There are no grand gates here, not by Dragovich standards. No monumental columns, no sprawling compound with men patrolling like decorative threats. Just a modest iron gate, old brick walls softened by age and ivy—a small villa set back among winter-bare gardens, olive trees that should not be here, and dark cypress.
The exterior is pale, worn, and dignified without trying to impress. Warm light glows in two downstairs windows and one upstairs. Ruslan is awake, then. Of course he is. The man sleeps like guilt pays rent in his skull.
The car stops near the front path, and Kai turns from the passenger seat. “Do you want me inside?”
“No.”
He nods once, then adds, “I’ll be near the gate.”
“I know.”
He hesitates, which means there’s something else. “Nikolaj. Don’t go in there looking for permission.”
That sentence pisses me off because itisuseful, and I get out before I can add to it.
Cold air bites at my face as I walk toward the villa. The garden smells of frozen earth, pine, and old chimney smoke. It’s strange how small the place looks every time I return. As a child, it seemed larger, not physically but in atmosphere, charged with adult secrets and the weight of things I wasn’t meant to know.
Now it is just a house. A modest house where an old monster has retired to drink vodka, tend grudges, and pretend his heart died decades ago when every conversation with him proves otherwise.
He opens the door before I knock, and stands there in a dark sweater and wool trousers, hair silvered more than he likes to admit, one hand braced against the frame.
There’s age in his face now. Real age, not weakness but weathering. He is still broad, still dangerous, still capable of making the air change around him with one look.
But the first thing I notice is the tension near his left eye, that subtle tightening he gets when the old ache has returned. I think absurdly of the scar over my own, the jagged line that makes us resemble each other more than either of us ever wanted.
He doesn’t look surprised to see me. That means either Kai called ahead or fatherhood does occasionally come with instincts worth mentioning.
“You look like shit,” he says in Russian.
I step past him into the warmth of the house. “Always good to see you too, Papa.”
He closes the door behind me. “This is not a social hour, then.”
“When have we ever had one?”
“A father can dream.”
I snort despite myself and take off my coat, hanging it on the peg by the door because this house has pegs by the door instead of servants appearing to take things from your hands. It always feels faintly absurd. Domestic, almost. I don’t know what to do with that.
Ruslan watches me with the same assessing look he has given me my whole life, but there is less command in it now. More caution. Maybe even concern, though he’d sooner drink poison than label it that. “Vodka?”
“Obviously.”
He leads me toward the kitchen instead of the study, another sign that he knows this is not business.
The kitchen is old but clean, with dark wood cabinets, white tile, and brass handles polished by use rather than staff. A kettle sits on the stove. A loaf of black bread rests under a cloth. There’s a small table by the window where he has clearly been sitting alone, a newspaper folded beside the vodka bottle and two glasses now, because he has already reached for another before I answer.
I sit, and he pours. For a while, we don’t speak. That is the thing about my father: he understands silence better than most men understand language. He doesn’t rush to fill it because he knows silence always confesses eventually if you let it sit long enough.
“I assume you didn’t drive out here for tea.”
“No,” I say. “I drove out here because I’m tired of everyone making decisions about my life and calling it mercy.”
His posture changes by less than an inch, but it changes. The old ease around his shoulders tightens. Not in fear; the old Pakhan doesn’t show fear in ways others can see. Recognition, though. He knows the subject before I say it plainly.
Finally, I say, “You hid Vincenzo from me.”
Ruslan does not deny it. “Yes,” he says.
