I stare at him.
“She’s protecting Leo the only way she knows how—by cutting off the thing that threatens him. And right now, that thing is you.”
The words sink between my ribs like a knife. Hearing them doesn’t make me angry. If anything, they make me tired because I know how true they are. Roman moves again, closer this time.
He claps a hand on my shoulder, firm and grounding. “I think you should come back home with us. If only for a little while to give you both space. With some time and distance, I think you will be surprised how quickly her heart can soften.”
He just squeezes my shoulder once, then turns and walks toward the door without waiting for my reply. He leaves the door open when he descends down the stairs, his footsteps the only noise in the heavy silence that follows.
My body sags into the couch, a tired breath leaving me.
Then I’m alone again.
22
IVY
The weeks slip past like grains of sand through my fingers, every day bleeding into the next.
Morning light through the curtains with Leo soundly sleeping and pressed into my side. Breakfast with our family, crayons at the table during lunch, dishes in the sink after every meal. Walks to the park when the weather is kind, games of cards when it rains. Bedtime stories that stretch longer than they should because I can’t bring myself to let him fall asleep without my voice in his ears.
It’s routine. Predictable and comforting.
I watch the way my son’s shoulders loosen little by little as the days roll on. How the fear in his eyes isn’t so present anymore. He clings a little less tightly when I step out of the room, and while he still doesn’t like me gone for long, the edge of panic isn’t there every second. The nightmares still come, but not every night.
Little by little, he feels a little less scared.
That should make me happy, but guilt threads through it like second nature. Because no matter what happens or how many milestones my son continues to hit, I can’t help but wonder what life would be like if I'd let Maksim stay. If I'd asked him to be a part of our lives instead of pushing him out the door and telling him to return to Russia.
I tell myself it’s better this way, but still, it hurts to wonder about the what-ifs. They plague me constantly, unrelenting in their demonstrative hold over my mind and my dreams.
Then, unexpectedly, life shifts.
Leo gets curious.
It starts one night after I tuck him in. He rolls onto his side, his eyes wide and serious in the faint light coming from the light-up whale figure plugged into the wall. He seems far older than he should look when his mouth pulls down into a frown, those soft brows of his furrowing together in a way that makes him look just like his father.
“Mama… can I ask you something?”
“Of course you can, my love.”
He watches me for a long moment. His fingers curl around the sheets pulled up to his chest, twisting them until his skin turns white. Whatever questions roll through his head, he struggles with choosing just one. And when he does, it nearly doubles me over when he asks it.
“Maksim… is he a bad person?”
My chest tightens. I brush his hair back and kiss his temple. “No, honey. He’s… his job is very complicated.”
“But why were those men after us? I heard them saying it was his fault.”
“They weren’t after us,” I murmur carefully. “They were… they wanted to get Maksim’s attention. He had something they wanted and they wanted to take it from him.”
“What did he have?”
I can’t tell Leo the truth. Not yet. Maybe not ever. As angry as I am at his father for everything that’s happened, for everything that’s been done to us because of his Bratva, I don’t want to demonize him to his son.
It wouldn’t be fair.
As dangerous as Maksim’s life is, as frightening as his world can be, he never once set out to intentionally put me or Leo in harm’s way. Quite the opposite, actually. We were unfortunately swept up into the current of his war, and once it caught us, there was no swimming back to shore.