“Ah,” he says softly. “Now I understand.”
Aleksei’s voice goes flat. “Get out.”
His mother says, weak but clear, “Enough.”
All three of us look at her.
She’s pushed herself slightly upright in the bed, breath shorter now, but her eyes are sharp with something that makes all the male violence in the room feel briefly childish.
“I am ill,” she says. “Not dead. I will not have this at my bedside.”
The father’s smile fades. Not completely. Just enough.
He looks at her for a moment, then back at Aleksei. Then, to my growing horror, back at me.
“You should be careful,” he says.
The words are addressed to me, but they’re really for his son.
“I was,” Aleksei says, stepping forward one pace. “Until you walked in.”
Something moves in the elder man’s face. Annoyance, maybe. Or pleasure at getting exactly the reaction he wanted.
He adjusts his cuff. “This isn’t over.”
“No,” Aleksei says. “It’s not.”
For one bright, terrible second, I think he’s actually going to hit him in front of his mother, the doctor, God and everybody.
Instead, his father gives me one last long look, turns, and walks out as if he owns every hallway he enters.
The door closes behind him.
Silence.
Heavy. Immediate. Still vibrating.
I realize only then that I’ve been holding my breath.
Aleksei doesn’t move for a few seconds, staring at the door like he can see through it. His shoulders are rigid. His hands flex once at his sides.
His mother exhales slowly. “Alyosha.”
That pulls him back. He turns to her at once, the fury smoothing down enough to let him be her son again. He goes to her bedside, takes her hand, lowers his head briefly.
I stay where I am, heart still racing, trying to process the last three minutes and failing. Then his mother looks past him to me.
There is apology in her face. And warning. Both, somehow, at once.
I finally understand what Aleksei meant when he said his father likes possession. Because the man didn’t have to touch me to make me feel claimed by the danger of this family.
Aleksei turns then, follows his mother’s gaze, and sees my face properly. The rage that comes back into his expression is different this time. He crosses to me in two strides and lowers his voice. “Did he say anything else to you?”
I shake my head once. “No.”
But my voice sounds thin even to me.
His eyes search mine, scanning for damage he can’t punch his way out of. “He won’t come near you again,” he says.
