Misha brought me flowers from the garden. Wildflowers, the kind that grow along the wall where the gardeners never bother to weed. He said they reminded him of me—growing where they're not supposed to, refusing to be tamed. I laughed, but I wanted to cry. He sees so much, my Misha. Too much for a boy his age. I pray this world doesn't break him.
The words blur. I blink hard, forcing them back into focus.
I remember that day. I was thirteen, maybe fourteen. I'd found a patch of wildflowers growing in a crack in the wall—stubborn things, pushing up through stone, blooming despite everything. I'd picked a handful and brought them to her, not knowing why, just knowing she would understand.
She'd smiled and put them in a vase on her workbench. They'd lasted for days.
I'd forgotten that. Buried it along with everything else from before.
Anna asked me today why Papa is always angry, another entry reads.I didn't know what to tell her. How do you explain to a child that her father loves her, but that love in our world comes wrapped in violence? That the same hands that hold her at night have done terrible things in the daylight?
I told her that Papa loves us the only way he knows how. That sometimes love looks different than we expect.
I'm not sure she believed me. I'm not sure I believe myself.
I close the journal. My hands are trembling.
My mother. Her thoughts, her fears, her hopes. All of it preserved in these pages, buried in the greenhouse she loved, waiting seventeen years for someone to find it.
For Bianca to find it.
I sit in the darkness, the journal pressed against my chest, and let the grief I've been outrunning for half my life finally catch up with me.
***
The phone rings sometime later. I don't know how long I've been sitting here—minutes, hours. The room is still dark,the only light coming from the moon through the window. The shadows have shifted, grown longer, but I haven't moved.
I check the screen. Anna.
For a moment, I consider letting it go to voicemail. I'm not in any state to talk to anyone, let alone my sister. Anna has always been able to see through me, to find the cracks in my armor that I hide from everyone else. Tonight, I'm nothing but cracks.
But Anna has a sixth sense for when something is wrong, and ignoring her will only make her more persistent. She'll call back. And again. And again. Until I answer or until she shows up at my door, demanding to know what's wrong.
I answer. "Anna."
"You sound terrible." No preamble, no greeting. Classic Anna. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Long day."
"Liar." I hear movement on her end—pacing, probably. She paces when she's worried, just like Dmitri. "I talked to our brother. He told me about Sergei, about the reinforcements he sent. He also told me about the woman."
"Her name is Bianca."
"Bianca." Anna rolls the name around like she's tasting it. "The one you dated two years ago. The one you've apparently been obsessing over ever since."
"I wasn't obsessing."
"Dmitri says you had her under surveillance for two years."
"That was security."
"That was obsession, Misha. There's a difference." Her voice softens slightly. "I'm not judging. I'm just... worried. This isn't like you. You don't do impulsive. You don't do emotional. And then you spend five million dollars at an auction for a woman you barely know?"
"I know her."
"You knew her for four months, two years ago. That's not knowing someone. That's infatuation."
I think about Bianca in the corridor, dirt under her fingernails, handing me a piece of my mother I didn't know existed. The way she didn't push, didn't pry, just gave and then stepped back. The way she stood in my office this morning and demanded to be included, not shielded.
