I type back before I can overthink it:I hope everything's okay.
It will be. Goodnight, solnyshko.
"You're smiling," Amanda accuses. "You're smiling at your phone like an in love woman!"
"I am not."
"You absolutely are." She grins, and for a moment, she looks lighter. Less haunted by empty rooms and absent parents. "Oh my God, you actuallylikehim."
I throw a pillow at her head.
She catches it, laughing, and suddenly we're both laughing, and the wine is spilling, and Amanda's apartment doesn't feel so empty anymore.
Neither does my chest.
Dmitri
The door to my office opens without a knock.
Karolina walks in. Her dark hair is pulled back, and her eyes carry exhaustion she's trying to hide. She settles into the leather chair across from my desk.
My sister. The psychiatrist. The one who escaped this world only to keep getting pulled back in.
"How are you handling it?" she asks.
I pour two glasses of vodka. Slide one across the desk. "Fine."
"Dmitri."
"I said fine."
She takes the glass but doesn't drink. Just watches me with that look she probably gives her patients. The one that saysI see through your bullshit.
"You've been in this office for three hours," she says. "Everyone else is with him."
"Someone has to manage things."
"Manage what? It's two in the morning."
I don't answer. Karolina sets her untouched glass on the desk. "Why do you do this?"
"Do what?"
"Pull back into yourself. Every time something hurts, you disappear. You become..." She gestures at me. "This. The pakhan. The weapon. Like the rest of you doesn't exist."
My jaw tightens. "There's work to be done."
"There's always work to be done. That's not an answer." She leans forward. "Talk to me. Not as your sister trying to fix you. Just... talk. When's the last time you told anyone how you actually feel?"
The question lands somewhere uncomfortable.
"I don't know," I admit.
Karolina nods slowly. "I do."
"Karolina—"
"Father loved Mother," she says, and her voice is steady in that clinical way she's perfected. "Loved her more than anything in this world. More than the Bratva. More than power. Definitely more than us."
