Page 79 of The Pakhan's Captive
I follow her inside. The air in the foyer is cool, smelling of beeswax and old stone. I shed my overcoat, handing it to a silent maid, and head toward the stairs.
I hear him before I see him.
“Is it them? Is it?”
The high-pitched, frantic pitter-patter of small feet on the hardwood upstairs. Then, a streak of blue pajamas appears at the top of the landing.
“Superman!”
Theo doesn’t care about Bratva politics. He doesn’t care about shipping manifests or the fact that his father is a murderer. He only sees the man who promised he’d be back.
He clears the last three stairs in a single, reckless jump. I drop to one knee, my heart leaping into my throat as I catch him mid-air. He hits my chest like a cannonball, his small arms locking around my neck with a strength that surprises me every time.
“You’re back! You’re back!” he shrieks, burying his face in the crook of my neck.
“I’m back, Theo,” I murmur.
I squeeze him tight, my eyes closing. He smells like sunshine and that strawberry shampoo Lena uses on him. He is the only thing in this world that is pure, the only thing that doesn’t look at me and see a monster.
“Did you find the bad dragons?” he asks, pulling back to look at me, his eyes wide and searching. “Did you win?”
“I won, little man,” I say, my voice sounding thick. “They won’t be coming here.”
“I told Lyosha you would win,” Theo says, his chest puffing out with pride. “I told him you’re the strongest Superman in the whole world.”
I feel a strange, localized ache in my chest. I want to hear it. I want to hear the wordDad. I want the title that isn’t a rank, the one that can’t be taken away by a coup or a bullet. But I look at his face—the innocence there—and I know I haven’t earned it. I’ve kept him safe, but I’ve also kept his mother in a cage.
“Go on,” I say, ruffling his hair. “I think someone else missed you more than I did.”
I look up and see Lena.
She’s standing in the doorway of the playroom, just down the hall. She’s watching us. Her hands are gripped tight in front of her, her knuckles white. She’s watching the man who killed her father hold her son, and for a fleeting, terrifying second, the silence between us cracks. I see a flash of agony in her eyes, a collision of her hatred for me and her love for the boy in my arms.
She blinks, and the shutters go back up.
“Theo,” she says softly. “Come here, baby. Let’s get you cleaned up for dinner.”
Theo gives me one last squeeze before scrambling out of my lap. “See ya, Razvan! We’re gonna play dragons later, okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
I stay on my knee for a moment after he runs to her. I watch her scoop him up, her movements fluid and instinctual. She doesn’t look at me as she carries him into the playroom. She doesn’t acknowledge that I exist.
I stand up, brushing the dust from my pants. I should go to the study. I have a war to manage. I have a list of names from St. Petersburg that need to be systematically erased from the earth. I have the weight of the Volkov empire on my shoulders.
Instead, I find myself drifting toward the playroom.
I don’t go in. I stop in the shadows of the hallway, leaning against the cold stone wall. The door is slightly ajar, casting a wedge of warm, yellow light across the floor.
I watch.
Inside, the room is a mess of plastic dinosaurs, wooden blocks, and picture books. Lena is sitting on the floor—the emerald silk of her dress fanned out around her like a fallen leaf. She’s shed her shoes. Her hair is down now, cascading over her shoulders.
She is…different.
With Theo, Lena isn’t a fortress; she’s a garden. She is soft in a way she never lets herself be when she knows my eyes are on her. She is unhurried. She listens to Theo’s rambling story about a T-Rex and a fire truck as if it’s the most important intelligence report in the world.
She laughs.
