But then that disappears, and is replaced by the smiling faces of the twins.My children.I never thought I would bring my flesh and blood into this world. I thought I would die alone, but there they are.
For one blissful moment, I allow myself to be happy.
Katerina touches my arm.
The contact should be easy to ignore. It isn’t.
“What did you dream?” she asks quietly.
I almost tell her it doesn’t matter.
I almost tell her she doesn’t want to know.
Instead, I hear myself laugh once under my breath, tired and ugly. “My mother.”
Her hand stays where it is.
I stare at the wall across from the bed because looking at her while I say any of this will make it harder.
“She used to sleep lightly,” I say. “I think when you live with a man like my father, that becomes instinct. You learn the sound of a bad night before it fully starts.”
Katerina says nothing.
I don’t think I could keep talking if she interrupted.
“I was twelve when he sent us away the first time. Just far enough to make it clear we had become inconvenient. My mother still thought that meant there was a chance he would come back for us if she waited properly. If she behaved properly. If she stayed quiet long enough.”
I let out a breath.
“She loved him,” I say. “That was her weakness. She kept believing there was a version of him worth waiting for.”
I feel Katerina’s fingers tighten slightly on my arm.
“She took me to a smaller apartment after that, nothing that looked like punishment from the outside. That was always his style. He didn’t like mess where other people could see it. But the money got tighter. The visits stopped. Then the calls stopped. Then even his men stopped pretending we still mattered. She did love him. And that was the worst mistake she ever made.”
Katerina shifts closer but doesn’t interrupt.
“I was fourteen when he had her killed. I woke up because she screamed my name. There were men in the apartment already. One of them grabbed me before I could get out of bed. The other went straight to her.”
I stop there for a second, because even after so many years, the memory is still overwhelming.
“My father sent them,” I say. “I know that as surely as I know my own name. He wanted her dead, and he wanted me alive to see it. He wanted me to understand what happened to people who became inconvenient to him.”
Katerina’s hand tightens on my arm.
“They killed her in front of me. He had her murdered in that room while I was held down and forced to watch.”
The words settle hard between us.
“I remember stupid things about it. The color of her nightgown. The sound of the radiator. The smell of cigarette smoke on the man holding me. I remember her looking at me while she was dying, like she was more afraid for me than for herself. I remember the man kneeling over her standing up afterward and telling me to remember it. After that, there was nothing left to misunderstand. My father hadn’t just thrown us away. He had finished the job.”
I lean forward and rest my forearms on my knees for a moment. The apartment is still dark, and outside the windows the city hasn’t started making noise yet.
“I buried her with borrowed money,” I say. “I would rather have owed strangers.”
“And that’s when you decided?” Katerina asks quietly.
“Yes.” I turn my head and look at her properly. “That’s when I decided I was going to take everything from him. Not quickly. Not in some fit of grief. I wanted him to lose it the way I lost her. Slowly. Piece by piece. His money. His men. His power. His name. I wanted him to watch his world come apart and understand exactly who was doing it.”