By the time the last of them leaves, the safehouse feels cavernous.
I collapse onto the couch, the only remaining piece of furniture left in the living room, and rest my elbows on my knees. My palms drag down over my face, but they do nothing to erase the image of her standing there, her shoulders tight, her eyes guarded, voice trembling but firm.
“I can’t go back to Russia with you.”
The pain sitting in my chest is deep,a dull, endless throb that settles into my bones and refuses to let go. I stare at the floor until the edges of my vision blur. Until time ceases to move and silence becomes a vise around my skull.
Then a voice cuts through it.
“Are you really not coming?”
I jolt.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here motionless, but the voice coming from the front door startles me like a gunshot.
My gaze drags upward.
Roman.
He leans against the doorframe with his arms crossed, his silhouette framed by the dim hallway light. There’s no judgment in his expression, just calm observation. And maybe something else buried beneath it. Pity? Sympathy? I’m not sure.
I should send him away, should bark at him to leave me alone, but I don’t. Instead, I admit something I never thought I would.
“She doesn’t want to be a family.”
I don’t know why I say it. These are the kinds of dark confessions I usually reserve for Lev when we’re shoulder to shoulder in the dark, passing the bottom of a bottle back and forth while pretending it makes things easier.
Still, he says nothing, just watches me with that unnerving steadiness of his. Waiting.
“I tried to get her to reconsider… told her I’d protect them both. She told me she couldn’t live in Russia with us always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Didn’t want our son to be involved either. She’s cutting me out of their lives completely.”
“Do you blame her?” he finally asks.
The truth comes too easily. “No.”
How could I? If she were any less of a mother, I wouldn’t trust her with Leo at all. If she were softer, more easily swayed, if she bent to the world the way so many others do when power breathes down their necks, I wouldn’t have left our son in her arms.
It’s her ferocity that keeps him alive. Her refusal to bend,even when it’s me she’s standing against. Her rage, her grief, her need to keep Leo as far from my world as possible.
All of it is justified.
It’s me who isn’t.
Roman steps inside the room, his boots soundless against the hardwood floor. He doesn’t go for a chair or perch on the edge of the table like Katya would. He just walks toward me and stops a few feet away.
“Maybe with time, she’ll come around.”
“I’ve never lost anything I wanted this badly,” I admit, the words like sandpaper on my throat.
Roman and I have been through hell together. We’ve fought side by side, buried the same brothers, carried the same scars. But love? That’s always been the one battlefield we’ve never discussed.
“She loves you, you know,” he says.
I blink at him, surprised.
“She wouldn’t be this angry if she didn’t.”
I huff a bitter breath, dragging a hand over my face. “Love doesn’t mean anything if she won’t stand beside me.”
