“She made sure they had everything. Tutors. Clean uniforms. Maids who rotated like soldiers on shift.” He pauses. “Not one ever lasted more than six months.”
“She didn’t like them getting attached,” I mutter.
“No,” Oleg says. “She didn’t like being compared.”
Of course she didn’t. Tatiana never raised those boys. She oversaw them. Like assets. Like future tools in her war chest.
“She said affection made them soft,” Oleg adds. “So, she hired structure. Hired rules. Hired order. But she never gave them herself.”
And now Bella walks in, stitches a project back together with a piece of thread and a tired smile, and they look at her like she hung the moon.
Because she did the one thing neither Irina ever could.
She showed up.
And she actually cared.
I push the tray away slightly. Appetite gone.
Oleg doesn’t move.
“She didn’t just keep them busy,” he says. “She saw them. Listened. She put that broken school project together like it was war prep. No complaints. No theatrics. Just—quiet. Calm.”
“She’s not their mother.”
“She doesn’t need to be,” he says. “But tonight… she seemed like one.”
The silence lands hard. I feel it in my chest—like a blow I wasn’t braced for.
Chyort voz’mi.
I push back from the counter and pace a step to the side like it’ll help burn the feeling off. It doesn’t.
I’ve known Oleg for fifteen years. Since the days when I was Anatoly’s shadow with blood on my hands and no idea what the fuck softness looked like. Oleg’s seen every version of me—from the man who couldn’t hold a relationship longer than a week to the one standing over a crib wondering how the hell to raise a daughter with a wife who wouldn’t come home.
He never offered advice. Never overstepped. Just stayed. Fed me. Protected the kids. Made sure I didn’t fall all the way apart.
I’ve never once raised my voice to him. Because you don’t bark at the man who pieces your world back together while pretending he’s just setting out dinner.
He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need to.
Instead, he looks at his phone. Reads something. Tucks it away.
Then, quietly: “ThePakhanwants to see you.”
I head downstairs. The hall outside my father’s private study is empty, just like it always is this late. Except for one of the guards—who gives me a nod and opens the door without a word.
Anatoly Belov is not a man you interrupt.
He’s already pouring a drink when I enter, his back to me. His reflection in the glass shows eyes that haven’t dulled despite the years.
“So,” he says, “the groom returns.”
“I need you to step down,” I answer.
He turns. Slowly. Like the weight of the empire still sits on his shoulders—and maybe it does.
“The wedding’s barely cold,” he says, sipping whatever sixty-year-old poison he favors tonight. “And already you want my chair.”
