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Choosing to focus on my daughter instead, I fight back the surge of emotions that threaten to overwhelm me. The weight of it all presses down on my chest, and I allow myself to take responsibility for all that I have done.
I am responsible for his loss.
For his daughter.
For her mother.
For Mikhail’s attempted murder.
And there is no way I can change it.
I notice Isaak still looking down at Chiara, but as he feels the weight of my gaze on him, he looks back at me. Though his eyes are still hard, they are searching mine.
I swallow hard, and for the first time in a long time, I find that my voice is quiet, almost fragile.
“Your daughter is well.” I admit in a small voice. “She is smart, she is beautiful…she is exactly how her mother was.”
The room grows tense.
Isaak stills completely, his posture becoming rigid as though the very air has shifted.
I feel either one of his sons eyes on me, and I watch as they both step a fraction forward to be closer to their father, sensing the change in the atmosphere. Isaak’s gaze narrows in my direction, but he does not say anything. He simply stares at me, as though he is waiting for something, perhaps some more from me to explain this all.
“You have met my daughter?”
He asks me, his voice low and controlled, each of his words sounding like a warning.
I nod my head, keeping my eyes locked on his as my fingers gently stroke my daughter’s soft hand.
“Yes.” I reply, my voice steady despite the storm that is brewing in my chest. “She and my daughter attend the same school. They knew each other in passing, and Gabriel and I still keep in touch.”
I see the way his eyes darken further, the way his fingers curl into fists on either side of his body at the mention ofhisname; the man who murdered his lover.
Isaak continues watching me, as do his sons, as the silence becomes suffocating.
He inhales sharply, as though to steady himself, with his hands still clenched at his sides.
His eyes flicker over to his sons. Together, the twins move in closer, as if to protect their father, understanding just how fragile this moment is.
When Isaak turns to me once again, his words are barely a rasp.
“My daughter is in England? She is safe there?”
His question is almost a plea, a fragile thread of hope that is woven into his words, but there is also something beneath it.
An unspoken fear, a longing that he tries to keep buried, but cannot completely mask.
I can see it. I can hear it in his voice.
I nod, my heart tightening as I raise Chiara’s limp hand to press a kiss to my daughter’s knuckles.
This is all I can give him—this small reassurance that his daughter is well—and that she is safe.
“She is.”
I confirm, my voice steady, but not without a hint of sorrow for all of this which has affected our children.
There is a shift in his eyes, a small flicker of relief as he exhales a long breath, one which seems to carry the weight of all these years of loss, of uncertainty.