For the first time in years, I do not feel like aPakhan. Or a man who has spent half his life striking down enemies. For the first time in years, I feel like Maksim. Afather.
I thought the pride would come with a rush of anger. Anger for the years I missed, for the first steps I never saw, the words I never heard. But there’s no room for that here. Not while I’m watching him sprint into her waiting arms, laughing as she lifts him up and spins him around.
They’re safe.
They’re alive.
That’s all that matters.
Anton’s followers didn’t die easily. Men like them never do. They cling to power like a disease, infecting everything they touch. He had allies in places I couldn’t reach without cutting off limbs I still needed. So I spent the years dismantling his organization piece by piece. A loyalist here, a business front there.
Some went quietly. Most didn’t.
It was ugly work, even by Bratva standards, but it was necessary.
When it was finally over, his network burned to the ground, his name erased from our table, I didn’t stay to bask in the quiet and the aftermath of peace. I started looking for her.
Ivy disappeared like she’d been born to vanish. No credit trail, no public work history after she’d come back to the States.
For weeks, I hunted her ghost the same way I’d hunted Anton’s men, with relentless patience.
If not for a few lucky breaks, I might still be searching. A half-sister’s carelessness—a social media account left unlocked, a tagged photo where Ivy’s half face lingered just out of frame. From there, it was a thread. Fragile and delicate. I pulled it until it led me here.
To her. Tohim.
That boy has no idea who I am. That I’ve bled for him without ever holding him. That every time I should’ve given up in those long, brutal years of war, I told myself I needed to stay alive for something. For someone.
Now I know where my heart had been tugging toward.
They play for a while, Ivy chasing him between the playground and the open grass. Her laughter sounds the same as it used to in the quiet moments I’ve replayed a thousand times in my head.
Her sister lingers nearby.
She’s watchful, protective. The kind of woman who notices details no one else does. Who would sniff out an intruder by skill alone. If she saw me right now, she’d know I didn’t belong here.She would drag Ivy and the boy away and never let me close again.
Thankfully, she doesn’t see me. No one does.
I lean against a tree at the edge of the park, my coat collar turned up to block the lower half of my face, my figure blending in with the shadows from my dark clothing.
When the sun begins to dip, families start to scatter. Ivy gathers their things, the little boy chattering at her side, her sister rising from the bench with her hands stretched over her head. Ivy tugs his jacket zipper up to his chin with a careful hand, smoothing his hair back from his face with a gentle sweep.
He talks the entire time they leave, words spilling too fast for me to catch from this distance, his hands waving, his expression animated. Ivy laughs at something he says, tilting her head toward him in that familiar way I remember so well.
It cuts me, how much I’ve missed out on these past few years.
I follow them at a distance when they leave the park.
My steps are soundless, my pace measured. Always just far enough not to be seen, close enough to intervene if the world so much asthreatensthem. I know the risk of letting myself do this, of trailing them like some phantom tethered to their shadows. But after seven years of hell, I’m not ready to leave them just yet.
Their route takes them down quieter streets, away from the main road where traffic hums steadily and people cluster in tight groups. Down this way, it’s more residential. Streetlamps start to flicker on, throwing cones of yellow light down onto the sidewalk.
The boy runs up the walkway to a pale-blue house with white trim. The front window curtains are drawn but warm light warms from within, hinting at life inside. It’s the kind of house people pass without noticing, that no one marks as remarkable.
He barrels through the gate and up the steps, tugging on the handle before Ivy arrives with the key. She unlocks the door, holding it open wide as he rushes inside like a storm. Her laugh follows him, softer, weary but fond.
Lettie lingers, though. She pauses on the threshold, scanning the street. She’s sharper than most would give her credit for. Her eyes sweep the sidewalks, the shadows, the parked cars out front.
Her gaze slides over me where I’m tucked between a neighbor's overgrown bushes. For a moment, my breath stills, but her attention keeps moving, skimming past me.
