is gone. I watch that hope drain from her eyes as tears filled them at the mention of the word "Bratva."
I don't blame her. I wouldn't want me either if I had a choice in the matter.
The bed creaks when I shift my weight and I freeze to make sure I haven't woken them. Sasha's breathing stays slow and steady tucked against Noemi's side, and she doesn't stir. So I ease myself off the mattress and move toward the balcony door, pulling my cigarettes from my jacket pocket as I go.
The night air is cold enough to see my breath when I step outside, and I light up and take a long drag that burns all the way down to my lungs. The balcony is barely big enough for one person to stand on, rusted railing and cracked concrete. It overlooks the parking lot where a neon sign flashes "vacancy" with the V burnt out and the rest of the sign flickering. Places like these are meant for drifters, not men with serious missions, but I can't take the risk of Koslov finding me again.
I stand there smoking, wondering what my life has become. I just found out I'm a father and I already feel like I'm failing my son. I wanted to comfort him when he was crying. I wanted to hold him and tell him everything would be okay, but the words wouldn't come out. They got stuck somewhere in my throat and all I could do was stand there like a useless piece of furniture while Noemi did the job I should've been doing.
The cigarette burns down between my fingers and I light another one off the end of it, chain-smoking the way I used to when I was young and stupid and thought I was invincible. The cold seeps through my jacket but I don't go back inside because I can't be in that room right now. I can't lie there next to them pretending to sleep while my brain runs in circles chasing its own tail. All I can think about is how my boy is hurting because his mother is dead and life has only dealt him a shit hand ever since. It makes my chest ache the way it did years ago of my own parents.
A memory surfaces, one I've been pushing down for years and years. My father's funeral, or what passed for one in our world. I was eight years old and I didn't understand what was happening, or that he was never coming back, and when it finally hit me I started to cry.
Viktor grabbed me by the arm and dragged me away from the grave before anyone could see my tears. My father's brotherwas supposed to take care of me now that my father was gone forever. He pulled me behind a shed and hit me so hard I saw stars, and when I fell down he kicked me in the ribs and told me to get up. He told me that Gravitch men don't cry about anything, and it was my baptism into all things Gravitch.
I was black and blue for a week after that beating. I couldn't take a deep breath without my ribs screaming, or lift my arms over my head. But I learned the lesson he was trying to teach me so well I never forgot it. I stopped crying. I stopped showing any emotion at all.
When Viktor died a few years later, shot in the back by someone he thought was a friend, I didn't shed a single tear for him. I stood at his grave the same way I'd stood at my father's but this time I felt nothing, or at least that's what I told myself at the time.
The truth is I felt rage and relief and a sick kind of satisfaction that the man who beat me for grieving was finally gone. But I didn't show any of it because I'd learned my lesson too well by then.
The problem is I never stopped feeling things. I just stopped knowing how to let my feelings out. All those emotions got locked up somewhere deep inside me where no one could touch them, and now they're rotting there, turning into something bitter that I can't seem to break through no matter how much I want to.
My son needed comfort tonight and I couldn't give it to him. I stood there with my hands useless at my sides while he cried and sobbed and I hated myself for it. I hate the way I've become exactly the kind of father I swore I'd never be. Cold and distant and useless.
The words I read in Noemi's journal are wrong. I don't deserve any of her praise or any hope that I might be better than I am right now. I'm a monster and I don't think that will ever change.
The balcony door slides open behind me and I don't turn around, but I know it's her from the soft sound of her footsteps and the way she breathes in the cold air.
"You left the door open," she says quietly. "The room is freezing now."
"Sorry."
She moves up beside me and leans against the railing with her arms wrapped around herself to ward off the cold. She's wearing one of my shirts because all her clothes are back in the hotel, and her hair is messy from sleep and her eyes are tired.
"You should come inside," she says. "It's late and you need to rest."
"I can't sleep."
She doesn't push. She just stands there with me in the cold, and I take another drag of my cigarette and blow the smoke out into the night. The silence between us is tense now because she knows who I really am. I keep waiting for her to explode and run, and part of me believes she will eventually, but part of me still wonders what she's thinking. I had her wrong this whole time, thinking she hated me but it isn't what her journal revealed to me.
"Why do you write those things," I ask finally. "In your journal. The things you write about me."
She's quiet for a moment, and I wonder if she's going to answer or if she's going to walk back inside and leave me out here alone with my thoughts and regrets.
"I write what's true," she says after a while. "So I can remember that good things exist, even when I'm scared or upset or angry at the world. Even when everything feels like it's falling apart around me." She pauses and I feel her eyes on the side of my face. "There are good things in you, Fyodor. I know you don't believe that, but I see them. I see how hard you're trying even when you don't know what you're doing."
