Page 71

He smiles, a small, weary lifting of lips. “You’ve become hard, Aleksei. Like I was.”

“I am nothing like you,” I snap, the comparison hitting a raw nerve.

“No.” He looks at me with unexpected clarity. “You’re better. Stronger. You built something. I only destroyed.”

The compliment, if that’s what it is, leaves me unsettled. I move toward the door, eager to end this strange encounter. “Rest. The staff will bring food later.”

“Aleksei.” His voice stops me at the threshold. “There’s something else you should know.”

I turn back, irritation rising. “What?”

He seems to shrink further into himself, his gaze dropping to the floor. “Your mother… she’s alive.”

The words don’t register at first. They can’t. They contradict twenty years of certainty, of grief, of hatred directed at the man before me.

“What did you say?” My voice sounds distant to my own ears.

“Maria. Your mother.” He looks up, eyes watery but clear. “She’s alive.”

The room spins around me. I grip the doorframe, steadying myself against a wave of dizziness. What the fuck is he talking about? Is he delirious? “That’s impossible. She disappeared. You—”

“I didn’t kill her.” He shakes his head slowly. “I couldn’t. Not her.”

“Then where?” The question comes gruffly. “Where has she been for twenty years?”

“Vostok.”

The single word makes me sway on my feet. Vostok Institute— the notorious Soviet-era psychiatric facility, rumored to house political prisoners alongside the mentally ill. A place where people disappeared, where treatments included ice baths and electroshock, where patients were test subjects for experimental drugs.

A place of living nightmares.

“Why?” I cross the room in two strides, looming over him. “Why the fuck is my mother in Vostok?”

He shrinks back, alcohol and exhaustion clouding his eyes. “She was going to take you… take my children… I couldn’t…”

“Couldn’t what?” I snap. I grab his shoulders, shaking him slightly. “Finish the fucking sentence!”

But his head lolls, eyes unfocused. The combination of vodka, medication, and exhaustion has pushed him beyond coherence. His mumbled response makes no sense— fragments about threats and protection and choices no man should make.

“What the fuck is she doing there?” I snarl, knowing I probably don’t want to hear the answer.

I release him in disgust, watching as he slumps back onto the bed. Within seconds, his breathing deepens into the heavy rhythm of unconsciousness.

“Blyad,” I mutter, running a hand through my hair.

Twenty years believing she was dead— twenty fucking years of hatred based on a lie. My mother, alive all this time in that hellhole, while I built empires and exiled the man I thought had murdered her.

Even now, he can’t give me a straight answer. Even dying, he’s still a drunk piece of shit.

I pull out my phone, dialing Vasya. He answers on the third ring.

“I need everything you can find on Vostok Institute,” I say without preamble. “Current operations, security protocols, patient records. Everything.”

“Vostok?” His confusion is evident. “The psychiatric facility? Why would you—”

“Mama is there.” The words still feel foreign, impossible. “She’s been there for over twenty years.”

Silence stretches across the connection. A long one. Then: “I’ll call you back in an hour.”