That’s Yakov?Adrik blinked. The man was at least two inches taller than he was.
“Yakov?” he asked, just to be sure.
“That’s me,” Yakov said with a grin, switching fully into Russian as he stepped close and kissed Adrik on both cheeks. Adrik returned the gesture automatically, still trying to reconcile the voice he knew with the man in front of him.
“Happy to finally meet you in person,” Adrik said.
Yakov clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Your grandfather would have been proud of you. That man loved you very much.”
The words about his grandfather really surprised him. His chest tightened. “I know. I loved him too.”
Yakov nodded once, like that settled something, then grabbed Adrik’s bag and tossed it into the back of an old SUV. “Come. Long drive.”
The moment the car heater kicked in, the exhaustion caught up with him. The hum of the engine, the blur of snowy roads, the weight of everything—his mother, the distance, the fear—pulled him under. He drifted off without meaning to.
A hand shook his shoulder gently. “Adrik. Wake up. Checkpoint.”
He blinked awake, disoriented. Bright lights, uniformed guards, the heavy gates of Seversk looming ahead. Yakov handled the paperwork, the questions, and the scrutiny. Adrik sat frozen, breath shallow, trying not to imagine the next thing falling apart.
Once they were cleared, Yakov drove him deeper into the city and eventually pulled up to a large house, bigger than Adrik expected, quiet and dark except for a single lamp in the entryway.
“This is your mother’s home,” Yakov said. “Eat something. Then we’ll go to the hospital.”
Adrik nodded, throat tight. He stepped inside, the warmth and familiarity of his mother’s things hitting him all at once. The place smelled faintly of her perfume.
He wandered through the rooms, touching the back of a chair, the edge of a picture frame, anything to ground himself. On the kitchen counter, he spotted her phone. He hesitated only a second before picking it up.
He scrolled through her contacts, searching for anything that might help him understand what she’d been doing here. Then he froze.
Sergei’s number. And an address.
He stared at it, pulse thudding.
He’s here. In Seversk.
Adrik transferred the information to his phone and put his mother’s down and let it continue to charge.
And his mother was somewhere in a hospital bed and waiting for him.
He exhaled slowly, trying to steady himself.
Tomorrow, he’ll face Sergei.Tonight, he needed to get to her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Adrik
Seversk, Russia
Adrik stepped out ofthe house and instantly turned to ice, literally. The cold slapped him in the face so hard his eyes watered. He stopped halfway to Yakov’s car, boots crunching in the thick snow.
“What is wrong with this weather?” Adrik muttered, pulling his jacket tighter.
Yakov opened the passenger door with one gloved hand. “It’s minus fifteen Celsius.”
Adrik blinked. “So… really what?”
“Five degrees Fahrenheit,” Yakov said, like it was nothing.
