Page 87 of Mafia King’s Dangerous Vow

With that, he turns and leaves the room.

For a long time, I stay frozen with my son’s photograph beneath my fingertips.

Ivan Morozov.

Age eight.

Mark.

Two names for one boy. Two lives laid over each other, neither one less real because the other exists.

Dark curls. Loose scarf. Sheet music bent slightly in one hand. His mouth open around some argument I will never hear.

My son is alive.

The thought should be enormous. It is enormous. Too large to hold all at once.

Instead, it keeps arriving in pieces.

He plays piano. He has friends. He almost walks into things when he is talking. He is loved.

That one breaks me each time.

I press my fingers to my mouth, but no sound comes out. I am past sobbing. Past the first shock. The grief has thinned into glass in water.

Papa killed Mark. Papa stole my son. Aleksander knew.

All three facts remain, and I don’t know which one gets to destroy me first.

The desk lamp throws a clean circle of light across the file. Hospital records. Adoption papers. Financial transfers. Photographs. Timelines. Names. The entire machinery of my life dismantled and laid out in organized black folders because Aleksander Sokolov does not do anything halfway, including violation.

I should still be furious. I am still furious. But underneath the anger is the part I hate most.

He gave me the address.

He could’ve kept it. He could’ve shown me the photograph and withheld the street name. He could’ve said not yet, not safe, trust me. He could’ve done what powerful men always do—wrapped control in concern and expected gratitude for the ribbon.

He didn’t. He put the address between us and waited.

If that’s what you decide, I will take you.

I close my eyes. That’s what makes it worse.

Cruel men are easier. Cruel men take and take, and the only work required of you is survival.

Attentive men make you decide what kind of damage matters.

The closed door gives me exactly what I asked for.

I hate it.

Aleksander is somewhere on the other side of the wall because he chose not to decide what I needed tonight. I hate that line almost as much as I need it. I hate that he understood the wound exactly, then stepped away from it with his hands open.

I read my father’s message again.

Tomorrow, I will sit across from Papa with my son’s address in my pocket.

And for the first time in my life, he will be the one speaking into a room where I know more than he thinks I do.