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“Mama,” I say finally, softly.

Her expression doesn’t change immediately. The word hangs between us, suspended in the air. Then, slowly, her eyes widen.

Her lips part.

The color drains from her face.

Chapter Thirty

Aleksei

“Lyosha?”

The diminutive form of my name— the name she used all those years ago— pours into a hollowness deep in my chest. Her eyes are huge, hand rising to cover her mouth. Time stretches, elastic and surreal, as recognition dawns across her features.

“Is it really you?” she whispers through trembling fingers.

Words fail me. I manage a single nod, my throat constricted by emotions I’ve spent decades burying. Years of carefully constructed control crumbles in an instant.

She takes a half-step forward, then stops, as if afraid I might disappear. Her eyes scan my face with desperate intensity, taking in the changes time has wrought. The boy she knew transformed into a man she doesn’t recognize, yet somehow knows to her core.

“Moy syn,” she breathes. “Moy Lyosha.”

Something breaks inside me— a dam holding back too many years of grief. I feel wetness on my cheeks before I realize I’m crying. Silent tears that I haven’t allowed since the day she vanished.

“Mama,” I choke out, my voice broken.

Her own tears spill freely now, tracking down cheeks hollowed by years of living in this fucking hellhole. For a moment, we stand frozen in mutual disbelief, separated by less than a foot of physical space and an ocean of lost time.

Then she moves.

With surprising speed for her age, she closes the distance between us. Her arms— thinner than I remember but stronger than they appear— wrap around my waist. Her face presses against my chest, her body shaking with sobs that seem torn from the depths of her being.

“My boy,” she cries, the words muffled against my shirt. “My beautiful boy.”

My arms encircle her automatically, carefully, as if she might break under too much pressure. She feels smaller than in my memories— or perhaps I’ve simply grown into the man she always said I would become. Her head barely reaches my shoulder now, when once she seemed to tower over me.

I hold her as she weeps, my own tears falling silently into her gray-streaked hair. The scent of her— flour and cooking spices layered over coarse, institutional soap— triggers a flood of memories so vivid they steal my breath. Sunday mornings makingblini. Her hands bandaging scraped knees. Her voice singing lullabies to usher in sleep.

Mama.

We stand locked together while the world continues around us— distant footsteps, the clatter of kitchen preparations, the mechanical hum of the building. None of it matters. Nothing exists beyond this impossible moment of reunion.

Eventually, her sobs quiet. She pulls back slightly, looking up at me with red-rimmed eyes full of wonder. One trembling hand rises to touch my face, fingers tracing the line of my jaw, the arch of my brow.

“Look at you,” she whispers. “A man. My little boy is a man.”

She guides me to a nearby table, her hand gripping mine as if afraid I might vanish. We sit facing each other, neither speaking for long moments. Words seem inadequate, trivial against the weight of so many years of absence.

I study her as she studies me. The Maria of my memory was vibrant, her movements quick and graceful despite the shadow of my father’s abuse. This woman before me moves with the careful precision of someone who has learned to navigate a world of strict limitations. Her beauty remains, but transformed— softened by age, tempered by hardship, deepened by survival.

“Twenty years is a long time, son,” she says finally, her voice steadier now. “Tell me about your life. Tell me everything.”

How do I compress two decades into words? How do I explain the Bratva, the empire built on blood and fear? How do I tell my gentle mother that her son became the very thing she once protected him from— a man whose rage shapes the world around him?

“I live in America now,” I begin carefully. “California. I have… business interests there.”

Something in her eyes tells me she understands the deliberate vagueness, but she doesn’t press. Instead, she squeezes my hand. “And Diana? Vasya?”