Page 85 of The Pakhan's Captive
“It’s a lot harder than I thought. Even harder than being Pahkan,” I admit.
“Yeah,” she sighs. “It is.”
Theo stirs between us, his small body finally relaxed. He mumbles something in his sleep, a nonsensical word that sounds a bit like “Mama,” and then he settles back down. I watch him for hours, watching the rise and fall of his chest, making sure every breath is followed by another.
I think about the years I lost. I think about the man I was before I knew the weight of this boy’s hand in mine. I was a hollow shell, filled with nothing but ambition and blood. I thought I was powerful because people feared me. But I was nothing.
Power isn’t the ability to kill. It’s the ability to care about something so much that its pain becomes your own. It’s the terror of losing a piece of your heart that lives outside your body.
“I’m never leaving him again,” I whisper, though they are both asleep. “I’m never leaving either of you.”
As the sun begins to peek through the curtains, painting the nursery in soft pinks and golds, I finally feel my own eyes start to get heavy. The panic has burned itself out, leaving behind a quiet, solid resolve.
I know who I am now. I’m the man who will burn the world to the ground to keep this room safe. I’m the man who will kill anyone who tries to take this peace away. But I’m also the man who cries when his son has a temperature.
I pull the blanket up over the three of us. For the first time in my life, I don’t dream of blood or betrayal. I don’t dream of the serpent on my wrist or the enemies at the gate.
I just dream of the quiet breathing of the two people who finally taught me how to live.
When I wake up a few hours later, the room is bright. Theo is sitting up, rubbing his eyes, looking perfectly fine. He sees me and a huge grin spreads across his face.
“Superman! You’re sleeping in my bed!”
“I am,” I say, my voice raspy but warm.
Lena stirs beside me, blinking at the light. She looks at Theo, then at me, and a small, genuine smile touches her lips. It’s not a mask. It’s not a truce. It’s real.
“How do you feel, monkey?” she asks, reaching over to ruffle his hair.
“Hungry,” Theo announces. “I want pancakes. Big ones!”
“I think Superman can make that happen,” Lena says, her eyes meeting mine over Theo’s head. There’s a softness there, a shared relief that should make me feel light.
Instead, it feels like a noose tightening.
“I’ll get the kitchen started,” I say, my voice sounding hollow even to my own ears.
I stand up, stretching my aching muscles. My side twinges—the wound I sustained for them—and for the first time, the pain doesn’t feel like a badge of honor. It feels like a warning.
I watch her ruffle his hair, the two of them framed in the pale morning light, and a cold, sickening clarity washes over me. I’ve spent my life eliminating my vulnerabilities. I’ve burned bridges, executed traitors, and slept with a gun under my pillow to ensure I had no jagged edges for an enemy to grab onto.
And now? I am all jagged edges.
Every breath Theo takes is a secondary pulse I have to protect. Every smile Lena gives me is a map for Viktor or the Italians or any ambitious street soldier to find exactly where to drive the knife. I’m not just the Pakhan anymore. I’m a man with two beating hearts outside of his own chest, and in Moscow, that makes me a dead man walking.
“Razvan?” Lena asks, sensing the shift. I don’t know how she did it, but she did. The warmth in her eyes flickers with a sudden, sharp uncertainty.
I don’t answer. I can’t. The panic from the fever has transformed into something much more dangerous: a predatory, suffocating possessiveness.
If they are my weakness, I have to bury that weakness so deep no one can find it. I have to make her mine—not just by contract, not just by shared trauma, but by total, absolute absorption. She needs to be so close to me that an assassin can’t tell where I end and she begins. If I’m losing my mind to this—to them—then I’ll make sure the rest of the world is too terrified to even look in their direction.
I walk toward the door, but I don’t look back. My mind is already moving past pancakes and nursery rhymes. I’m thinking about the security perimeter. I’m thinking about the men I need to kill before the sun is fully up, just to remind the city who I am.
I thought I was winning because the fever broke.
But as I descend the stairs into the shadows of my empire, I realize the real war has just begun. I’m not just fighting my enemies anymore. I’m fighting the fact that I would burn the entire world to ash just to keep that one small room warm.
And I’ve never been more terrified of what I’m capable of doing to keep them.
