I go still.
"When she died, he didn't know what to do with that love. So he poured it into making you into something. A weapon. A legacy. Something to be proud of." She pauses. "He forgot he was supposed to love his children too. Not just shape them."
"He did what he had to do."
"He asked more and more from you. Every time you succeeded, the bar moved higher. Every time you proved yourself, he found another test." Her eyes hold mine. "You were never enough, Dmitri. Not because you failed. Because he couldn't let you be enough. If you were enough, he'd have to stop. He'd have to actuallyseeyou instead of her ghost."
My hand tightens around the empty glass. "I don't need therapy sessions."
"No, you need someone to tell you the truth." Karolina stands, smoothing her dress. "You're terrified that without the weapon, without the pakhan, there's nothing left. That Father was right to keep pushing because maybe there really isn't more to you than what he built."
"Karolina."
"But there is." She walks around the desk, stops beside my chair. Her hand rests on my shoulder—a rare touch in a family that shows affection through loyalty, not contact. "I've seen it. Aleksander's seen it. Even Natalia, who worships the ground you walk on, knows there's a man under all that armor."
I don't move. Don't breathe.
"Father is dying," she says softly. "And when he's gone, you get to decide who you become. You can keep being the weapon he forged. Or you can figure out who Dmitri Baganov actually is."
She squeezes my shoulder once, then releases.
"I'll be with the others. When you're ready."
The door clicks shut behind her.
Karolina is right.
I know she's right.
The leather chair creaks as I lean back, staring at the ceiling. Shadows stretch across the plaster, moving with the flicker of the desk lamp. Somewhere down the hall, my family gathers around our dying father. And I'm here. Alone. Doing exactly what she accused me of.
Pulling back. Disappearing into the weapon.
The vodka burns going down. I pour another.
Here's what Karolina doesn't understand—what none of them understand. Iknowwhat I am. I've always known. The coldness isn't armor I put on. It's not a defense mechanism I developed to survive our father's impossible standards.
It's just... me.
Some people are warm. They feel things easily, express them freely. They cry at funerals and laugh at weddings and their emotions flow like water, natural and uncomplicated. Aleksander is like that. Natalia too.
I'm not.
I never have been.
When Mother died, I was eighteen. Old enough to understand death. Old enough to watch my father crumble into something unrecognizable. My siblings wept. They held each other. They needed comfort.
I stood apart. Not because I didn't love her. I did. But the grief didn't come out in tears. It settled somewhere deeper. It became something I carried rather than something I released.
Father noticed. Of course he noticed.
"You're strong,"he told me that night, while my brothers slept and my sisters cried themselves into exhaustion."The others feel too much. But you're like me. You'll be pakhan someday."
He meant it as praise.
Maybe it was.
Karolina thinks I can change. That once Father dies, I'll have some choice about who to become. Like I've been playing a role all these years, waiting for permission to be someone different.
