“I have one family,” he said, voice low and vibrating with violence. “Amy. She’s dead.” His eyes burned, wild and merciless. “Everyone else—including you—holds zero value to me. None of you were there when it mattered. Not one of you.” He leaned closer, every word sharpened to a blade. “So shut your mouth. Or I’ll make you.”
For one terrible second, I thought he might actually hurt her.
But the woman didn’t flinch. She didn’t step back. She simply lowered her gaze, accepting the blow with a quiet dignity that twisted something deep in my chest.
“Understood,” she said calmly. “Medication will be delivered tonight. Bring her at five tomorrow. I’ll personally see her.”
She lifted her eyes one last time, sadness flickering through them like a dying flame.
“See you when you decide you’re ready,” she added softly. “...brother.”
Then she turned and walked away, heels clicking lightly against the pavement until the darkness swallowed her whole.
The silence that followed felt like a held breath—thick, suffocating.
Ruslan stood motionless for several long seconds.
His chest rose and fell slowly, deliberately, as though he were wrestling something monstrous back into its cage.
Moonlight caught in his hair, along the sharp planes of his face, turning him into a statue carved from fury.
Then he turned to me.
“Get in the car,” he said flatly. “We’re not done.”
Panic flared hot in my gut.
I opened my mouth—tried to ask where, tried to plead, to explain—but he cut me off without looking back.
“You’re mute, not deaf,” he said coldly. “You heard the doctor. No more forcing words until she examines you tomorrow.”
The reprimand stung. But beneath it—buried deep—was something else. Not kindness. Something sharper. Something almost like... concern.
I swallowed. My throat burned, but the pain was less now. Dull instead of blinding. Manageable.
“A... actually...” I forced out, voice cracking like glass under pressure. “I... I’m... d-deaf too.”
He stopped.
Turned.
Stared at me as if I’d just spoken in another language.
For a heartbeat, there was no rage. Just disbelief.
“My son made me marry a beautiful deaf-and-mute woman,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. His brow furrowed as if the sheer absurdity of it had only just landed. “Unbelievable.”
I took a breath—shallow, careful—and pushed again, each word scraping raw flesh.
“Di... vorce me.”
The word tasted like blood and fear.
His lips curved—not in a smile, but something colder. Humorless.
“No.”
He clenched his fist at his side and looked up at the moon instead of at me, as though my request offended the universe itself.
