“I wish I could’ve helped sooner,” I say.
She looks at me.
“That sounded dangerously sincere.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
She smiles, but it’s gentler now.
Then: “What about you? What was it like growing up in your world?”
I glance at the guards. At the street.
And then I answer.
“Structured. Brutal. My father didn’t believe in affection. He believed in discipline. Every success was expected. Anything less was punished.”
“Sounds… nurturing.”
“My first bulletproof vest was a birthday gift. Tatiana taught me to lie before she taught me to read. Yelena taught me how to stand still while men screamed in my face.”
She winces. “So that’s why you’re hard on your boys.”
“I’m not hard. I’m precise. I teach them how to survive.”
“And who taught you to love?”
I pause.
Then: “No one.”
She doesn’t flinch. She listens like it’s oxygen.
Like there’s nothing in the world more important than me choking out pieces of a childhood I’ve buried six feet deep.
“And Irina?” she asks.
The air shifts.
“I never loved her,” I say. “It was obligation. A merger. We were paper. Not people.”
Like us.
Her face drops.
I hate that look. That flicker of sadness. Like I’m something to pity.
Then—without warning—her fingers brush against mine. Barely there. Soft. Hesitant.
Like she forgot.
Forgot this isn’t real. Forgot she’s not really my wife. Forgot I’m not someone built for moments like this.
“But you love the kids,” she says, her thumb now tracing the back of my knuckles. “I’ve seen it. The way you are with them. It’s not something you were taught. It’s just… there.”
I don’t move.
Because if I do, I’ll break the spell—or worse, lean into it.
