"Kira wants to meet her. She remembers what it was like to be thrown into this world without warning. She thinks she might be able to help."
Kira. My brother's wife, who started as a captive and became something else entirely. Who found her footing in our bloody world and built a life that actually looks like happiness.
"Maybe," I say. "When things are more stable."
"Things may never be more stable. That's the nature of our lives." A pause. "Don't isolate her, Misha. Whatever you're feeling—guilt, responsibility, something else—don't let it convince you that distance is protection. It isn't. Take it from someone who learned that lesson the hard way."
I don't have a response to that. Dmitri doesn't seem to expect one.
"I'll be in touch," he says. "Stay sharp, brother."
"Always."
The line goes dead. I set the phone down and stare at the wall, my brother's words echoing in my mind.
Don't isolate her. Distance isn't protection.
He's right about that too. But I don't know how to be close to her without wanting things I have no right to want. Without remembering what it felt like to hold her, dance with her, watch her fall asleep in my arms.
That man is gone. The man who bought her at an auction, who threatens dismemberment, who has killed people—that's who I am now. That's who she sees when she looks at me.
I can't blame her for flinching.
***
Dusk comes slowly, the gray light fading to purple and then to black.
I tell myself I'm walking the perimeter for security reasons. Checking sight lines, evaluating the new camera positions, making sure the guards are alert at their posts. It's what I would normally do—what I should be doing, with Sergei Morozov circling like a shark.
But my path takes me past the greenhouse, and I find myself slowing.
There's light inside. A lantern, flickering behind the grimy glass. She's in there again—or still. I can see her silhouette moving among the dead plants, bending to examine something, straightening to move to the next row.
I should keep walking. Give her space. Let her have this one thing that isn't about me.
Instead, I stop. Watch.
She's touching the leaves of a fern—one of the few things still alive in there. Her fingers are gentle, careful, the hands of someone trained to heal. She leans closer, examining the fronds, probably assessing whether it can be saved.
The image hits me somewhere I wasn't expecting.
My mother used to do the same thing. Stand in that exact spot, her dark hair pinned up against the humidity, her fingers moving over leaves and stems with the same focused attention. I was seven the first time she brought me in there, showed me how to repot a seedling, explained how roots needed room to grow.
Everything alive needs space to become what it's meant to be, she told me.You can't force growth. You can only create the conditions for it.
I didn't understand then. I was a child, more interested in the earthworms I found in the soil than in philosophical lessons about nurturing.
I understand now.
My mother has been dead for seventeen years. The greenhouse has been abandoned almost as long—a mausoleumfor her memory, too painful to tend but impossible to tear down. I haven't set foot inside it in over a decade.
But I gave it to Bianca without thinking. Offered it up like a gift, not realizing until this moment what I was actually giving away.
She moves to another plant, this one clearly dead, and begins pulling the withered stalks from the pot. Making room for something new. Creating conditions for growth.
I watch until the cold seeps through my jacket, until my fingers go numb in my pockets. Then I force myself to turn away, to continue my circuit of the perimeter.
Distance isn't protection, Dmitri said.
