"And yet."
"And yet," I agree spreading my hands in front of me.
He picks up the coffee. Sets it down again without drinking. A tell. Yury doesn't have many, but that's one. It means he's angry and choosing not to show it, which is somehow worse than if he showed it.
"Your cousins managed," he says. "Vitali. Leon. Avros. Even your brother, and we all know how he felt about it. All of themfound a way. Some of them found a way in less-than-ideal circumstances, but they still found a way."
"Their circumstances were different."
"Their circumstances were comparable. The point is not the difference, Iosif. The point is the commitment. You gave your word."
I lean back in my chair. Look at the man who raised me after my parents died. When he was barely a man himself. Broad shoulders, sharp eyes. Hands that have done things I'll never ask about, clasped on his knee with the stillness of a man who learned patience the hard way.
He's right. I gave my word.
"I love her," I say.
He blinks. It's the closest I've ever seen Yury come to surprise.
"I know you love her," he says. "I knew it that first morning when you stood in your kitchen and told me you wouldn't use her. I'm not questioning whether you love her. I'm questioning why loving her didn't produce the outcome we agreed on."
"Because I refuse to rush her."
"Rush her." Flat. "It's been five months. Women know what they want, especially women as clever and clear-headed as Mia."
"She's been through something most people don't survive, Yury. She killed a man. She lost her entire life and rebuilt it inside mine. She has a job she went back to because she needed something that was hers. She has a best friend she’s had to lie to for months. She's twenty-four. I wasn't going to put a ring on her finger and a baby in her belly on a timeline dictated by family politics."
"So instead, you let the deadline pass."
"Yes."
"Knowing the consequences."
"Yes."
He's quiet. The office is quiet. Through the closed door I can hear the faint sounds of the house, Pavlina in the kitchen, a door closing somewhere upstairs. Mia is up there. She was still asleep when I came down, her hair fanned across my pillow, one hand resting on the space where I'd been.
Five months. She's been in my house for five months, and every single one of them has confirmed what I knew the first night. She belongs here. With me. In my chair with her feet tucked under her, in my bed with her back against my chest, in my kitchen arguing with Pavlina about whether garlic belongs in porridge, which was a conversation I never expected to witness and which lasted forty-five minutes.
She's mine. I'm hers. That part isn't in question.
The part in question is the heir.
"I'll accept the consequences," I say. "Whatever you decide. Remove me from the inner circle. Restructure my share. Whatever it is, I'll take it. But I won't apologize for putting her wellbeing above a deadline."
Yury looks at me for a long time. His expression is unreadable, which means he's feeling several things at once and hasn't decided which one to lead with.
"You are," he says slowly, "the most stubborn man I have ever raised. And I raised five of you."
He opens his mouth to say something further, and that's when the door opens.
No knock. No warning. The door swings inward and Mia is standing there in one of my shirts, just the shirt, bare legs, hair unbrushed. She's holding something in her hand and her face is doing something I've never seen it do before.
She's shaking.
Not the way she shook that first night. Not fear. This is different. This is adrenaline and shock and something underneath both that looks, from where I'm sitting, a lot like joy.
"Iosif—" She stops. Sees Yury. The color drains from her face and floods back in the space of a second. "Oh god. I'm sorry. I didn't know you had a meeting. I'll come back."
