Page 103 of Bratva Bidder

I feel like I’m balancing on the edge of a blade.

Konstantin exhales beside me. The sound is low, strained, like he’s forcing air into lungs that don’t want to cooperate.

“I had an uncle,” he says, voice low and flat. “My father’s younger brother. Igor.”

I turn to look at him, unsure where this is going.

“He was a cruel bastard,” he says. “Drank like a fish, hands like iron. He used to grab me by the neck when my father wasn’t around. Called me names. Said I wasn’t really my father’s son. Said my mother was a whore. Called me a bastard. Over and over.”

His voice doesn’t waver, but something about the way his hands clench in his lap tells me this is the first time he’s said any of this aloud.

“I was ten when he died,” he says. “Heart attack. Unexplained. One moment he was yelling at a maid for scuffing the marble floor, and the next he was on the ground, choking. Nobody could figure out what happened.”

He leans back against the wall, eyes unfocused, staring straight ahead.

“And I was happy,” he says softly. “Not just relieved. Happy. Like something bad had finally been erased from the world.”

A pause.

“I didn’t know what it would mean for me,” he finishes.

A broken thread in the bloodline. And this cruel uncle—this man who once tormented him—might have been carrying the same thing, undiagnosed and destructive, like a curse running through their veins.

His voice cracks.

My heart twists so hard I have to grip the bench to steady myself.

This should be the moment I hate him.

He’s the reason our son is lying in that bed, waiting on test results and doctors and prayers. His blood. His legacy. His goddamn family.

And yet…

I can’t bring myself to feel it.

Because I see the pain carved into his features. The way he’s unraveling in silence. The shame. The helplessness. The man who once ruled entire rooms with a glance now looks like he’s barely holding himself together.

Hewouldtrade places with Nikolai in a heartbeat. That much I know.

So I don’t tell him what part of me is thinking—that if he hadn’t disappeared from my life, maybe we would’ve caught this sooner. That if he’d known his family’s medical history instead of burying it in vodka and violence and old Russian myths, maybe Nikolai wouldn’t be here now.

But I also don’t tell him that I forgive him.

Because I’m not sure I do.

I just sit there, shoulder to shoulder with him, our arms not quite touching.

The silence stretches between us, taut and full of things neither of us has the strength to say.

A nurse steps out with Mila, who’s munching on a lollipop, completely unfazed. Her eyes brighten when she sees me, and she runs into my arms with sticky fingers and that fierce, all-consuming love only small children are capable of.

“All done,” she chirps, lollipop bumping my cheek. “The lady with the glasses gave me stickers too. Want one?”

“Of course I do.” I hug her tighter than I probably should.

She wiggles, then leans in and whispers, “Did I do good?”

“You were perfect.”