That’s enough. That has to be enough right now.
I step out from the tree line and level the gun at Popov’s two remaining men before they could move. Without their leader, they look exactly like what they are—men whose only certainty just hit the ground.
“Drop it,” I yell. My voice comes out steadier than I have any right to. “Both of you. Now.”
Their arms move slowly as they raise them, their weapons slipping from their fingers and hitting the ground.
Timur and Nikolai move immediately, Timur barking in Russian as they close in.“Ruki vverkh! Na grebanoy zemle!On the ground!”
Popov’s two thugs go to their knees without further argument, hands laced behind their heads. Whatever fight was in them has gone with their fallen boss.
I keep the gun up until they are secured. Then I lower it, and my arm drops like the weight of it has finally arrived all at once.
Hannah is a few feet away, absolutely still, her eyes moving between me and Nikolai and the man on the ground. She hasn’t made a sound.
I drop the gun and rush to Hannah.
She comes into my arms before I’ve fully reached her—her whole body shaking, fingers gripping the back of my shirt with a strength that doesn’t belong on a four-year-old. I hold her against me, press my face into her hair and breathe her in, and for a moment nothing else exists. Not the yard, not the bodies, not the pale morning opening up around us. Just her. Her weight, her smell, the specific way she tucks her head under my chin like she always has.
“It’s okay, baby. Mommy’s here,” I murmur into her hair. “I’ve got you.”
She doesn’t answer. She just holds on tighter.
I run my hands over her—arms, back, legs—searching for anything wrong. Her clothes are filthy, her hair matted, but she’s not hurt. Nothing broken. Nothing bleeding. She’s whole, she’s in my arms, and I have to close my eyes for a moment against the force of the relief.
“Nikolai saved me,” she whispers. So quietly I almost miss it.
I pull back just enough to look at her face, then follow her gaze.
He’s standing a few feet away, watching us. The makeshift bandaging on his thigh and arm is already soaked through. His shirt is torn, his knuckles raw, blood dried in dark streaks across his chest and jaw. He’s been shot twice and beaten and he’s still upright through what appears to be sheer will, because there’s nothing else left holding him up that I can see.
The corners of his eyes are wet.
He’s not hiding it, not even trying—just standing there in the early light, watching the two of us, and letting it show.
He closes the distance slowly, one hand finding my back, the other coming to rest on Hannah’s hair. And then his arms are around both of us, and Hannah shifts to accept him without hesitation.
We stay like that, just the three of us, in the middle of all of it. All while the morning continues to open up around us, indifferent and unhurried, the same as it always is.
I press my face against his shoulder and feel him exhale—long and slow, like something he’s been carrying for years has finally been set down.
I understand the feeling.
Hannah pulls back from Nikolai’s chest just far enough to look up at him. Her eyes—his eyes, that particular shade of blue I stopped being able to look at without feeling the loss of him—search his face with the focused seriousness that she gets sometimes, the expression that makes her seem much older than she is.
“Are you really my daddy?”
The question lands in the silence like something fragile.
Nikolai goes very still. I watch something move across his face—not surprise, but the particular pain of a moment you’ve imagined so many times that the real version catches you off guard.
His jaw tightens.
His throat works.
He looks at me once, briefly, and I give him the smallest nod.
He lowers himself carefully, favouring his wounded leg, until he’s level with Hannah. He takes her small hands in both of his and holds them there gently, like something he’s been waiting a long time to hold.
