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When he climbs in, I reach for his hand and ask, "So, where are we going? You know I can't be gone too long. Misha will get hungry and they don't have a bottle."
"You'll see," he says as he puts the car in gear and pulls out.
The heater blasts warm air as Dimitri drives east, away from my father's neighborhood toward the older neighborhoods where the streets narrow and the buildings sag with age. I keep my eye on the road, but I’m counting the minutes in my head, wondering how long before Misha needs me. Dimitri keeps his eyes forward, but I can see the tension in his shoulders. He's planning something.
"You're going to make me miss his feeding," I say, though I try not to make it sound snippy or unkind. Whatever he's planned must be special for him, and maybe he already planned this with my mother and sister too. I've not left Misha alone for too long, so the separation is giving me anxiety.
"You won't miss anything," he replies and turns onto Preobrazhenskaya Street.
I know this street. I studied it in university, wrote a paper on the architectural decay of the Preobrazhenskoye District and the churches that survived the Soviet era, only to crumble from neglect. When Dimitri stops the car, I look up and see the onion domes of Preobrazhensky Sobor rising above the apartment blocks, black with mildew and neglect.
He kills the engine while I'm still staring up in shock and awe. It's so beautiful, but so neglected. Someone should take the time to give it the care it deserves and restore the history so the people of this city and those who visit can enjoy it in all its glory.
"What are we doing here?" I ask.
Instead of answering, he gets out and comes around to my door, opening it. The cold is biting out here in the wind, and I pull my hat down and step onto the curb, looking up at the church.
It's been closed for decades, the brickwork crumbling, the gold leaf peeling from the domes. I remember telling Dimitri about this place last winter, when we walked through the winter market looking at buildings I used to dream of saving. I talked for twenty minutes about the baroque details hidden under the grime, about the iconostasis that probably still sits inside under layers of dust. I thought he was humoring me by listening back then.
He takes my hand and leads me to the side entrance then produces a key and unlocks the heavy wooden door. It swings open with a groan. My eyes are already filling with tears just to be able to come into this old place and marvel. The interior is so beautiful yet so neglected.
The nave has been stripped of decades of grime. Work lights stand on scaffolding, illuminating walls where restorers have already cleaned away the soot to reveal frescoes underneath—faded but intact, depicting saints with their halos still gleaming gold in places. The air smells like plaster dust, but underneath all of this, I feel the sense of rising hope.
"I bought it," he says quietly so his voice doesn't echo around the cavernous interior. "Three months ago."
My mind flicks to a memory in our kitchen in St Petersburg where I saw this very cathedral open on a tab on his browser. I was curious then, but it's starting to click now. And how he used to tell me we couldn’t touch our savings at all.
My heart feels like it'll stop beating any second.
"Why?" I turn to face him. "Dimitri, this must have cost—"
"Money isn't an issue," he interrupts, stepping closer. Even inside, his breath fogs in the air. The church has heat, but it's still drafty. "You talked about this place for twenty minutes straight. You said if you could restore any building in Moscow, it would be this church. So…"
I can't stop the flood of emotions or the tears that streak my cheeks as I look up into his eyes and grab his hand. "My God," I mutter, "what did you do?"
He moves to the scaffolding and pulls back a tarp, revealing architectural plans pinned to a board—drawings of the restored interior, the domes regilded, the frescoes preserved, the space converted into a community center and gallery that would serve the neighborhood instead of serving as another Bratva front.
"This is your project," he says. "I want your future to belong to you, Alana, and this was your dream." I can't believe he'd do this for me. My eyes scan the room again and fall back to his face where his eyes are fixed on me.
My throat tightens. Dimitri didn't just buy me a building. He is offering me the future his brother stole, one I don't think I'd ever have found on my own now, being a mother. He has no idea what this means to me.
"I don't know what to say," I admit.
"Say you'll keep it," he says. "Make it beautiful again, baby."
He steps closer, and I can see the exhaustion in his eyes, the same weariness I feel in my bones. We've been fighting for so long. Fighting our fathers, fighting each other, fighting the war they made for us. It feels like it's time to stop all this fighting and make something beautiful with our lives, and this cathedral is his way of helping me move out of that darkness into the light of a new day.
"I want that," I say. "I want that more than anything."
Dimitri smiles awkwardly and fumbles in his pocket for a second. He looks uncertain or hesitant, and when he pulls his hand out, he has a small box. My stomach drops. I know what that is. I've seen enough of these in my life to recognize the velvet casing and the teary-eyed expression he's giving me.
"Don't," I say as my hand rises to cover my open mouth.
"Listen to me," he mumbles, suddenly with a serious expression as he lowers himself to one knee. "I have waited to ask you this for a long time because I didn't want you to think for a second that I was scheming to get our families to stop the war."
He opens the box to show me the ring inside. It's simple, a single diamond in a platinum band, but the setting is heart-shaped, perfect for the way I feel about this man.
"I want to marry you because you're the woman I love," he says. "You make me want to be better than the man I was raised to be. Alana, when I look at you, I see everything I could ever want, and I don't want anyone else ever again."
