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Maksim’s tiny voice cuts through the tightness in my chest. “Mama’s okay now?”
He’s standing beside me, clutching a half-finished juice box the nurse gave him, his wide eyes flicking between the two of us. He tugs gently on the leg of my pants.
I crouch in front of him, brushing a hand through his dark curls. “She’s going to be just fine,” I say, steady and low.
He leans his head into my palm and smiles—a small, tired smile that knocks the breath right out of me.
Behind him, Mara gives me a look. It’s quiet and loaded, something between gratitude and sorrow. I hold her gaze for a long second and then rise to my feet, slipping the medication bag into my pocket.
“We’re done here,” I say quietly, more to myself than anyone.
She nods once, then reaches for Maksim’s hand.
I open the door and guide them into the corridor, one hand at Mara’s back, the other hovering near the boy. Whatever comes next—whatever storm is waiting outside—I will walk through it first.
They’ve had enough. No one’s touching them again.
The streets are mostly empty as I guide the car through the sleeping city, the sky bleeding slowly into soft shades of pink and blue. Streetlamps flicker above us, casting long shadows that melt away as we drive past. It’s the kind of stillness that only comes after a storm—the world holding its breath before the next breath begins.
In the rearview mirror, I can see Mara and Maksim curled together in the back seat.
He’s wrapped in a blanket the nurse handed us on our way out, small chest rising and falling in steady rhythm, completely knocked out. One tiny fist rests in his mother’s lap, still loosely wrapped around two of her fingers like he’s afraid to let go. And Mara... she hasn’t moved in a while.
Her head leans against the window, eyes closed, lashes casting shadows over her cheeks. There’s a bandage at her temple now. Ointment smeared over the bruises that still stain her wrists and ribs. And even though her posture is slumped with exhaustion, there’s something unbreakable in the way she holds her son—like her body might be battered, but her soul? Her soul is steel.
They both refused to sit apart. I offered Mara the front seat, but she just shook her head without a word and slid into the back with her son. I didn’t argue. After everything they’ve been through, who the hell was I to come between them?
An unlovable husband and an absentee father.
I glance at them again, and my hands grip the wheel tightly. I think of the way she’d looked in that exam room. Those bruises, the tremble in her hands—haven’t left me. I could see how hard she was trying to hold herself together. And even now, I can feel it, the quiet weight of her pain sitting in this car like a fourth passenger. I want to take it from her. I want to pull all of it into my own chest and lock it away where it can’t touch her anymore.
But I know I can’t erase the past. All I can do is fight for what’s left of the future.
The road curves, and I ease onto the familiar stretch leading to my house. Dawn is fully breaking now. The horizon glows with the start of a new day—clean, brutal, and honest. The kind of day that doesn’t hide what came before, but dares you to survive it anyway.
46
Chapter 37
Xiomara
The first thing I register is the silence. A kind of silence that cradles you instead of choking you. It’s warm and soft and still. My body feels like it weighs more than it ever has. Not in pain—but in the strange heaviness that comes after surviving something that nearly ended you.
I blink slowly, staring up at the ceiling of a room I never thought I’d sleep in again.
Zasha’s house.
For a long moment, I just lie there, cocooned in the thick, expensive bedding, letting the fact settle into my bones. I’m here. I’m alive. Maksim is safe. We made it out alive.
The last memory I have before sleep took me was the drive home. Zasha at the wheel. Maksim curled up against me, already snoring, a juice box still clutched in one tiny fist. The way Zasha kept glancing at us through the mirror, protective, unreadable, as if trying to memorize the shape of us.
I push myself upright and glance at the clock on the bedside table.
5:42 p.m.
A gasp flies out of me. I’ve slept nearly twelve hours. It hits me then—how deeply my body must have needed the rest. How deeply my soul did too.
As I swing my legs over the side of the bed, the coolness of the wooden floor makes me shiver, but I ignore it. My heart is already beating faster, not from the chill but from the thought that Maksim might be looking for me. That maybe he woke up, and I wasn’t there.