“Elena cannot stay with you,” Dario continued. “She needs time. Real time. Doctors we choose. Security we control. Spaceto heal. Away from...” His gaze flicked to the blood staining Ruslan’s shirt. “...all of this.”
Ruslan didn’t look at Dario.
Not once.
His eyes remained fixed on me as if the rest of the room had dissolved.
“I know where your father lives,” he said.
The words sucked the oxygen from my lungs.
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
“The man who orchestrated the plane crash that killed your mother and your little brother.”
The past didn’t return gently. It detonated.
My mother’s laughter in the kitchen. The way she used to brush my hair back from my face and call me her stubborn star. My little brother—seven years old, gap-toothed, clutching his toy airplane in the terminal, waving at me because I’d refused to go on that trip after a stupid teenage argument.
The news footage of a plane explosion that took my little brother and my mother.
Five of us once — my father, my mother, my elder sister, me, and my little brother.
Then three. My sister, my father, and me.
Then two — just my sister and me.
Then...
Only me.
I had believed my father died in the plane crash alongside my mother and brother.
I had mourned him as if he were already gone.
I had cried until my body gave out, believing he had been inside that aircraft too.
Until Ruslan, with that same detached calm, told me the truth months ago.
He hadn’t died.
He had planned his disappearance.
To this day, I cannot understand why a father would fake his death and leave behind children who had no one left.
My hands trembled violently as I signed.
“I have no business with him.”
Ethan translated, voice tight.
“Or with you.”
That part I signed slower. Sharper. So there would be no misunderstanding.
I stepped closer to Dario and gripped his forearm.
His sleeve was cool beneath my fingers, the solid muscle under it grounding. I half-hid behind him without shame. I had fought enough battles alone.
